Abstract
From the start of his administration, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev focused principally on the large scale expansion of agricultural production as the cornerstone of his internal policy. At the center of this expansion was the Virgin Lands program, a project that could be called megaengineering writ large. From 1954 to 1956, most of the northern Kazakh steppe, representing tens of millions of acres/hectares, were plowed and sown with grain. The ultimate goal of the program was to gain parity with the U.S. in grain production and to secure the food needs for the Soviet Union well into the future. Though initially a celebrated success, vagaries of climate, unrealistic expectations, and the inability of Soviet industry to keep pace with mechanical, transportation, or living needs caused the Virgin Lands program to have very uneven results. The lack of concretely positive results inevitably led to the fall of Khrushchev and a more conservative approach to agriculture in future administrations.
The virgin lands program was one vast epic.
– Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev(2006)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Becker, S. (1988). Russia’s Central Asian empire, 1885–1917. In M. Rywkin (Ed.), Russian colonial expansion to 1917 (pp. 235–256). London: Mansell Publishing Limited.
Brezhnev, L. (1978). The virgin Lands. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Clark, M. G. (1977). Soviet agricultural policy. In H. G. Shaffer (Ed.), Soviet agriculture: An assessment of its contributions to economic development (pp. 1–55). New York: Praeger.
Craumer, P. (1990). Trends in Soviet dryland farming and soil conservation practices with comparison to North Americandevelopments. In K. R. Gray (Ed.), Soviet agriculture: Comparative perspectives (pp. 176–194). Ames: Iowa State University Press.
Davies, R. W. (1998). Soviet economic development from Lenin to Khrushchev. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Evans, A., Jr. (1984). Changes in the Soviet model of rural transformation. In R. C. Stuart (Ed.), The Soviet rural economy (pp. 143–148). Totowa: Rowman & Allanheld.
Figes, O. (2001). Peasant Russia, civil war: The Volga countryside in rebellion, 1917–1921. London: Phoenix.
Filtzer, D. (1993). The Khrushchev era: De-Stalinisation and the limits of reform in the USSR, 1953–1964. Houndmills: MacMillan Press Ltd.
Frumkin, M. I. (1926). Narodnoe Khoziaistvo Vneshniaia Torgovlia SSSR. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo.
Goncharov, A., & Lyniakov, P. (1967). V. I. Lenin i Krest’ianstvo. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Literatury.
Hahn, W. G. (1972). The politics of Soviet agriculture: 1960–1970. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hedlund, S. (1984). Crisis in Soviet agriculture. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Heinzen, J. W. (2004). Inventing a Soviet countryside: State power and the transformation of rural Russia, 1917–1929. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hyland, W., & Shryock, R. W. (1968). The fall of Khrushchev. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
Jackson, W. A. D. (1980). The Soviet Union. In G. A. Klee (Ed.), World systems of traditional resource management (pp. 131–164). London: Edward Arnold.
Johnson, S. E., Breimyer, H. F., Heisig, C. P., Kirkbride, J. W., & Volin, L. (1959). Economic aspects of Soviet agriculture. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Kapital’noe Stroitel’stvo v SSSR: Statisticheskii Sbornik. (1961). Moscow: Gosstatizdat.
Karcz, J. F. (1979). The economics of Soviet agriculture: Selected papers. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Khrushchev, N. S. (1962). Stroitel’stvo Kommunizma v SSSR i Rasvitie Sel’skogo Khoziaistva, Volume I. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Isdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Literatury.
Khrushchev. N. S. (1970). Khrushchev remembers. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Khrushchev, N. S. (1974). Khrushchev remembers: The last testament. S. Talbott (Ed., & Trans.). Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Khrushchev, N. S. (2006). Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Volume 2 reformer (1945–1964). S. Khrushchev (Ed.). University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Kitching, G. (1998). The revenge of the peasant? The collapse of large-scale Russian agriculture and the role of the peasant “private plot” in that collapse, 1991–97. Journal of Peasant Studies, 26(1), 43–81.
Laird, R. D. (1982). Soviet agricultural and peasant affairs. Westport: Greenwood Press (Slavic Studies Series – 1).
Lenin, V. I. (1962). Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii (Vol. 32). Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Literatury.
Linden, C. A. (1966). Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership: 1957–1964. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Lowe, N. (2002). Mastering twentieth-century Russian history. New York: Palgrave.
Marx, K. (1962). Konspekt von Bakunins Buch “Staatlichkeit und Anarchie”. In Werke, Band 18. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Matley, I. M. (1989). Agricultural development. In E. Allworth (Ed.), Central Asia: A century of Russian rule (pp. 266–308). Durham: Duke University Press.
McCauley, M. (1976). Khrushchev and the development of Soviet agriculture: The Virgin Land programme 1953–1964. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.
McNeal, R. H. (Ed.). (1974). On the results and coming tasks of kolkhoz construction. In Resolutions and decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Volume 3: The Stalin years: 1929–1953 (pp. 28–38). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Medvedev, R. A., & Medvedev, Z. A. (1976). Khrushchev: The years in power. New York: Columbia University Press.
Medvedev, Z. A. (1987). Soviet agriculture. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Morozov, V. A. (1977). Soviet agriculture. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Narodnoe Khoziaistvo SSSR v 1960 godu: Statisticheskii Ezhegodnik. (1961). Moscow: Gosstatizdat.
Narodnoe Khoziaistvo SSSR v 1964 godu: Statisticheskii Ezhegodnik. (1965). Moscow: Gosstatizdat.
Nove, A. (1959). Soviet agricultural practices and prospects. Oxford: St. Antony’s Papers on Soviet Affairs.
Nove, A. (1992). An economic history of the U.S.S.R.: 1917–1991 (3rd ed.). London: Penguin Books.
Olcott, M. B. (1981). The collectivization drive in Kazakhstan. The Russian Review, 40, 122–142.
Pierce, R. A. (1960). Russian Central Asia, 1867–1917. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schiller, O. (1954). Die Landwirtschaft der Sowjetunion 1917–1953. Tübingen: Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Osteuropaforschung.
Sel’skoe Khoziaistvo SSSR, Statisticheskii Sbornik. (1960). Moscow: Gosstatizdat.
Shaffer, H. G. (1977). Soviet agriculture: Success or failure? In H. G. Shaffer (Ed.), Soviet agriculture: An assessment of its contributions to economic development (pp. 56–105). New York: Praeger Publishers.
Smith, G. A. E. (1987). Agriculture. In M. McCauley (Ed.) Khrushchev and Khrushchevism (pp. 95–117). Houndmills: The MacMillan Press Ltd.
Sokol, E. D. (1954). The revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia. Series 71, Number 1 of The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Sotsialisticheskoe Stroitel’stvo SSSR. (1934). Moscow: Tsunkhu Gosplana SSSR, Soyuzorduchet.
Sotsialisticheskoe Stroitel’stvo Sel’skoe Khoziaistvo SSSR. (1939). Moscow: Gosplanizdat.
Stalin, J. (1931). Building collective farms. New York: Workers’ Library Publishers.
Stalin, J. (1949). Sochineniia, Volume 12, April 1929–June 1930. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Literatury.
Stiefel, M. M. (1977). Séminaire sur le nomadisme en Asie centrale: Afghanistan, Iran, URSS. Berne: Commission Nationale Suisse pour L’UNESCO.
Taaffe, R. N. (1962). Transportation and regional specialization: The examples of Soviet Central Asia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 52(1), 80–98.
Taubman, W. (2003). Khrushchev: The man and his era. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Timoshenko, V. P. (1932). Agricultural Russia and the wheat problem. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Tursunbaev, A. B. (1967). Kollektivizatsia Sel’skoe Khoziaistvo Kazakhstana. Alma Ata: Institut Istorii Partii.
Volin, L. (1970). A century of Russian agriculture: From Alexander II to Khrushchev. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Waldron, .P. (1997). The end of imperial Russia: 1865–1917. London: St. Martin’s Press.
Wheatcraft, S. G. (1991). Agriculture. In R. W. Davies (Ed.), From Tsarism to the New Economic policy: Continuity and change in the economy of the USSR (pp. 79–103). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wheeler, G. (1966). The peoples of Soviet Central Asia. London: The Bodley Head Ltd.
Wheeler, G. (1974). Russian conquest and colonization of Central Asia. In T. Hunczak (Ed.), Russian imperialism from Ivan the Great to the revolution (pp. 264–298). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Zemskii, P. M. (1959). Razvitie i razmeshchenie Zemledeiia. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rowe, W.C. (2011). Turning the Soviet Union into Iowa: The Virgin Lands Program in the Soviet Union. In: Brunn, S. (eds) Engineering Earth. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9920-4_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9920-4_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-9919-8
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-9920-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)