Office of the Historian

File No. 763.72/11443

The Chargé in Sweden ( Whitehouse) to the Secretary of State

[Extract]
No. 1321
Stockholm, August 23, 1918.
[Received September 12.]

Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith to the Department, for its information, translated extracts from the Stockholms Aftontidningen of July 28 on Russia’s losses in the Brest peace. …

I have [etc.]

Sheldon Whitehouse
[Enclosure—Translation]

Russia’s Losses in the Brest Peace as Published in the “Stockholm Aftontidningen” of July 28, 1918

The Russian paper, Petrogradski Golos, gives a statistical summary of the losses in area, state income and industrial factories which Russia has suffered through the Brest Litovsk peace.

The loss of area is 930,000 square kilometers with a population of more than 56 millions, or 32 per cent of the whole present Russian population. At the same time rather one-eighth of the whole Russian railroad system is lost. Of 97 million dessiatines wheatland, Russia keeps only 69; and of 700,000 dessiatines rye only 100,000. The iron-mining area is decreased by 78.8 per cent. The loss of coal reaches 1,688 million poods yearly, that is, 89 per cent of the total production.

The countries which in the Brest peace were taken from Russia contain about half of the Russian factory and industrial plants; that is, 1,073 metal-working and machine plants (46.5 per cent), 615 paper mills (42.8 per cent), 233 chemical plants (44.4 per cent), 43 corn-brandy distillation plants (53.1 per cent), 1,642 alcohol distilleries (56.2 per cent), 113 tobacco factories (57 per cent), 574 breweries (57 per cent), 918 weaving and spinning mills (86 per cent), 286 raw-sugar factories (86 per cent).

There were 1,800 savings banks in the surrendered territories and the state income therefrom reached 842,238,000 rubles, that is, about 40 per cent of the total income of the whole government of the Tsar.