ABSTRACT
In 1921–22 reconstruction had suffered from the very small volume of agricultural produce available for purchase on the market. The legacy of the war period in the shape of shrunken cultivation, both in area and intensiveness, aggravated by the failure of crops in the Volga region, fettered industry in its efforts toward recovery by starving it of the supplies of food and materials which it required. The recovery of industry had proceeded from a Ievel of about a quarter of pre-war production at the beginning of 1922 to about a third at the beginning of 1923. The much greater widening of the “scissors” which took place in the summer of 1923 cannot, therefore, be attributed to the disproportion between industrial and agricultural development. This disproportion, while it constituted an important cause, was probably not the main cause; and the principal explanation of the “scissors” at any rate for the full extent of their widening must be sought elsewhere.
