TRANSPORT
Locomotives.—Before the war Russia had 22,000 locomotives. Destruction by war and ordinary wear and tear have reduced the number of locomotives in good order to 5,500. Russia is entirely cut off from supplies of spare parts and materials for repair, facilities for the manufacture of which do not exist in Russia. And the Soviet Government is able only with the greatest difficulty to keep in running order the few locomotives at its disposal.
Coal.—Soviet Russia is entirely cut off from supplies of coal. Kolchak holds the Perm mining district, although Soviet troops are now on the edge of it. Denikin still holds the larger part of the Donetz coal district and has destroyed the mines in the portion of the district which he has evacuated. As a result of this, locomotives, electrical power plants, etc., must be fed with wood, which is enormously expensive and laborious and comparatively ineffectual.
Gasoline.—There is a total lack of gasoline, due to the British occupation of Baku. The few automobiles in the cities which are kept running for vital Government business are fed with substitute mixtures, which causes them to break down with great frequency and to miss continually. Almost the entire fleet on the great inland waterway system of Russia was propelled by gasoline. As a result the Volga and the canals, which are so vital a part of Russia's system of transportation, are useless.
FOOD
Everyone is hungry in Moscow and Petrograd, including the people's commissaries themselves. The daily ration of Lenin and the other commissaries is the same as that of a soldier in the army or of a workman at hard labor. In the hotel which is reserved for Government officials the menu is the following: Breakfast—A quarter to half a pound of black bread, which must last all day, and tea without sugar. Dinner—A good soup, a small piece of fish, for which occasionally a diminutive piece of meat is substituted, a vegetable, either a potato or a bit of cabbage, more tea without sugar. Supper—What remains of the morning ration of bread and more tea without sugar.
Occasionally sugar, butter, and chickens slip through from the Ukraine and are sold secretly at atrocious prices—butter, for example, at 140 roubles a pound. Whenever the Government is able to get its hands on any such "luxuries" it turns them over to the schools, where an attempt is made to give every child a good dinner every day.
The food situation has been slightly improved by the rejoining of Ukraine to Great Russia, for food is relatively plentiful in the south; but no great improvement in the situation is possible because of the lack of transport.
MANAGEMENT
Such supplies as are available in Soviet Russia are being utilized with considerable skill. For example, in spite of the necessity of firing with wood, the Moscow-Petrograd express keeps up to its schedule, and on both occasions when I made the trip it took but 13 hours, compared to the 12 hours of prewar days.