Trotsky in his speech before the third congress of the Third International has been at some pains.to explain the parlous condition in j which Rassia now finds itself. For instance the decline in Russian industry was not due to the mobiliza-ition for civil war, but to that for ithe last imperialistic war—the Great War. Another cause was the blockade which cut off the supplies of articles insignificant in themselves but important in the uses to which they are put. Indeed, according to trotsky, the present economically astrous state of Russia is solely due to outside influences brought to bear by a world jealous of the all-pervading light of Bolshevism. According to the Rosta News Agency Trotsky said "The fact that Sovizt Russia—which has been forcibly torn off from the economic life, shattered and exhausted by the imperialistic and civil wars—could stand for three years foreign intervention and more wars and clothed, fed and armed an army sometimes exceeding five million men is nothing more nor less than a miracle, So that whatever is wrong with Russia the cause is not Bolshevism.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.