Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85:
Virgin lands scheme
Teaching notes
This resource is one of a sequence of eight resources, originally planned for Edexcel’s
Paper 1 Option: Russia, 1917-91: from Lenin to Yeltsin. The sequence focuses on the
theme ‘Industrial and agricultural change, 1917-85’. Although the content of the
resources is drawn from this particular specification, there is no reason why they
couldn’t be used to support the teaching of other similar courses, perhaps with some
adaptation of the suggested activities.
The eight resources in the sequence are:
1. War Communism (search ‘25198’to find it on Teachit History)
2. The New Economic Policy (search ‘25199’)
3. The First Five-Year Plan (search ‘25200’)
4. Collectivisation (search ‘25201’)
5. Soviet Industry and Agriculture in WW2 (search ‘25202’)
6. Virgin Lands (this resource)
7. Stagnation and the Brezhnev era (search ‘25204’)
8. Reform under Gorbachev (search ‘25205’)
Each resource contains a section of reading followed by some suggested tasks. These
could be completed in class or as independent homework tasks.
© www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016
25203
Page 1 of 5
Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85:
Virgin lands scheme
Background
The devastation of the Second World War had seen Russian agricultural output decline
dramatically. Russian agriculture continued to be dominated by the collective farms
when the war ended, but a combination of massive rural population losses, the chaos of
war and the economic strain of the conflict left it badly weakened. This meant that the
Communist party urgently needed an opportunity to reform agriculture to make it
productive enough to feed the country.
That opportunity presented itself on 5 March 1953 with the death of Joseph Stalin. In
his final years, as he grew ever more paranoid and suspicious of any potential rival
power base in the country, the suggestion that key policies such as collectivisation
should be revised was an invitation to be purged, imprisoned and quite possibly
executed. New policies, plans and initiatives were quickly forthcoming from most of the
contenders for the premiership of the Soviet Union in the weeks and months after
Stalin’s death.
Power struggle
The new policies towards the soviet peasantry need to be understood within the context
of the struggle to replace Stalin. Just as Lenin’s death had left Russia in a political
limbo for several years, Stalin’s death from a stroke also resulted in political crisis and
division. Initially Georgi Malenkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Kliment
Voroshilov, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, ran the government with
Stalin’s former interior minister Lavrenty Beria.
Beria was the dominant figure in the triumvirate and
proposed radical reforms such as the abolition of the
gulag system.
More conservative minded party
members were wary of the pace of reform and this
enabled Beria’s main critic, Nikita Khrushchev to
organise a coup against him. Beria was arrested, tried
and shot in late June 1953.
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev / Credit: Evening Standard / Hulton Archive Editorial / Getty Images /
Universal Images Group / Copyright © Getty Images / For Education Use Only. This and millions
of other educational images are available through Britannica Image Quest. For a free trial,
please visit www.britannica.co.uk/trial
© www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016
25203
Page 2 of 5
Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85:
Virgin lands scheme
Malenkov’s plans and Khrushchev’s strategy
Beria, one of the chief architects of Stalin’s terror, had believed that reform was
necessary because the repressive violence of Stalinism had created an economically
weak country. Despite the fact that Beria was executed, it did not stop other soviet
politicians from making their mark by suggesting reform. It was apparent to most
leading members of the politburo that there could be no return to the excesses of
Stalinism. The question that would dominate the post Stalin era was how would the
Soviet Union function without Stalinism? As Chairman of the Council of Ministers,
Malenkov proposed agricultural reforms similar to those of the NEP. He believed that
lower taxes, allowing individual peasants to farm their own plots and offering higher
prices for farm produce would incentivise the peasants to produce more.
When Khrushchev took power he insisted that Malenkov’s plans to change agriculture
had really originated from him. He disliked Malenkov and wanted to be seen as the
major reformist in the government, distancing himself from Stalin and denouncing his
former master in the Secret Speech in 1956. By criticising mass terror (which
Khrushchev had been a participant in), alternative methods of running the country had
to be found. Khrushchev believed that by connecting once more with ordinary activists,
he could break free from the legacy of Stalinism and build himself a power base. The
most far reaching policy that engaged large sections of the population was the Virgin
Lands Scheme.
The Virgin Lands Scheme
By the 1950s the Soviet Union once again had a growing population. The collective
farms were far too inefficient to feed the whole country. The prospect of having to
import food in large quantities, at the height of the Cold War, was one that was
unpalatable to Khrushchev; being dependent on other countries, often outside the
communist bloc was a major strategic weakness. The failure of collectivisation to
provide enough food for the USSR was further evidence that he could use to show that
Stalinism had failed. Malenkov’s attempts to incentivise the peasants were condemned
by Khrushchev as policies that would create an entire new generation of kulaks.
Instead, he suggested a policy that was in line with original Leninist ideals. The Virgin
Lands campaign encouraged young people, particularly members of the soviet youth
organisation the Komsomol, to cultivate the vast plains of Siberia, Kazakhstan, the Volga
region and the Caucuses. Khrushchev wanted a policy that was successful and on a
similarly vast scale to the Five Year Plans and he also wanted to show that Russia could
out produce America in grain. In 1954 300,000 Komsomol members travelled to the
remotest parts of the Soviet Union and cultivated the land, resulting in a record harvest.
In the next six years that amount of land under cultivation grew by 46 million hectares,
but the rapid successes of the campaign contained within them the seeds of its demise.
© www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016
25203
Page 3 of 5
Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85:
Virgin lands scheme
Problems on the land
A tractor driver and clerk checking the
record of work accomplished on a shift of a
new state farm set up on virgin land in the
Chkalov region of Russia, 1955.
A tractor driver and clerk checking the record of work / Credit: Sovfoto /
Universal Images Group / Copyright © Universal Images Group / For
Education Use Only. This and millions of other educational images are
available through Britannica Image Quest.
For a free trial, please
visit www.britannica.co.uk/trial
Soil: Even though the Soviet Union covered a vast expanse of territory, very little of it
was suitable for arable farming (growing wheat and other grains). The vast planes of
Siberia and Kazakhstan were completely unsuited and the nutrients in the soil were
quickly exhausted.
Housing: Komsomol activists, who travelled deep into peasant Russia to work on farms
or to set up new ones, quickly learned that the government had done nothing to cater
for them. No new accommodation had been built or funds allocated for building.
Instead they caused massive overcrowding in small peasant villages.
Workforce: Some branches of Soviet local government saw the scheme as an opportunity
to rid themselves of orphans and abandoned children, vagrants, alcoholics and criminals
— many were sent to the Virgin Land regions. Stories of the poor living conditions kept
skilled workers and specialists away, so the new farms lacked workers with enough
expertise to successfully cultivate the land. Planned programmes to train tens of
thousands of new skilled tractor operators and mechanics produced under half the
desired numbers. Instead, skilled farmers had to be bribed by the government to travel
to Siberia and Kazakhstan to help bring in the harvest, once their own harvests had been
completed.
Machinery: Khrushchev had promised the volunteers that there would be sufficient
tractors and other equipment. He diverted thousands of newly built tractors to the
Virgin Lands regions, but by 1959 there was only one tractor for every two hundred
hectares of arable land. When they broke down there were insufficient parts. Perhaps
the greatest failing of Khrushchev, however, was the lack of grain storage. The increase
in grain production was not matched by a growth in the number of grain barns or silos in
which to store it, meaning that thousands of hectares of grains were left to rot in the
fields.
© www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016
25203
Page 4 of 5
Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85:
Virgin lands scheme
Results
Below is a graph showing the increase in grain yields following the campaign.
1954
1959
1955
1960
1956
1961
1957
1962
1958
1963
150
112.5
75
37.5
0
Grain Output (in millions of tonnes)
Clearly grain output increased and in 1964 it shot up to 152.1 million tonnes, ironically
in the same year that Khrushchev was deposed. He was forced from office, in part due
to the errors and mistakes of the Virgin Lands campaign and the failure to overtake the
USA in grain production.
Tasks
1. Working in pairs, review your notes on the agricultural policies of Lenin, Stalin
and Khrushchev
a. Which soviet leader had the greatest successes in controlling the
peasantry?
b. What similarities are there between the Virgin Lands campaign,
collectivisation and War Communism?
c. In what ways were they different, and why?
2. How did the power struggle to succeed Stalin affect the campaign?
3. To what extent was the Virgin Lands campaign the result of Cold War rivalries?
© www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016
25203
Page 5 of 5