Smychka

For the location, see Smychka, Volgograd Oblast.

Not to be confused with Smyčka.

Smychka (Russian: смычка) was a popular political term in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union. It can be roughly translated as "collaboration in society"^[1] "union", "alliance", "joining the ranks". The generic meaning of the noun "смычка", derived from the verb "сомкнуть", is joining of two things: contact, joint, linkage, coupling, like joining the two opposite branches of a railroad whose construction was started from both ends.

Poster of the Leningrad Society for the Bonding of City and Country by Boris Kustodiev

The best known example of the usage of the term was the motto and the Soviet politics of "smychka of the city and the village" ("смычка города и деревни"), which was understood as the alliance of proletariat and the poor peasantry.^[2]

References

1. "Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Stephen F. Cohen, p. 201
2. "The Economic Organization of War Communism 1918-1921", by Silvana Malle, 2002, ISBN 0-521-52703-1, section 8.1: "Military Emergency and Smychka" p. 396

External links

• 1924: Scissors Crisis - "Smychka and the Scissors Crisis", at Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, an essay by Lewis Siegelbaum