is not surprising that Russian industry, far from displaying “a tremendous expansion,” was almost arrested. Here, as throughout the world, the ruin of capitalism was beginning. In 1917, under the Kerensky regime, the closure of factories attained the following dimensions:
Ruin was advancing with giant strides.
If we wish to consider the rise in prices that resulted in part from scarcity and in part from the inflation of the currency, it suffices to turn to Britain, which of all the original belligerents was least affected by the war.
Here are the average prices of five of the chief articles of diet (tea, sugar, butter, bread, and meat):
Thus in the course of the war, even in Britain, prices were more than doubled, and the increase in wages was very far from keeping pace with the increase in the cost of living. In other countries, conditions were very much worse. They were especially bad in Russia, where the war proved positively ruinous, and where the country was