ABSTRACT
A country in an advanced stage of economic decline usually finds a chief cause of its weakness in an extreme shortage of circulating capital. When, as usually occurs, the process of economic decline has been accompanied by currency inflation, the real acuteness of the situation does not tend to show itself until inflation has been stopped and stabilisation attempted. Inflation imposes reduced present consumption on those persons on whom the levy falls, and so sets free resources for use as circulating capital. By the end of 1922 the most serious phase of Russia’s economic collapse had been passed, and the basis for recovery had been laid. For the first year since 1916 economic conditions had shown an unmistakable advance. To continue the upward process required an immense effort, a faith and a determination, even a certain ruthlessness. But given such qualities, the stage had been set for the more rapid reconstruction and the currency stabilisation of the next eighteen months.
