PEASANTS AND INDUSTRIALISATION IN THE SOVIET UNION 47 scholars and planners. This paper has the limited objective of looking at trends of development in the agrarian sector and the rationale of land leases to farming households, now being put forward as the solution to the problem of lagging productivity. We begin in the first part with a brief overview of the problems and debates of a crucial period preceding collectivisation; the second part discusses trends in the post-war period, and the contemporary problems which have given rise to the proposals for reform. The 'Worker'Peasant Link' in a Closed Economy undergoing Industrialisation in the Inter-Vfar Period. Of the three decades of industrialisation after the Revolution, 1917-1947, a surprisingly short and discontinuous period comprised years of anything approaching normal development, undisturbed directly by war or intervention, or indirectly by the aftermath of severe earlier dislocation: not more than perhaps fifteen to sixteen years. Following the Revolution, the immense economic hardships imposed by the war, followed by civil war and foreign intervention to throttle the fledgling socialist state (in which Indian troops also participated) are well known, as are the contours of War Communism enforced by these circumstances, entailing grain requisitions from the peasantry. The story of the crisis of market supplies and the inception of NEP are also well known. The output of grain and all other agricultural commodities declined from the pre-World War I levels during these difficult years. The annual level of grain output for the quinquennium ending 1913, was not recaptured until the early 1920's, over a decade later. The proportion of total output marketed declined from the pre-War level of 24 to 26 per cent, to only half of this, and had recovered by 1926-7 to around 17 to 20 per cent according to one estimate, and only 13 to 14 per cent by another estimate. (This is considerably lower than the 30-33 per cent marketed by Indian peasants' in 1951). As a consequence of effective land redistribution improving the economic position of the peasants (enabling them to retain more food for their own consumption) as well as the dislocation of trade, the marketed portion of output thus did not rise in the recovery phase at the same rate as did total output. The very success of the agrarian revolution in breaking up land monopoly, liberating the peasantry from the burden of rent and usury interest, and improving the resource base of the majority, thus led to relatively increased domestic absorption of foodgrains in the rural sector, met partly by the decline in exports and partly by decline in sales to non-agriculture. (Export of grain fell from 9.6 m. tons in 1913 to 2m. tons by 1925-26). This in turn generated a severe problem for industrialisation with respect to the availability of food for urban areas and for non-agricultural enterprise generally. In the background of a necessarily strong emphasis on building up heavy industries and producers goods for strategic defensive reasons, and a virtual famine of manufactured goods for consumption,* there was little