The problem of the smytchka, therefore, between village and town, peasant agriculture and socialist industry, still remains fundamental for the Soviet regime. Already in 1923 the question of the relative rates of development of industry and agriculture had begun to give rise to violent discussion and even to the growth of a definite opposition element within the Russian Com munist Party. In that year the widening of the gap, or the "scissors," between industrial prices and agricultural prices had gone so far that a bushel of grain only exchanged for a third the quantity of industrial goods that it did before the war. An important section of opinion among the Communists attributing this phenomenon to the "under-development" of industry, were inclined to favour a continuance of "the scissors" (at least on a more moderate scale) as a means of enriching State industry at the expense of the village, and so enabling industry out of its profits to accumulate capital to finance industrial expansion and to accelerate the industrialisation of the country.
The exponents of the official view, however, denounced the opposition policy of Trotsky and his followers as a blow at the vital srnytchka between village and town, and proposed instead to close the "scissors" as rapidly as possible by forcing industrial Trusts and Syndicates to lower their prices, even at the cost of drastically reducing industrial profits. If the "scissors" continued, it was argued, and industry enriched itself by "exploiting" the village, this would have a similar effect to the requisitioning policy under "war communism," and would check, or even reverse, the recovery of agricultural production. By the end of 1924 a rigorous enforcement of the official policy had halved the gap; but although the policy of reducing industrial prices as rapidly as possible continues, the "scissors" still remain. In 1925 a further series of measures were taken to accelerate the growth of agri culture, including a lightening of the agricultural tax, easier terms of leasing land and hiring labour, and the development of co operation and of agricultural credit.
These new concessions to the village stimulated a fresh wave of opposition within the Party; and this time Kamenev, Zinoviev and Smilga joined hands with Trotsky, Radek and Preobrajensky, whom they had previously opposed, and went to the extreme of organising a secret opposition "fraction," carrying on propaganda of its own against the official policy. Their chief complaint was that the concessions to the village had played into the hands of the rich peasant, or kulak, and had begun to revive a tendency to class differentiation in the countryside, and to the actual domi nance of certain areas by "kulak influence." At the same time
industry, they argued, was failing to expand with sufficient rapidity, and capital accumulation for purposes of industrialisa tion was proceeding at too slow a speed. When, however, in the autumn of 1927 fresh difficulties were experienced in grain col lections, the marketable surplus, and particularly the exportable surplus, falling considerably short of what had been expected, it became clear that the expansion of industry was being retarded by the relative backwardness of agriculture—a backwardness, not so much of the total yield, as of the proportion of that yield placed upon the market. To have met this situation by making further tempting concessions to the village was hardly possible in the existing circumstances—it would at any rate have given apparent justification to the opposition charges that the Soviet leaders were encouraging the kulak.
Instead, a step was taken in the direction of the opposi tion policy by what came to be known as the new "Left" policy of placing the bulk of the Agricultural Tax on the rich peasants, so as to exempt 35% of the peasantry altogether, and of dissolv ing numerous agricultural co-operatives which were alleged to be under kulak influence and reorganising them with a membership composed of poor and "middle" peasants. At the same time in July 1928 a declaration of the Central Committee of the Party definitely eschewed all forms of overt "pressure" on the peasant in marketing his grain (which had occurred in certain cases in the early months of the year) and proposed to improve the price which the State purchasing-organs offered for grain. Incidentally it was hoped that the heavier taxation on the rich peasant would induce him to market a larger proportion of his crop, this pro portion being smaller by 5o per cent than before the war. In order to accelerate the growth of the grain surplus, reliance was placed on an intensive development of State farms—many of them being planned on a io,000 acre scale—since it is these which place the largest proportion of their yield upon the market. According to the existing plans it is hoped that the growth of collective farming over the next five years will give to state and collective farms nearly as important a place on the grain market as the landlords' estates possessed before the war.