It was not even as if, in vital matters, Russia started the war in a satisfactory condition.The most vital of all questions in a country of huge distances must necessarily be that of transport.It is no exaggerationto say that only by fantastic efforts was Russian transport able to save its face and cover its worst deficiencies even before the war began.The extra strain put upon it by the transport of troops and the maintenance of the armies exposed its weakness, and with each succeeding week of war, although in 19l6 and 1917 Russia did receive 775 locomotives from abroad, Russian transport went from bad to worse, making inevitable a creeping paralysis of Russian economic life, during the latter already acute stages of which the revolutionaries succeeded to the disease that had crippled their precursors.
In 1914 Russia had in all 20,057 locomotives, of which 15,047 burnt coal, 4,072 burnt oil and 938 wood.But that figure of twenty thousand was more impressive for a Government official, who had his own reasons for desiring to be impressed, than for a practical railway engineer, since of that number over five thousand engines were more than twenty years old, over two thousand were more than thirty years old, fifteen hundred were more than forty years old, and 147 patriarchs had passed their fiftieth birthday.Of the whole twenty thousand only 7,108 were under ten yearsof age.That was six years ago.In the meantime Russia has been able to make in quantities decreasing during the last five years by 40 and 50 per cent.annually, 2,990 new locomotives.In 1914 of the locomotives then in Russia about 17,000 were in working condition.In 1915 there were, in spite of 800 new ones, only 16,500.In 1916 the number of healthy locomotives was slightly higher, owing partly to the manufacture of 903 at home in the preceding year and partly to the arrival of 400 from abroad.
In 1917 in spite of the arrival of a further small contingent the number sank to between 15,000 and 16,000.Early in 1918 the Germans in the Ukraine and elsewhere captured 3,000.Others were lost in the early stages of the civil war.The number of locomotives fell from 14,519 in January to 8,457 in April, after which the artificially instigated revolt of the Czecho- Slovaks made possible the fostering of civil war on a large scale, and the number fell swiftly to 4,679 in December.In 1919 the numbers varied less markedly, but the decline continued, and in December last year 4,141 engines were in working order.In January this year the number was 3,969, rising slightly in February, when the number was 4,019.A calculation was made before the war that in the best possible conditions the maximum Russian output of engines could be not more than1,800 annually.At this rate in ten years the Russians could restore their collection of engines to something like adequate numbers.Today, thirty years would be an inadequate estimate, for some factories, like the Votkinsky, have been purposely ruined by the Whites, in others the lathes and other machinery for building and repairing locomotives are worn out, many of the skilled engineers were killed in the war with Germany, many others in defending the revolution, and it will be long before it will be possible to restore to the workmen or to the factories the favorable material conditions of 1912-13.Thus the main fact in the present crisis is that Russia possesses one-fifth of the number of locomotives which in 1914 was just sufficient to maintain her railway system in a state of efficiency which to English observers at that time was a joke.For six years she has been unable to import the necessary machinery for making engines or repairing them.Further, coal and oil have been, until recently,cut off by the civil war.The coal mines are left, after the civil war, in such a condition that no considerable output may be expected from them in the near future.Thus, even those engines which exist have had their efficiency lessened by being adapted in a rough and ready manner for burning wood fuel instead of that for which they were designed.
