40 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
begins by describing the astonishing red-tape methods employed
and the flood of papers which issues from the head office of
the Volga shipping administration. "In I933>" the report goes
on, "the number of accidents on the Volga had actually risen.
On an average every other vessel has been in for repairs on
account of accidents. These accidents constitute a disaster for
the Volga transport and are one of the main reasons for the
collapse of the shipping plan." It must be borne in mind that
the Volga is a river on which there are no accidents due to
stress of weather. A greater fiasco could not be imagined.
Picture, for the sake of comparison, that every other vessel
on the Rhine or the Danube had been damaged and under
repair during the past year. It must further be remembered
that the waterways, and especially the Volga-Kama system,
are of the highest importance to Russian economic life. The
correspondent declares in conclusion that at Astrakhan, where
70 per cent of the Volga vessels are laid up for the winter and
are repaired, "the plan of repairs was very far from being
completed" only just before the opening of navigation. "Astra-
khan," he writes, "is a menace to the Volga shipping traffic."
And he ends with a positively angry reference to the * liberalizing
indulgence which the public prosecutor of the Astrakhan river
district shows towards the producers of defective material" •
(meaning the persons in charge of the repair shops, where
"hundreds of instances of careless work in the execution of
repairs have been recorded") instead of taking proceedings
against them.
It is the same with the railways. On this subject, too, a
number of reports are available which were submitted at the
1934 Communist Congress, the most important being one by
Andreiev, then People's Commissary for Transport* An article
by Andreiev in Pravda bears the significant title: "How the
railways transport air!" Latterly the collapse of the transport
system has induced the highest Soviet authorities to take
extraordinary measures and to issue remarkable decrees. By a