But in old industrial countries there must be many more industrial specialities. And thus the economic self-sufficiency of Russia does not mean her economic isolation from the rest of the world, just as such self-sufficiency does not mean isolation for the British Empire or for the United States of America.
Russia and England can very well supplement each other, and, given the requisite energy on the part of the English, the importance of Russia as a market for English goods may very greatly increase.
It is twenty-five years ago since I maintained that the economic development of Russia is in essence like that of the United States. Now this is acknowledged clearly enough in Russia herself and in other countries. With great insight this thought was recently put forward by an American economist, who wrote: "In an economic sense Russia and the United States are more alike than any other two great countries of the world. Underneath their wide differences of language, government and religion, these two countries show fundamental similarities. Russia includes the eastern portion of the great plains area of the northern hemisphere; America the western portion. Both have had a history of agricultural pioneering. Both have great natural resources of fertile land, forests, and mines, which have been drawn upon with the pioneer's inevitable prodigality. Russia and America are the two wings, so to speak, of the great movement in economic development, which originated in Western Europe a little over a century ago, and thence has spread eastward and westward. They both borrowed from this centre the new technical equipment of machinery and
