Sergey Nikolaevich Andreenkov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Prerequisites, Results and Significance of the Development of Virgin and Fallow Lands in the USSR
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2024-4-15
The development of virgin and fallow lands in the steppe regions of the Kazakh SSR, the Urals and Siberia, which began in 1954, was one of the largest economic and political campaigns among those carried out in the USSR after the Great Patriotic War. Comprehension of the prerequisites, course, results and significance of the virgin lands epic in the context of the current discussions on these issues remains an urgent task for researchers. The interest of the state, the community of scientists and history buffs to the peculiarities of the implementation of the virgin lands program of 1954 and the problems of historiography of the subject is intensified in connection with the 70th anniversary of the event. In the eyes of post-Soviet scientists, and especially those of them who look at the virgin lands from the height of seven decades, the results of the campaign are much more contradictory than in the eyes of its first researchers. At present, a large amount of data has been introduced into the scientific turnover, significantly detailing the methods of carrying out and the effectiveness of the development of virgin and fallow lands. The author’s analysis of the structure of grain resources of the Soviet state in the middle of the 20th century became an important direction of concrete-historical study of the topic. Of particular interest are the report notes of the Minister of Grain Products of the RSFSR N.E. Proshunin, who reported on the extremely low quality of grain supplied to the state and the resulting threat of disruption of the normal supply of grain products to the population. This article introduces a note by N.E. Proshunin that reveals the problems of receiving and storing grain collected from the fields in virgin regions. According to the document, due to the lack of storage facilities, the practice of storing grain crops in the open air – in barns organized by collective and state farms – was widespread. The work on prevention of grain losses was poorly organized here, as a result of which the bread harvested from the fields was spoiled and plundered by farm workers on a mass scale. Deterioration of its consumer properties, first of all, negatively affected the food supply of the urban population. In this connection, we conclude that the contribution of the virgin lands campaign to the improvement of citizens’ well-being turned out to be significant, but still not as significant as it was expected and officially reported.
Publishing: 28/08/2024
The article has been received by the editor on 23/04/2024
How to cite: Andreenkov S.N. Prerequisites, Results and Significance of the Development of Virgin and Fallow Lands in the USSR // Historical Courier, 2024, No. 4 (36), pp. 190–203. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2024/ISTKURIER-2024-4-15.pdf]
The work was carried out on the topic of the state task “Socio-Economic Potential of the Eastern Regions of Russia in the 20th – Early 21st Centuries. Management Strategies and Practices, Dynamics, Geopolitical Context” (FWZM-2024-0005).
Links: Issue 4 2024
Keywords: agriculture; grain problem; development of virgin and fallow lands; virgin program of 1954; N.S. Khrushchev; Kazakh SSR; Siberia