The Great Trek

. . . There is only one means, Stalin said, to reduce to zero the present German superiority in tanks and thus radically improve the position of our armies. This method consists not only in increasing several times the output of tanks in our country but also in sharply increasing the output of anti-tank guns, anti-tank aircraft, anti-tank rifles, anti-tank grenades and trench mortars. . . .

So far Russia has lost only about one-third of its pre-war industrial capacity. The principal losses have been the Leningrad area and the Ukraine. The Germans have nibbled at, and probably partly immobilized, Moscow's industry.

Russia has not lost to the Germans a single irreplaceable unit of its incredible natural resources. These treasures lie be yond Hitler's present reach. The oil and manganese of the Caucasus are the only resources immediately threatened.

Russia has lost only about 7% of its territory (which totals one-sixth of the earth's surface). Beyond the Volga, 350 miles to the east of Hitler's easternmost advance, lies 85% of Russia; behind the Urals, 75%.

Speed. The new Russia becomes more powerful every day. A fortnight ago foreign correspondents were taken to a plant near the Urals. In June, when the war broke out, it was a relatively unimportant factory producing a few simple machines. On Aug. 3 a Leningrad factory shut down, dismantled its machinery, loaded it on flat cars and sent it east, along with most of its skilled workers and executives. While the trains were on their way, a community of wooden sheds was built around the Urals plant. When the machines arrived they were set up at once. Unskilled workers were hired from the locality. On Aug. 25 the new plant went into production.

"It is a strange thing," wrote New York Times Correspondent C. L. Sulzberger, "to wander through this factory and see hundreds of peasant women, each with a bright kerchief around her head, stamping out and testing intricate machine parts. Men are doing the heaviest types of work and dozens of young technical students in their teens are employed as apprentices. The factory works day & night. The workers are on the job wartime hours--eleven a day, six days a week."

Efficiency. The U.S. would have had a hard time moving such a plant so far so fast. That the Russians could do so is because Red tape is not binding.

A Soviet official who plans a plant transfer does not have to worry about state lines. He does not have to make intricate arrangements with railroad companies. He does not have to worry about labor laws or labor unions. He does not have any trouble finding enough workmen. He just orders so many workmen, asks railroad authorities for the proper number of trains, goes to work. U.S. observers, reared in the legend of Russian inefficiency, have found little of it in this war.

Foresight. For the last decade Russia has paid increasing attention to the development of great new industrial areas. One straddles, and partly hides behind, the Urals. Another is the Kuznetsk Basin, next to Outer Mongolia. In the extreme south, centered at Tashkent, there is a less concentrated area, mainly of light industries such as textiles.

These areas include such great centers as Magnitogorsk, whose iron & steel combine is larger than any in Europe. The Ural Freight Car Building Works in Tagil produced 120,000 two-axle cars in 1939--as many as were made elsewhere in all Russia. There have been many conversions: the Tagil Car Works is now producing military vehicles; the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant now makes tanks; factories in Novosibirsk mass-produce military-type skis. The diversity is surprising: the auxiliary capital produces carburetors, armatures, railway equipment, cinema apparatus, tractor parts, tubes, leather goods, foodstuffs.

Fat Rump. Except for two shortages--manganese and mercury--Russia's great rump is sufficiently stocked in all vital resources. The Kuznetsk Basin has five times as great coal reserves as the Donets Basin, now in German hands. Oil fields in the plains adjoining the Urals have been developed to the point where they could partially compensate for the loss of Baku. The area should not lack water power: on the Angara River the biggest power dam in the world is being built. Even without the good black earth of the Ukraine, Russia could be agriculturally self-sufficient.

This Russia could in time produce the heavy necessities of war, probably including airplanes. It would be hard put to it to produce precision instruments and delicate machines. It would have to rely on Lend-Lease for such things.

Russians have had a great reputation for industrial fallibility. They have been dismissed as Orientals, incapable of understanding machines. But one set of Orientals, the Chinese, withdrew in the face of military reverses to China's mountains, and there succeeded in pinning down 1,000,000 Japanese soldiers for over two years. Even allowing for Soviet weaknesses and failures, the Russians already possess an industrial setup that makes Chungking look pretty primitive.

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