CHAPTER IX 
END OF RUSSIA’S PARTICIPATION IN 
ECONOMIC WAR 
1. Absorption of measures of economic war by communist legislation. 
For all countries which took part in the economic world war of 1914- 
1918 the results of this war were summed up by peace treaties. They 
show gains in the case of those countries which won the War, and 
losses for the losers of the War. The Treaty of Versailles (and other 
treaties modeled upon it) gives a whole system of rules (Part IX, 
Economic Provisions) which, first, put an end to all military meas- 
ures and, second, fulfilled within certain limits the proposals of the 
Paris Conference relating to economic warfare in time of peace. The 
liquidation of war-time legislation took the following form: meas- 
ures taken by the Allies against the rights and interests of enemy 
nationals were confirmed and further developed, while similar meas- 
ures taken by the members of the German coalition were repealed and 
gave place to the obligation to compensate those against whom they 
were applied. The effects of economic war upon the period following 
the War, therefore, proved quite unilateral and manifested them- 
selves in the deprivation of the Powers of the German group of 
equal rights with the Allies in the field of trade. 
The close of the economic war in Russia was quite different. No 
systematic liquidation of war policy took place; it merely disap- 
peared, being engulfed in the abyss of the upheaval occasioned by 
the Revolution. 
If the first Revolution of 191%, which led to the downfall of the 
Monarchy and the transfer of the Government into the hands of 
the moderate oppositionary groups, did not produce any essential 
change in the conduct of economic war, the second Revolution of 
1917, on the contrary, which resulted in the seizure of power by 
Lenin, had a direct effect upon the fate of those measures. To be- 
gin with, three days after the Bolshevik coup d'état (28th October 
1917) there was published the memorable “peace decree” which 
proclaimed that the “Russian Government of Workmen and Sol- 
diers . . . offers to all belligerent peoples and their Governments