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to official announcements, direct budget allocations todefence amounted to little more than four per cent.(1.4 milliard roubles) of the total expenditure. Thechange by 1939 was staggering; over a quarter (almostforty-one milliards) of total expenditure was being spenton defence; in 1940 nearly one-third, fifty-seven milliards'These figures are yet more weighty when it is rememberedthat the national budget is far more extensive than that ofWestern countries, including as it does the great bulk ofcapital investment; and further that a large proportionof that investment, which is not included under thebudget heading of defence, was directly and indirectlybeing employed for military and naval requirements.' Socialism in one country' was to be built up by totalplanning, but in a world of 'capitalist encirclement,' aworld that after Hitler's advent to power in 1933 and hisalliance with Italy and Japan was more and more threateningto the safety of the U.S.S.R. To be secure she mustmatch power with power and shape her planning accordingly.The Soviet Union, like the Russian empire,covered one-sixth of the land surface of the globe,comprised, after China and India, the largest aggregationof people in any one state, and contained a richness andvariety of resources unsurpassed by any other country.The First World War, the Revolution and the Civil Warbrought Russia very low, but it did not cripple hervitality. What grew out of the October Revolution laidthe basis for the Second, Stalinist Revolution which inthe last fifteen years has converted the Union into a greatpower, in many quarters only too tardily regarded assuch, but proved in the last two years to be withoutquestion one of the deciding forces in the world. Justas for two centuries before 1917 Russia ranked as oneof the great powers, so the Soviet Union has resumedher place, on a far stronger foundation despite herterrible losses.5. Russia and the PowersFrom 1700 to 1917 Russia had a hand in all the majorEuropean questions that divided the powers, except theSpanish Succession War and the partition of Africa. As389