Between 1934, when the last Anglo-Soviet commercial agreement was signed, and the outbreak of the present war a fairly large trade was developed, but in these years the Soviet Union deliberately cut down its foreign trade altogether. It will always remain one of the historic cases of the power of dogma over the life of nations that Russia, with a large gold reserve and a severely under-supplied population, refrained from casing the internal pressure by using commercial opportunities amply offered from abroad. At any rate, even with the stimulus of the British credit of. £10,000,000, which caused some extra trade in 1938-9, the Anglo-Russian exchanges remained for the greater part confined to raw materials.
In the present conditions Russia would presumably be neither willing nor able to export large quantities of goods to this country. Nor would the British Government be willing to sell to Russia anything like the large volume of raw materials that were regularly shipped there before the war, let alone engineering products. The most that could be released is limited quantity of tin and tea, to be paid for in timber. The tin-timber deal arranged last autumn was not carried into effect.
Tin Shipments The Soviet Union requires at least 15,000 tons of tin annually and produces very little at home. In 1937 net imports of tin were as large as 25,125 long tons. Although at least. 5,000 tons of tin have reached Russia since the beginning of 1940 a few thousand tons more could probably be supplied without the risk of re-export to Germany, Tin is not an important armament metal, and its price is high in relation to' bulk. Less than 4,000 tons of tin cost £1,000,000, so that a fairly small shipment would pay for a considerable quantity of timber.
Tea and Rubber Among other commodities which Russia would like to purchase are tea and rubber. In recent years imports of tea into the Soviet Union have been remarkably small. In 1936 no more than 27,000,0001b. were taken in, and in 1938 just under 37,0000001b., compared with 65,000,0001b. imported ten years earlier. Russian imports of rubber were reduced from 47,300 tons in 1934 to 26,800 tons in 1938, and were probably still less in 1939. There might be little risk in supplying limited quantities of Indian and Ceylon tea to Russia, but the supply of rubber might seriously affect the blockade of Germany. Apart from the fact that the Soviet Union is deriving a large and increasing portion of its rubber requirements from three distinct synthetic processes, i: has obtained at least 10000 tons of natural rubber from the United States and smaller quantities from the Dutch East Indies since the beginning of this year. The margin between these imports and the actual Russian requirements appears to be too narrow to suggest that further supplies could be released without risk.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.