der how they could do away with such
anomalies. Their main idea is that the transport of coal in a modern
State is an almost inexcusable barbarism. They have set themselves,
these ragged engineers, working in rooms which they can hardly keep
above freezing-point and walking home through the snow in boots without
soles, no less a task than the electrification of the whole of Russia.
There is a State Committee presided over by an extraordinary optimist
called Krzhizhanovsky, entrusted by the Supreme Council of Public
Economy and Commissariat of Agriculture with the working out of a
general plan. This Committee includes, besides a number of well-known
practical engineers, Professors Latsinsky, Klassen, Dreier, Alexandrov,
Tcharnovsky, Dend and Pavlov. They are investigating the water power
available in different districts in Russia, the possibilities of using
turf, and a dozen similar questions including, perhaps not the least
important, investigation to discover where they can do most with least
dependence on help from abroad.]

Considering the question of the import of machinery from abroad, I asked
him whether in existing conditions of transport Russia was actually in a
position to export the raw materials with which alone the Russians could
hope to buy what they want. He said:

"Actually we have in hand about two million poods (a pood is a little
over thirty-six English pounds) of flax, and any quantity of light
leather (goat, etc.), but the main districts where we have raw material
for ourselves or for export are far away. Hides, for example, we have in
great quantities in Siberia, in the districts of Orenburg and the Ural
River and in Tashkent. I have myself made the suggestion that we should
offer to sell this stuff where it is, that is to say not delivered at a
seaport, and that the buyers should provide their own trains, which we
should eventually buy from them with the raw material itself, so that
after a certain number of journeys the trains should become ours. In
the same districts we have any quantity of wool, and in some of these
districts corn. We cannot, in the present condition of our transport,
even get this corn for ourselves. In the same way we have great
quantities of rice in Turkestan, and actually are being offered rice
from Sweden, because we cannot transport our own. Then we have over a
million poods of copper, ready for export on the same conditions. But
it is clear that if the Western countr