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(4) There were just enough specialists available (almostall of them non-Communist) for the reconstruction ofindustry and transport and for the training of the Sovietspecialists who were to replace them. Lenin had alwayspreached the necessity of learning from ' bourgeoiscivilization,' of taking over its material achievements andscientific (and artistic) heritage and transforming themto the needs of socialist society. But the war and thecivil war left them in a ruinous condition, and the wholerevolutionary ethos, with its violent iconoclasm andpitiless animosity against anything 'bourgeois,' made thetask of reconstruction tragically difficult, since it had tobe done with the help of a suspect and outcast technicalclass.(5) Foreign aid in various forms made an importantcontribution. Foreign specialists, mainly German andAmerican, did much work of value. The politicalhostility of the West made heavy financial borrowingimpossible, even had not the majority of the Communistparty been emphatically against any return towards whathad been denounced as the tsarist enslavement of Russiato Western finance capitalism. None the less, bitternecessity compelled the seeking of some foreign advances,mostly short-term credits. This was essential in there-equipment of industry and the restoration, on a smallscale, of foreign trade. Actual concessions to foreignconcerns were also resorted to, but they did not bulkheavily and eventually disappeared as they became moreand more hedged about with restrictions.(6) Slowly, with the pains of travail, amid the clashof rival groups, a central governmental apparatus wasbeing built up which succeeded in working out andoperating better the various controls instituted by theparty and the growing bureaucracy. These controls,from 1924, aimed especially at a continuous price reductionand a planned increase of output. In that year theestablishment of a new currency was accomplished, afterastronomic inflation and the 'scissors' crisis, caused bythe price gap between manufactured goods and foodproducts. Attempts to centralize both the direction ofeconomic policy and the administrative operation of trade376