San José State University
Department of Economics
& Tornado Alley
Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev came from a farm family in the Ukraine. His father left the farming area to work in a mine and Nikita joined the mining workforce as a metal fitter. He married early but his wife perished of starvation in the terrible famine of 1921. This must have left a lifelong concern for food and agriculture in Khrushchev's mind in his later career as a Communist Party politician. He probably was never aware that the source of the famine was the Bolshevik program of confiscation of grain from the farmers.
Khrushchev rose to the leadership of the Communist Party in part because of his advocacy of a program to increase food production. Superficially considered the solution to increased food production seemed to be to increase the amount of land farmed. The Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a decree in March of 1954 that grain production was to be increased by sowing grain on idle and virgin land, land that had never been farmed before. The Party decree stated that about 33 million acres of new land was to be sown in the following crop year of 1954-55. This decree stated that the new land would produce 18 to 20 million metric tons of grain, 13 to 15 million tons of which would be marketed.
By August of 1954 33.5 million acres had been plowed and there were great expectations that the plan for increased grain production would be fulfilled. The targets for increased future production were correspondingly increased. However there is a distinct tendency in socialist decison-making to confuse inputs with outputs. It is important not to presume one statistic necessarily is equivalent to another statistics. For example, in Kazakhstan where most of the virgin lands were located there were millions of acres which were plowed but not sown in seed. Later, also in Kazakhstan, there were millions of acres on which grain was produced but not harvested. At other times there was large amounts of grain that was cut but not thrashed because it had gotten wet and could not be stored. And of course there was some grain that was stored wet and became unusable due to mildew and fungus. For some of the fiascos of mismanagement and misallocation of resources in the virgin lands program see Virgin Lands Operations.
In socialist decision-making seldom were trade-offs considered. While the output of grain might be increased by bringing previously uncultivated under cultivation the question is whether the enormous funds devoted to the virgin lands could have brought greater increases in the production from already cultivated land through increased fertilizer inputs.
The official record of areas sown and grain production in the areas where there was virgin and idle land brought under cultivation is shown below. The figures for 1953 indicate how much of the land in those areas was already under cultivation. The nature of idle land is crucial. Idle land is land previously cultivated but not currently under cultivation. If the land is merely neglected or not cultivated for lack of adequate resources then bringing it into cultivation would be beneficial. However if land which is being kept fallow to let it recover its fertility then bringing it into cultivation too early could hurt future yields.
It is often more useful to view such statistical information in the form of graphs and charts. Here is the graph of the above data.
The story behind the figures for each year is given below:
The 1954 crop year illustrates the problems of initiating a new agricultural program. The crop on the virgin lands planted was larger than anticipated and the authorities could not get it all harvested. Thus the amount of grain produced was significantly larger than the amount harvested. While the production in the virgin lands area was larger there were droughts in the Volga River Basin grain growing region.
The 1955 crop was a disappointment. The plowed area of virgin lands increased but droughts especially in Kazakhstan resulted in a 38 percent fall in the harvest compared to 1954 even though the plowed area had increase 100 percent. Kazakhstan in 1955 got only 10 percent of its normal precipitation. However, in contrast to 1954, the non-virgin land harvest more than offset the failure of the virgin land crop. The Ukraine crop was more than double its 1954 crop. However the lesson of the undependability of precipitation in the virgin lands was not heeded and Khrushchev called for an expansion of the virgin lands program into East Siberia and the Soviet Far East.
The 1956 crop was a bumper crop and its success seemed to justify the risks taken in the virgin lands program. The virgin lands crop for 1956 nearly equalled the combined crop of the two previous years.
Droughts led to great disappointment at the 1957 crop. The virgin lands crop was down 40 percent; Kazakhstan's crop was down 50 percent.
A recovery of production came in 1958, but the crop did not equal the bumper crop of 1956.
The crop year of 1959 was down due to an early winter and freezes which killed some of the winter wheat crop. But the declines in production was relatively minor, being only 10 percent for the whole country and only 6 percent for the virgin lands area. This was despite a 60 percent decline in the Volga region production.
The crop for 1960 was good but did not exceed the 1956 crop. However it did fall short of the planned harvest.
1961 provided a good average crop but it was a disppointment to Khrushchev. He called for a crash program. He felt that crop production was not keeping up with population increases, particularly the rise in urban population. The opportunities for being virgin land into production quickly were not available so he called for the plowing of fallowed land and land which had been devoted to grass.
The weather for the 1962 crop was erratic. There were some favorable conditions and then some unfavorable conditions. Grain production on the old croplands was good and average on the virgin lands so the overall production for the Soviet Union was good, exceding the previous year by 10 million tons.
The authorities were anticipating a bumper crop in 1963 but instead faced a disaster. The production was less than what was considered the required grain needs of the Soviet population. It was an economic disaster that led to a regime change.
In 1964 Nikita Khrushchev lost power in the Soviet Union. Ironically 1964 produced the bumper crop that had not materialized in 1963.
(To be continued.)
Wind erosion was a serious problem for the virgin lands program. In years in which there was a drought the wind picked up unprotected soil in the virgin lands area. That dust would be deposited on areas with vegetation destroying the crop. The wind storms were particularly bad in 1960 and 1962 and the general public became aware of the problem. Khrushchev gave little attention to the problem. Joseph Stalin had ordered in 1948 the planting of trees for windbreaks in agricultural areas. Some of the trees died but the plan had merit. It however was neglected after Stalin's death in 1953.
There were recommendations that the virgin land should be plowed without the moldboards that turned over the soil in a furrow and exposed it to the wind. This recommendation would require the manufacture of special plows and therefore it was largely ignored.
Water erosion was just as big of a problem. Authorities estimated that the Soviet Union was losing 500 million tons of top soil annually and that the lost top soil contained more nitrogen that was being put on the soil as fertilizer. Khrushchev's drive for production increases at any cost ultimately sabotaged itself by neglecting erosion.
(To be continued.)
Although the matter of costs was crucial there is only limited amounts of information available for the costs of the virgin lands program. What is different for the program is that the costs of the housing, roads and other infrastructure needs to be counted as part of the cost of the program because otherwise those facilities would not have been built.
(To be continued.)
In December of 1963 Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in which he acknowledged that the solution to the objective of increasing grain production was not to be found in bringing new land under cultivation. The new lands required excessive capital investment in clearing the land, draining it and otherwise preparing it for cultivation. He said that the funds invested in virgin lands cultivation would have been better spent in producing more mineral fertilizer to use on the already cultivated land to increase the crop yield.
Martin McCauley, Khrushchev and the Development of Soviet Agriculture: The Virgin Lands Program 1953-1964 Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., New York, 1976.
HOME PAGE OF Thayer Watkins