line, a truck of china was sent to the “Raisojouse” in Belij of the Smolensk 
gouvernement; in ten days time the china was already travelling back as 
‘there was no demand for it”. 25 trucks of buckwheat came from Novo- 
sibirsk, 18 of them were sent back, as “they proved to be extra”. A pen- 
dulum-like journey was made by another truck loaded with hemp, circulating 
between two stations. And here is another example. “Oats from the 
Woenprodsklad (The war alimentary stock) often stray via Orel, of the 
\loscow-Kursk line”. All this is printed in the above-mentioned communistic 
paper in very small print, and rightly so, for the Soviet people are not 
very particular in the matter of transport. The average haul of the 
load was gradually diminishing before the revolution, and formed 458 versts 
in 1912, that means that the transport was becoming rationalized. But since 
the time when the Nikolaewskaja line was named the “October” line, and 
Novonikolaevsk became Novosibirsk and factories with such sonorous names 
as ‘“Revtrud” (Revolutionary Labour) appeared, the average haul of the load 
became always longer and in 1924/25 amounted to 532 versts, 1925/26 to 
564 versts and in the current year (i.e., 1927), “shows a further increase’. 
The official paper of the Soviet Government (The Economical Jisn, middle 
of April, — the date has unfortunately not been noted down by me) from 
which these facts are taken, gives a right explanation of the fact: monopoly 
of the economy. — “The economical organisations are ready to bear any 
transport expenses, passing them over on to the consumer, for the transport 
is only interested in the gross-receipts, ignoring the rationality of the 
iransportation.” The gross receipts will undoubtedly increase, if the goods 
30 on travelling backwards and forwards more oftener. 
Such is the harmony in the country which has introduced a socialistic 
plan economy in place of the “bourgeois chaos”. And to people who thus 
manage their business, blind Europe gives credit — in goods and in politics! 
The Industry. 
Lenin has characterised the substance of the present economic system 
in Russia as “monopolistic capitalism”. By it he meant that particular 
position which the Soviet power has assumed “provisionally”, after the 
purely communistic regime had broken down. The chieftain of the DBol- 
shevics has a predilection for terms employed by Western economic science; 
however, his “State monopolistic capitalism” corresponded as little to the 
idea of “state capitalism” — as the term is commonly used in science, — 
as a Soviet-“syndicate’” or a “Soviet-trust’”’ of the present day corresponds to 
that what is understood by this word in Western Europe or America. 
In the form which the Soviet regime has adopted in the eleventh year 
after the revolution, its real character can be epitomised as a system of State 
monopolies, which have seized upon the most important branches of poli- 
tical economy. It is the task of these monopolies to tolerate in industry 
09