produce such economic conflicts, such refusals of cooperation, as
will turn exhaustion to despair. They believe, to put it briefly, that
Russia has passed through the worst stages of a process to which
every country in Europe will be submitted in turn by its desperate and
embittered inhabitants. We may disagree with them, but we shall not
understand them if we refuse to take that belief into account. If, as
they imagine, the next five years are to be years of disturbance and
growing resolution, Russia will get very little from abroad. If, for
example, there is to be a serious struggle in England, Russia will get
practically nothing. They not only believe that these things are
going to be, but make the logical deductions as to the effect of such
disturbances on their own chances of importing what they need. For
example, Lenin said to me that "the shock of revolution in England would
ensure the final defeat of capitalism," but he said at the same time
that it would be felt at once throughout the world and cause such
reverberations as would paralyze industry everywhere. And that is why,
although Russia is an agricultural country, the Communist plans for her
reconstruction are concerned first of all not with agriculture, but with
industry. In their schemes for the future of the world, Russia's part is
that of a gigantic farm, but in their schemes for the immediate future
of Russia, their eyes are fixed continually on the nearer object of
making her so far self-supporting that, even if Western Europe is
unable to help them, they may be able to crawl out of their economic
difficulties, as Krassin put it to me before he left Moscow, "if
necessary on all fours, but somehow or other, crawl out."

Some idea of the larger ambitions of the Communists with regard to the
development of Russia are given in a conversation with Rykov, which
follows this chapter. The most important characteristic of them is that
they are ambitions which cannot but find an echo in Russians of any
kind, quite regardless of their political convictions. The old anomalies
of Russian industry, for example, the distances of the industrial
districts from their sources of fuel and raw material are to be done
away with. These anomalies were largely due to historical accidents,
such as the caprice of Peter the Great, and not to any economic reasons.
The revolution, destructive as it has been, has at least cleaned the
slate and made it possible, if it is possible