ABSTRACT
The industrial machine had completely run down, transport had almost ceased and raw materials for the factories were either non-existent or incapable of movement to the place of use. The peasant, after taking the landlord’s latifundia and satisfying his agelong land-hunger, retired into small self-sufficient husbandry. The foreign military intervention and the consequent civil war had imposed a crude type of War Communism on the country. Everything was requisitioned by the state, and bands of Red Guards roamed the countryside. Moreover, the new revolution assumed a form closely in line with the historical development of Russia. For the new form of collective farming was really an extension under twentieth century conditions of the age-long Russian system of collective land-utilisation through village communes. Difficulties of course developed in the problem of creating a civil service and a managerial staff for the new industrial developments.
