Andreenkov S. N. Virgin Project of 1954 in Kazakhstan and Siberia: Dynamics of grain production // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №3. P. 89-105.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-3-89-105
Annotation
The article aims at identifying features of grain production in Siberia and Kazakhstan during the campaign for developing virgin and fallow lands (second half of the 1950s) and subsequent decades of the Soviet and post-Soviet era; such features determined the results and consequences of the Virgin Project in 1954. The author identifies objective and subjective factors affecting the adoption and realization of the virgin land program; considers general and particular practices of plowing new lands; describes the dynamics of sown areas for crops, grain productivity and gross production, its qualitative characteristics in Siberia and Kazakhstan. The author argues that the campaign for developing virgin and fallow lands was a means of N. S. Khrushchev’s struggle for power, which explains its excessively large scale and relatively long duration. The author shows that the virgin land campaign is more significant for the history of Kazakhstan than for the history of Siberia. Due to the new land development in Kazakhstan, the sown areas of crops, primarily wheat, significantly increased; the network of large agricultural enterprises expanded; the infrastructure of agricultural production started to develop. In 1991, these production capacities became the foundations of the contemporary economy of independent Kazakhstan. In Siberia, the sown area of crops has decreased since the mid-1960s, but the gross grain harvest has grown, which indicates opportunities for intensive farming, and such opportunities are gradually realized.
Keywords
Virgin Project, campaign for developing virgin and fallow lands, grain production, acreage, yield, grain farms, agriculture, Kazakhstan, Siberia.
About the author
Andreenkov Sergey N., PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Sector of Agrarian History, Institute of History, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Akademika Nikolaeva St., 8, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia.
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“I have always considered it extremely important to use science in agricultural practice”
May 15 2022Khlystun V. N., Nikulin A. M. “I have always considered it extremely important to use science in agricultural practice” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №1. P. 171-219.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-1-171-219
Annotation
The interview presents the history of the rural development and agrarian reforms in Russia in the 20th — 21st centuries as based on the facts from the biography of the Academician V.N. Khlystun. The article focuses on the features of educational and scientific institutions associated with the countryside in the USSR and in post-Soviet Russia, in particular on the history and present state of the Academician’s alma mater — the State University of Land Use Planning. One of the main issues in the interview is the reforms of the Russian agrarian system, which are considered primarily on the basis of Khlystun’s rich management experience in the 1990s — as the Chairman of the RSFSR State Committee on Land Reform, Russian Minister of Agriculture, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Government, and as a key manager of large financial organizations and analytical structures in the agrarian-industrial complex. In his memoirs, Khlystun describes and analyzes successes and failures of various legislative, economic and political measures of agrarian reforms at the federal and regional levels, and makes some personal assessments of the behavior and competencies of some representatives of the state, political and scientific elites of Russia. He repeatedly emphasizes that rural life is a special social sphere that requires complex and balanced measures for its transformations, i.e., considering various agrarian characteristics of such a vast country as Russia. Khlystun argues that the key to successful rural reforms is a combination of leaders’ broad professional horizons with the ability to give priority to the common national good instead of private interests.
Keywords
Russia, Kazakhstan, State University of Land Use Planning, perestroika, Ministry of Agriculture, land and agrarian reforms, Russian Government.
About the authors
Khlystun Viktor N., DSc (Economics), Professor, State University of Land Use Planning; Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 125064, Moscow, Kazakova St., 15.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Russian Peasant Studies. Scientific journal
Center for Agrarian studies of the Russian Presidental Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)
- Publisher: Delo Publishing, RANEPA
- Editor-in-Chief: Nikulin Alexander
- ISSN 2500-1809 (Print), ISSN 2949-2564 (Online)
- Founded in 2016
- Frequency: four issues per year (March, Jun, September, December)
- Open Access: All volumes and articles can be downloaded for free in the PDF format.
- Author fees: free of chagre
- Indexation: Russian Science Citation Index, Russian Science Citation Index Core, List of Journals approved by Russian Hihger Attestation committee (Ministry for Sciende and Education), Scopus, UlrichWeb Global Serials Directory, European reference index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIHPLUS), CNKI scholar
- Russian registration number: PI FS77-65824 27-May-2016
Hard copies of the journal can be purchased at the Delo e-store or by subscription in the "Press of Russia" Agency (subscription index - Т81017).
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