Smychka (Russian: смычка) was a popular political term in Soviet Russia and 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.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Ru-smychka-Kustodiev%28Lenin%29.jpg/220px-Ru-smychka-Kustodiev%28Lenin%29.jpg)
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
edit- ^ "Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Stephen F. Cohen, p. 201
- ^ "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
edit- 1924: Scissors Crisis - "Smychka and the Scissors Crisis", at Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, an essay by Lewis Siegelbaum