«Smychka» of the city and village: policy of the state or practice of a survival?

Author(s):  A.P. Kilin, Dr., Prof., The Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, Ekaterinburg, Russia, alexey.kilin@urfu.ru

Issue:  Volume 41, №1

Rubric:  Topical issues of russian history

Annotation:  In the course of formation of the Soviet system authorities declared the neccesity of rapprochement of interests of workers and peasants who were proclaimed a social support of "the first-ever state of workers and peasants". Central planning and unification of economic ways assumed harmonization of development of agrarian and industrial sectors of economy. Thus, process of integration or "bows" was guided by the solution of economic and social tasks. Based on materials of information reports of district departments of the Joint Head Political Department (JHPD) on the Urals region for 1924 it is analyzed methods and acceptances of adaptation of the population to condi-tions of an economy in transition, combining both the planned, and market beginnings, based on interaction of vari-ous economic ways and patterns of ownership. In the article it is considered the "bow" not only as a part of a state policy, and as a method of adaptation of the population to conditions of a transition period, with contradictions in-herent in this process. There was a paradoxical situation in case of which workers and peasants had been forced to be engaged in the same types of activity, to join actively as in agricultural, and industrial production, but at the same time in the social plan to separate strictly from each other, formulating opposite, mutually exclusive requirements. Process of an urbanization which actively proceeded in days of the New Economic Policy in the Urals led not only to growth of number of urban population, but also to marginalization of its considerable part, to "okrestyanivaniye" of workers and "orabochivaniye" of peasants, to symbiosis of traditional and industrial ways, to an arkhaization of an urban environment.

Keywords:  history, economy, New Economic Policy, OGPU, city, village, worker, peasant, agricultural indus-try, industry, salary, supply, currency circulation, taxes, "smychka"

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