PREFACE i]
of the contributions drawn from the peasants* meagre harvests
To that extent there is a resemblance between past and present
But the importance to the State of the vodka monopoly and oi
the indirect taxes is nothing like that of the exactions of grain
to-day. At that time the mass of the population could despite
everything hold its own without being actually threatened by
death from starvation., and if occasional droughts led to a
failure of the harvest the deficiency could be made good by
bringing grain from elsewhere.
Then came the war, followed by the revolution. The vast
empire collapsed. In 1918 Bolshevism came into power, and
with it a new and fascinating idea. Equality and freedom were
to triumph. There was to be an end to the rigours of the old
regime, to the vodka monopoly and to the gulf between the
upper class and the peasants.
Once again circumstance sent me on my travels—before
the war was at an end—as plenipotentiary of my own native
province of Livonia, and later of Estonia. I visited extensive
areas of Russia, especially in the south, to negotiate for my
country supplies of important foodstuffs from the east and
the south. After the formation of an independent Ukrainian
republic under the Hetman Skoropadsky, it was my task to
negotiate with the Ukrainian Government at Kiev on behalf of
Estonia and Latvia for the supply of grain and sugar from the
Ukraine in exchange for Baltic produce. After 19171 was also
in a position to watch the growth of the Ukrainian nationalist
movement during the time of the Rada, of Skoropadsky and
at the beginning of Pedura's rule.
The winter of 1920 was a terrible time of suffering for many
regions and cities of the former realm of the Tsars, especially
for the former capital, Petrograd, now called Leningrad, At
that time the economic convulsions and the breakdown of
communications rendered the famine most acute. When I
returned1 home (where, as part proprietor of the Rigasche
Rundschau, the leading German paper in the Baltic provinces,