The Paradox of Marxist Economics: Dogmas and Reality by Vladislavas Petraškevičius

Author:Vladislavas Petraškevičius
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783031362903
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland

8.3 The Third Administrative Cycle

8.3.1 The End of Khrushchev’s Economic Reforms

N. Khrushchev made every effort to intensify agricultural production and increase its profitability in order to bring agricultural production closer to the level of industrial production. However, he made a lot of serious political mistakes at the same time, which had a negative impact on the national economy later.

First of all, it should be noted that he was the initiator of the country’s extensive economic development, which is understandable. Because the intensive method of development requires significant investments in production technologies and, at the same time, a considerable amount of time for their implementation, reclamation of new territories for agricultural activities appeared to be the only way to increase the production of grain and other crops with the aim of quickly resolving the problem of food scarcity.

The Virgin Lands campaign. Grain harvest nearly did not increase between 1949 and 1953 as a result of Stalinist policies in USSR agriculture and averaged around 81 million tons each year (Mironin, 2012). The worrying food situation has been exacerbated by the rise in the population of the USSR due to the rise in the birth rates during the post-war period. However, the country’s grain harvest was insufficient to bake bread and feed livestock in 1953. To avoid starvation, the government had to take drastic measures, such as using a portion of the strategic grain stocks held in the state reserve in the case of war. To change the situation, urgent measures were required. The so-called epopee of virgin lands began (Zhuravlev, 2018).

At the end of January 1954, Khrushchev submitted a report to the CC of the CPSU on the situation in agriculture and its perspectives. He drew attention to the deep crisis on the grounds that the country collected less grain in 1953 than it did in 1940. 99.6 million tons of grain were collected at that time (Mironin, 2012). The main point of his proposals was the need to increase the area of arable land by reclaiming an additional 13 million hectares of land in steppes of Kazakhstan, Siberia and the Urals. It was planned to plough the so-called “areas of virgin lands” (Russian “Tselinnye zemli”).

In total, nearly a million people were sent to virgin lands from the central regions of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Up to 33 million hectares of land have been ploughed after several years of this epopee instead of 13 million hectares of land (Ratkovsky & Khodyakov, 2001). In 1956, the record grain harvest of 125 million tons was achieved, where crops accounted for approximately 40% (Mironin, 2012). However, it was accompanied by unforeseen problems. Because of the impassable roads, delivering grain from production locations to storage and consumption locations was very difficult, resulting in high transportation costs for equipment, fuel and construction materials. The lack of storage capacities and poor work organisation of hundreds of thousands of people who came to reclaim new areas of land contributed to them.

The disturbed ecological balance of these lands was the most critical factor.

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