Untitled - OUDL Home

imperialism in the Middle and Far East, just as were thesugar magnates, who had built up the beet-sugar industryto a position of primary importance in Little Russia; anindustry which provided the best illustration in Russia ofthe interlocking of state regulation with producers' cartels.The most spectacular rise in output and capacity wasthat in the heavy industry. This was due to the developmentfrom almost nothing of the very rich iron-oredeposits of Krivoi Rog and coal deposits of the Donetsbasin (see map i), which began in 1869 with the Welshman,John Hughes. (He gave his name, in russianizedform, to the town where his works were started, Yuzovka:it is now the great city of Stalino.) The new SouthRussian mining and heavy industry swept ahead of theold metallurgical centres of the Urals, and by 1913 theSouth, with Kharkov as its chief industrial capital, wasproducing between sixty and seventy per cent, of Russia'scoal, coke, iron ore, pig-iron and steel (for the presentposition, see p. 234).This modern metallurgical industry worked above allfor railway equipment and armaments. Consumers'needs, for instance in agricultural machinery or corrugatediron, were largely met—in so far as they were met by all—by foreign imports. Similarly, the output of artificialmanures was diminutive. The electrical and chemicalindustries were very weak, and Russia was also almostentirely dependent on imports for machine tools, thefiner steels and precision instruments.By 1917, and to a lesser extent by 1905, the high degreeof concentration of industrial workers in large concernsand in certain regions had assisted the growth of anindustrial proletariat and of revolutionary propagandaamong them. The fact that St Petersburg and Moscow,the two capitals, were also the two largest single industrialcentres made them inevitably the foci of unrest. Theactual numbers of industrial, mining or urban workerswere still relatively very small, but they were increasingproportionately more rapidly than the peasants, and itwas this fact that fortified the Bolsheviks in their concentrationon the towns, the mills, the mines and therailways.364