The workers who had seized power had to hold in one hand the rifle, and in the other the hammer. It is really marvellous that the Soviet Government has not only defeated in the course of these three years, Alexeyev, Kornilov, Kolchak, Denikin, Doutov, and Yudenitch, and the capitalists supporting these Generals, but managed at the same time to keep some life in our industries. However, in spite of the ruinous war on all these fronts, the working class has succeeded not only in arresting the collapse of industry, but has recently effected considerable improvement in a number of industries.
As everybody knows, fuel is for industry what bread is for man. Under Kerensky the fuel position was growing worse from day to day. For example, by the time of the October Revolution, the stocks of coal on the railways of the Republic did not exceed a supply of ten days. Now most of the railways keep supplies for one and a half to two months ahead.
The general position of the fuel problem at present is as follows:
Before the war when our industries were in full swing, we procured and consumed an enormous amount of fuel. Reducing all the fuel consumed, whether coal, wood, peat, or oil, to the unit of wood fuel, we get a figure of 40,000,000 cubic sagens of wood. Coal acccounts of two-thirds of this, oil one-fifth, and wood proper one-eighth. From the 1st of July, 1918, up to 1st July, 1919, 4,000,000 cubes were prepared; we were living all this time on the old stocks. We used up the wood piled previously, the oil stored under the Tsar and Kerensky, and some
