Who set Hitler against Stalin?. Nikolay Starikov

in that order. Firstly, the amount, which was 1,000 steam locos. Secondly, the price, which was 200 million golden rubles. However, other details were also peculiar. Everyone knows that Sweden is not the Motherland of elephants, but the signees of that agreement somehow left out that Sweden was not top-of-the-range in regard to global locomotive construction. Nydqvist & Holm AB even had no production opportunities to produce the goods ordered by the Soviet party. So, the parties agreed that Russia would pay money, the Swedish would build a plant with that money, and then the locos would be produced and sent to us.

      When you want to buy shoes, do you have to credit the shoe seller, so that he would to build a tannery? If someone needed locos that much, why didn’t they order them somewhere else? And if they were needed that much, why did the Soviet party agree to wait for five years?

      Nydqvist & Holm AB had never constructed more than 40 locos per year. But at that time it decided to brace itself up and to produce as much as 50 locos in 1921! After that the order was evenly spread within five years, when the Swedish should have been building a plant with our money. In 1922 the buyer should have received 200 locos, and since 1923 till 1925 it was 250 locos per year[60]. At that the Soviet party wasn’t only a buyer, it was a creditor. And it wasn’t the advance payment for the locos. In May 1920 the Swedish company received not only an advance payment of 7 million Swedish crones, but also a non-interest loan of 10 million crones “to built a mechanical workshop and a boiler-house”. According to the agreement this loan should have been paid back during the period, when the last 500 locos would have been delivered.

      If the Soviet party decided to reduce its order, the Swedish would be allowed not to pay the loan back! And the Soviet party could do so, if dispatch of locos would be delayed due to the fault of the Swedish part. And the agreement didn’t contain any conditions that would allow to terminate the agreement with the Swedish company.

      However, it wasn’t all. The price of ordered locos was about twice as big as their cost during pre-war times. And they were paid not with devaluated paper money but with golden rubles![61] The case was rather spicy, as the price was too high, the money was paid and the goods weren’t provided. And it wasn’t clear when they would be provided! Any tax inspector or auditor would start to rub his hands, if he discovered something like that. Trouble was in the air, and the person who would discover fraud, might have been promoted.

      Weirdness of “the loco case” was described in the Soviet magazine Economist in early 1922. Mr. Frolov, the author of the article, felt puzzled about such a strange way of making business. He also asked a logical question, why these locos should have been ordered in Sweden, namely. Wasn’t it logical to develop or, to be more precise, to recover the local industry? The Putilovsky plant was able of producing 250 locos per year before the war. Why didn’t it get the loan? That vast amount of money would have allowed “to put our own locomotive plants and to feed our own workers”[62].

      And indeed, the proletarian authorities should have strived to start there own industrial facilities as soon as possible and to let proletaries earn money, as supposedly the bloody massacre in Russia was started for their profit. As early as in late 1923 RSFSR had about one million unemployed[63]. And the Soviet government signed an incredibly stupid and enslaving agreement, definitely damaging itself, trying to feed Swedish capitalists. Why was that?

      Are you surprised how weirdly Mr. Trotsky was making business? You will be surprised even further, when you learn how Lenin reacted to the article in the Economist magazine. “All of them are definitely counter-revolutionaries, the Entente supporters, a company of its slaves and spies, and youth molesters. We have to do something, so that these military spies would be caught. We have to systematically arrest them and exile them from our country”[64], the Proletary leader wrote. And he asked Felix Edmundovitch Dzerzhinsky to close this magazine down…

      Let’s get back to the price of the agreement, the one so unfavorable for Russia, which was almost prohibited to criticize. It was 200 million golden rubles. Was it much or not? To understand this we need to find out what a golden ruble was. In 1922 Lenin’s government passed through a monetary reform to get economy out of crisis. New monetary units were produced, chervonets. They contained 7.74 grams of gold. One new chervonets was worth 10 golden pre-revolution rubles. This arrangement turned out to be rather successful. In a short period of time rate of the Soviet chervonets against global currencies became even and then became even more profitable than the tsarist pre-revolution ruble was[65].

      The golden ruble was a sterling monetary unit. When Bolsheviks came to power, golden reserves of the State bank in Russia was 1.101 million golden rubles. Some of gold (650 million rubles) were evacuated to Kazan, then Kolchak got it, and after he was defeated, about 409 million rubles were returned[66]. Though, this would have been like that, if Bolsheviks wouldn’t have spend a kopeck, but we know that it wasn’t so.

      So, 200 million rubles didn’t just make a colossal amount. It was one quarter of the gold reserve of the country!

      Why did it happen? Why was Trotsky doing it, and why Lenin was covering this colossal mess up? Were Ilyitch and Davydytch flatly stealing for a rainy day? Could they have been stealing that especially large amounts? Wasn’t that absurd? Why would the Head of the Soviet Russia Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin deliver money to the West in such clumsy way? He was never going to move there himself. And why would he need as much as ¼ of the country’s golden reserve?! Lenin can be accused of any sins, but monetary symbols weren’t of decisive importance in his life ever. On the contrary, Bolsheviks would desperately need money to construct the new state. The loco agreement was signed in the end of 1920 – beginning of 1921.

      Wrangel’s army evacuated from Crimea to Constantinople in November 1920. In fact, it was the end of the Civil War. Money should have been transferred from the country before that, in 1918–1919, when Denikin had a short bound to Moscow and when Judenitch was at Petrograd. In 1921 it was time to blow the steam off and to start recovery of the country and establishment of new socialistic peace in it.

      So, what can such strange actions of Lenin and Trotsky mean? It just was that debts should have been repaid and that agreements should have been fulfilled. Amounts spent for crushing of Russia should have been paid back. It was one of the agreements between representatives of Western government and Bolsheviks. Lenin managed to stay in power for so long, because he didn’t breach all his agreements with the Anglo-Saxon “partners” at once, because he was doing it step by step and because he violated only some of the agreements. Having come to power in Russia with the aim to crush it, he aggregated all of its lands on the quiet. This can explain certain logics of his actions. Let’s not pay tsarist debts, but let’s provide concessions. Let’s not return the power, but let’s repay the money spent.

      They were paying the money back in many ways. The simplest way was to take values abroad. If you think that money were spent for “the global revolution”, please, note the following. Lenin and Co were preparing the so-called “global revolution” only in Germany and Austro-Hungary, but they didn’t do any preparations in either France or Great Britain. And foremost, amounts of financial support that Bolsheviks provided for crushing of the German Empire never matched the amount of values really transported away from Russia. The Swedish police announced that Bolsheviks provided 2 million rubles for revolution propaganda abroad (meaning, only in Germany). However, in autumn 1918, right when the coming German revolution was being financially backed up, Isidor Gukowski, Deputy People’s Commissar of Finance, arrived in Stockholm. He had crates full of money and gems. Hands at the Swedish police assessed the amount of that from 40 to 60 million rubles[67]. What were these amounts intended for? How come they were 20 to 30 times bigger than the official amount Lenin had provided for the German revolution? Mind that values were mainly transported through Sweden, where the Soviet Embassy was opened in the end of November 1917, headed by Vatslav Vorovsky. Millions of rubles started to be transferred to banks of Stockholm, in particular,

60

The Russian State Economical Archive. F. 4038. Op. 1.D. 31. L. 22. (Quoted from the book of The New Historical Messenger. 2004. No. 1.)

61

The New Historical Messenger. 2004. No. 1.

62

Frolov, A.N. Modern state and nearest perspectives of railway transport. Economist. 1922. No. 1.P. 176. (Quoted from the book The New Historical Messenger. 2004. No. 1.)

63

Brief course of history of VKPb. M., 1938. P. 251.

64

Lenin, V.I. Collected edition. V. 54. P. 266.

65

In 1924 one dollar was worth one ruble and 94 kopecks. Compare: in 1907 one dollar was worth two tsarist rubles.

66

Archive of the Russian Revolution. M., 1991. V. 5–6. P. 103.

67

Björkegren, H. Traffic in Scandinavia. Russian Revolutionaries in Scandinavia in 1906–1917. M., 2007. P. 425–427.