Deprived of Lenin's guidance, the Communist leaders dared take no risks with the internal enemy. The Nepmen had helped to renew commercial activity, but they must not be allowed to gain the upper hand. It was felt, moreover, that the State business organizations were now sufficiently strong to take the place of private enterprise, and the restoration of the currency to a sound basis would permit their being financed by the newly created State banking organizations. In the first half of 1924, therefore, private trade was loaded with heavy taxes and other restrictions.
The Nepmen were unpopular with the masses and the measures taken against them were not unwelcome, but the reduction of private enterprise in the towns led the extremist section of the Communist party to demand a similar suppression of "Capitalist elements" in the villages. The struggle between the forces of Capitalism and Socialism thus provoked a sharper struggle within the Communist Party itself.
In the cities the State might now hope to supplant the Nepman without economic disorganization, but in the villages it was still dependent upon the "kulaks" or rich peasants, who produced the grain surplus needed for export and to feed the urban centres. When Trotsky demanded their repression the Majority did not yet see how they could be replaced, and the Communist Party Con gress of Dec. 1925, confirmed the rights of "individual peasant producers," despite a screen of anti-kulak phrases to cover this compromise with Marxist principles.
A good crop in the summer of 1926, however, strengthened national food resources and brought forward a demand that the village capitalist be curbed. He was becoming dangerously strong, and the State had begun to feel, as it had about the Nepman two years before, that it could do without him. The Opposition plat form, therefore, was in accord with prevailing Communist senti ment, and by 1927 it had attracted such prominent figures of the Bolshevik regime as Zinoviev, the president of the Third International, and Kamenev, one of Lenin's closest associates.
But Trotsky'i adherents declared that their arguments were perverted in the official press and that they were not given proper opportunity to state their case. They had recourse to underground methods, which the Majority denounced as an at tempt to split the Party. The adherents of Trotsky refused to abandon their tactics and after hot discussion at the Communist Party Congress in Dec. 1927, were expelled from the Party. Trotsky and other Opposition leaders were sent into exile. Within a month of their departure from Moscow the victorious Majority had adopted their programme of repression of the "capitalist elements in the villages." The Peasant Problem.—The immediate reason for this step was the failure in the summer of 1927 of the State grain collec tions. This was the name given to the system of state purchases of grain to provide for the needs of the urban population and the army, and for export. In the previous year the State had col lected approximately io,000,000 tons of cereals, of which more than 2,000,000 were exported, and it was planned to collect an equal amount in 1927-28. A renewal of the "scissors" dispropor tion between the prices of grain and manufactured goods caused difficulty. The peasants preferred to keep the grain for them selves and their stock, rather than sell it. Communist sentiment was already prepared for a drive against "anti-Socialist forces" in the villages. During the spring and summer of 1928 vigorous measures, reminiscent of the Militant Communism period, were employed to extract surplus grain from the richer peasants, who were described as "class enemies." The quota was attained, but the growing needs of the towns left only a small margin for export, which fell to less than half a million tons. This reacted unfavourably upon the foreign trade balance, which had now become most important, because in 1927 the State had embarked upon an ambitious five-year programme of industrialization; that is, an attempt to build up a self-sufficient industrial production which required heavy purchases of machines and raw materials abroad. The enforced collections of grain caused much discontent in the villages, and in July 1928 the Central Committee of the Communist Party announced their abo lition and promised they should not be repeated. Once again Com munist insistence upon class warfare in the villages had over emphasized the distinction between kulaks and the rest of the peasants.