The corresponding paragraph in the manifesto says as follows: — 
“With regard to the workmen engaged in production itself, a transition 
from the 8-hours working day to the 7 hours working day, without 
curtailment of wages, must be secured in the course of the next 
few years, for which purpose the presidium of the Central Executive 
Committee and of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Union S.S. R. 
's bound to enter, not any later than in a year’s time, upon the gradual 
realization of this decree with regard to the separate branches of industry, 
m accordance with the reconstruction and rationalization of the factories 
and works and to the growth in the productivity of labour”. 
If one is to remember all that has been said and written this last 
rear by the leaders of Soviet industry about the productivity of labour 
aot keeping pace with the growth of wages*) and if one is to take into 
consideration the highly strained financial situation of the Soviet industry — 
this proclamation of the transition to the 7-hours working day, if even made 
mn rather indefinite terms, is quite unexpected, especially as it is not 
accompanied by a simultaneous increase in wages. 
Therefore, the first thought that comes across one’s mind is that by 
this proclamation Bolshevics pursued first of all political aims. aims of 
propaganda — at home and abroad. 
Precisely this point of view was shared in Russia by the communistic 
>pposition consisting of Trotzky, Sinoview and Kamenew, who launched 
against the reigning group of Stalin-Boucharin a charge of irresponsible 
demagogy. The present majority in the party gave foundation to 
such a charge in so far, as only a year before Bucharin in his speech, 
made at the meeting of the XV Conference of the Communistic party on 
the 2nd November 1926, quoted the slogan of the 7 hours working day as 
an extreme example of the worst kind of demagogy. And as the actual 
sconomic conditions had not changed in the course of the past year to 
such an extent as to enable an easy introduction of the 7 hours working 
day, then described as absurd, the present opposition comes to the con- 
clusion that “the situation has, in fact, changed acutely — only not in the 
economic, but in the political respect: the awakening of the proletarian 
van-guard and the growth of the opposition have compelled Stalin's group 
to complete the policy of repression by a policy of irresponsible dema- 
08"). 
{t is also worth noting the statement made by the leaders of the 
opposition that every time in the course of the last two years they 
brought forth the demand for a wage-increase of the industrial workmen 
*) See Kouibishew’s report, mentioned in a note to page IO. 
+) Counter-theses of the opposition. Pravda No. 263, November 17th, 1927. 
1)