The Supreme Council of the Allies decided on Friday week
to reopen trading relations with Russia without changing its attitude towards the Bolshevik despotism. The Council agreed to allow the Russian Co-operative organizations to import, clothing, medicines, agricultural machinery, and other necessaries in exchange for grain, flax, and so on, " of which Russia has surplus supplies." Both the Allied and the neutral countries will take part in this exchange of goods. It is to be noted that, if Russia has food to export, she cannot have been " starved" by the blockade, as some friends of •the Bolsheviks have incautiously asserted. If people are starving anywhere in Russia, it is through the fault of.-the Bolsheviks, who have broken up the economic structure of society and cannot put it together again. The Russian Co-operators, who have escaped the general proscription of educated and commercial people, alone retain an organized system of trading, and in them, with Allied support, lies the hope for distressed Russia.
Previous page
