THE RESOURCES OF SOVIET ASIA: If Russia Is Isolated

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 171, 2 October 1942, Page 6

THE RESOURCES OF SOVIET ASIA:

If Russia Is Isolated

"If The Worst Happens [II]

The second of two articles written for "The Listener" by A.M.R., answering the question "Can An Isolated Russia Carry On?"

E saw in last week’s survey that, should the Nazis tealise their wildest hopes this summer and cut the Mur-mansk-Archangel supply-pipe as they have almost cut that from Persia and the Caucasus, there would still be open the route through Samarkand in Soviet Central Asia and that through Dickson Island in the Arctic. But we saw too that both routes had a weak link. The southern one was the lorry journey via Meshed or Herat to the Central Asian railhead at Merv. The northern one was the barge journey up the Yenesei River which so far is usable only in summer. Therefore, supposing the White Sea line were seriously damaged, the U.S.S.R. would have to rely mainly on its own resources until accelerated ship building made possible both a "Second Front" and the maintenance of supplies to the present one. If these resources were purely Russian the task would be impossible. For Russia-in-Europe has now left free only one industrial area (that just behind Moscow) and only one exporting agricultural area (that just behind Voroneszh). But fortunately there is the much greater Russia-in-Asia. Concerning the The map above is from "News Review" of July 3, 1941. In several obvious ways it is, of course, rather out of date

resources of this sub-continent, particularly the potential ones, there are plenty of statistics. Only, figures by themselves never tell anything about a situation. One must know the situation first in order to be in a position to use the figures. In the case of Russia this is particularly true, both because Russian conditions are so different from Western European ones, and because NRussia’s light-hearted statisticians tend to use figures somewhat as humorists use words-to obtain effects rather than to give information. So first we must picture the Soviet Asiatic scene. What Maps Don’t Show First, to get some idea of relative size. The Soviet territories are so spreadeagled that no one flat map can hold them all without distorting the extremities. Few maps, moreover, indicate that two quite separate regions are involved -Siberia and Soviet Central Asia. And no map at all reveals that a third area, approximately of the same size (and topography and type of inhabitant) as the latter, is also part of the U.S.S.R. in every respect except its Chinese colour on the map. But we can roughly say that the whole U.S.S.R. is over double the United States in area, and 25 per cent. greater in population, both peoples increasing at about the same rate; that Soviet Asia is well over one-and-a-half times the size of U.S.A.; and that of its (Continued on next page)

Continued from previous page) two parts the Northern, Siberia, is considerably the larger in area and smaller in population. How big then is Soviet Central Asia, official and unofficial? Well, cut out with a used razor-blade the five Central Asiatic Soviet Republics (Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Khirgizstan and Tajikistan), cut out also the approximately equal aréa of "China" which is Moscow-controlled (ie., Chinese Turkestan, Outer Mongolia, Tanna-Tuva, etc.) and Australia will just drop neatly into the hole. The country will still look much the same — "bush" (i.e., steppe), in which mountain-born rivers get lost and end nowhere, But the dispossessed population of Muhammadan and Buddhist bearded Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tajiks, etc., will be over four times the number of clean-shaven White Australians. Some Exaggerations Because Central Asia is a mysterious seldom-visited land about which all rumours afe equally credible or incredible, and because it is sub-tropical in latitude, many exaggerations are current about the gaps it can fill in the beleagured Soviet economy. "Cotton", "rice", "sugar" and even "rubber" are mentioned, Moscow has for long been getting the Uzbeks along the Oxus to change over from wheat crops to rice and cotton — with more success to the Union than to the Uzbeks, who did not always receive the grain from elsewhere that they were promised as the price of giving up growing their own. More recently the Union has been trying to make up in part for the sugarbeet crops of the Ukraine that are now feeding Germany. But "rubber’-no. Probably it is the circumstance that the Union’s second synthetic rubber plant is in nowisolated Armenia (the first is at Yaroslavl near Moscow) that started this wild tale. For the fact is that the dawn-of-history fertility of these Central Asian regions has been largely ruined through centuries of wars and sloth; by the neglect of the irrigation systems which might have held off indefinitely the increasing drought that has steadily been turning steppe into desert these last 4,000 years at least. Moreover, Central Asiatic temperatures can be arctic even in midsummer when the winds off the surrounding mountains — the highest in the world-get worked into an "Afghanietz " fury. Necessity can of course work wonders. Nevertheless it: remains that "from the modern point of view the economic and political importance of these lands in the heart of Asia is small." (Sir Aurel Stein, 1933.) Siberia’s Potential Wealth Siberia, on the other hand, is possibly the richest land of comparable area in the whole world-potentially. The sting is in the tail--" potentially." At present it is still pioneering country. Even its much boosted, mainly successful, industrial areas have still the mining camp and boom town flavour. Not that our traditional English picture of Siberia is

even approximately true-one vast white plain, silent save for the howling of offstage wolves, and unbroken to the horizon save for yon chained line of wan exiles, steering themselves Poleward by the grave-hummocks of their Nihilist-comrades who have gone before! Siberia, like Australia, has suffered in reputation from having too many literary men connected with its original convict settlers. Actually the frozen tundra only skirts the Arctic Ocean. The main part of the country is the world’s greatest remaining forest, unpenetrated save by tivers and the few clearings on their banks. South of this again comes a wide belt of perfect agricultural land gradually fading into steppe towards Central Asia. This at least is a picture of Western Siberia. The Eastern half, contrary to all popular illusions, is highly mountainous. As recently as 1928 someone found another range among its jumble, a quite new one previously overlooked, four hundred» miles long. *The gold in thim thar hills has furnished of late years half the world’s total production. Other metals-some in vast quantities (e.g., Magnetogorsk-"Iron Mountain"): some small but militarily essential — exist both in this Far Eastern Area and in the Ural hills. A Blessing and a Curse But Siberia is made, and ruined, by its rivers. Apart from the Pacific-flowing Amur, these include three, the Ob, the Yenesei, and the Lena, greater than any other continent can produce. (The two Americas, Africa, and Europe have only two comparable apiece). These alone made the exploration of the country possible. They are to-day still its only northand- south highways. And they will broadcast it with electric power some day. But their mouths are still fast shut in the frozen arctic when Spring is bursting their upper reaches with billions of tons of melting snow. Therefore the whole northern half of Siberia stands one vast lake until nearly midsummer. The northern subsoil, moreover, is permanently frozen from a few inches down, with results to attempted agriculture precisely like our own West Coast pakihi. Soviet work in making habitable the Arctic has been amazingly thorough and therefore successful. Aided by a twentyhour summer day of sunshine, so fierce that the reindeer people, the Yakuts, have to cut their hay by night, they will eventually tame the impossible Arctic. But obviously this war will be distant history long before this happens to a country where apple trees will only grow when trailed flat along the soil and where Igarka’s drinking-water pipes have to be laid in the same conduit as its steamheating pipes. Quite clearly Soviet Asia is far too undeveloped to be the sort of industrial arsenal that a war of victory requires. On the other hand its very balanced, comparatively undeveloped condition makes it able to stand defensive isolation indefinitely as no other great area, except "Free China," possibly could.