RUSSIA'S FOREST FAMINE 



MANY people hold the popular 

 belief that Russia is a coun- 

 try of limitless forests, and 

 the fact that there is a wood 

 famine there may shock them. Such a 

 shock, however, is beneficial as it should 

 awaken in them an appreciation of the 

 efforts being made to perpetuate the 

 forests of this country. The Russian 

 wood famine is so severe that even Mos- 

 cow suffered from it last winter and a 

 number of public and charitable insti- 

 tutions were insufficiently heated. 



Mr. Menshikov tells about the con- 

 ditions in an article in the St. Peters- 

 burg Novoye Vrem\a and the follow- 

 ing portions have been translated by 

 The Literary Digest: 



"For many years, for whole decades, 

 we took no notice of the destruction of 

 the forests. On the contrary, the rul- 

 ing class, the nobility, hastened to sell 

 out their wooded properties rather than 

 be compelled to sell the land. Those 

 who sold their forests usually did so 

 for trifling sums, giving the brokers an 

 opportunity of earning 300, 500, and 

 even 1,000 per cent on their capital. 

 Those who did not sell their own en- 

 couraged the destruction of their neigh- 

 bors' forests, wisely supposing that the 

 remaining ones would rise in price. In 

 the end the deforestation of the coun- 

 try assumed threatening proportions, 

 and when the clamor raised by the 

 press and learned bodies and chiefly 

 by the landed proprietors themselves 

 became unbearable, the Government In- 

 troduced a forest-conservation law. 

 But, like the majority of our laws, the 

 conservation was left to the will of 

 God. With the shrewdness of the 

 brokers and the dishonesty of the com- 

 mon citizen, for centuries trained in 

 the art of circumventing the law, forest 

 conservation has in many places been 

 turned into an amusing comedy. The 

 destruction of the forests, even now, 

 goes on in full blast, and the most im- 

 portant of elements which guard the 

 very possibility of man's existence in 



the North --the forests which yield 

 fuel are rapidly disappearing. What 

 would you say if the English should be 

 deprived of the sea, or Switzerland of 

 her mountains? You would say that 

 their end had come. And fire-wood 

 must be considered just as vitally nec- 

 essary to Russia as the sea is to the 

 English and the mountains to Switzer- 

 land. One may regret the disappear- 

 ance of timber, but that can in a large 

 degree be replaced by brick, iron, and 

 other construction materials. But fuel 

 in the north, in the form of fire-wood, 

 cannot be replaced. . . . 



"We take a paper view of the coun- 

 try, and seeing on paper millions of 

 acres of woodland, we feel quite at 

 ease; we have been and still are the 

 richest country in wood. This may be 

 true, but then our forests have remained 

 only in the north. . . . The whole 

 western Russia, recently covered with 

 immense forests, the central provinces, 

 are completely bared; and even such 

 regions as Novgorod, Olonetzk, Volog- 

 da, are being gradually affected. The 

 forests which covered Russia were her 

 natural cloak, serving to warm the peo- 

 ple and rendering it possible for them 

 to live in the North. Before our very 

 eyes Russia's cloak is being removed 

 these last fifty years, and our nation 

 remains naked in the midst of a frozen 

 desert. There is a great demand for 

 timber and fire-wood both in Russia and 

 abroad. . . . Speculation in forest 

 land goes on wherever there has re- 

 mained a shred of the past riches. The 

 conservation laws are being evaded with 

 the greatest care." 



Mr. Menshikov concludes with the 

 following burst of pessimistic but pa- 

 triotic eloquence, whose bitterness seems 

 completely justified by the condition he 

 describes : 



"Devoid of its wooded cover, the soil 

 is losing its moisture, the lakes and 

 rivers are drying up ; from under the 

 surface barren sands appear, and man, 



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