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Humanitarian sciences in Siberia

2014 year, number

POLITICAL SITUATION IN KAZAKHSTAN BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF VIRGIN AND FALLOW LANDS CAMPAIGN

L.G. Shuhay
Cherkasy National University named after Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ukraine, 18031, Cherkassy, b.Shevchenko, 81
Keywords: agriculture, agrarian reforms, food crisis, cultivation of virgin and fallow lands, indigenous population, grain production

Abstract

The article investigates the state of agriculture in the Soviet Union and in particular in Kazakhstan on the eve and at the beginning of realization phase of the Communist Party policy aimed at virgin and fallow lands development in 1953 - 1954. The author analyzes circumstances of management reshuffle in the Republic. The food crisis that struck the Soviet Union after World War II is also considered. The problem of providing the population with bread was very urgent. Soviet Union’s new leadership under N.S. Khrushchev had to take immediate actions. The paper analyzes two possible solutions of the problem: agrarian reform could be conducted with either intensive or extensive methods. The first variant foresaw a profound transformation of relations of production, i.e. transition to the market mechanisms, including private interest that was attainable only after privatization of property, and above all - after establishment of private land ownership. The author emphasizes that the System chose an extensive model of problem’s solution for the purpose of self-preservation. A sharp increase in grain production was planned in order to soften (and then to resolve) the food crisis. In this regard, the government set a course for ploughing the huge land masses in the eastern areas of the country, i.e. “cultivation of virgin lands”. The largest-scale ploughing was to be done in Northern Kazakhstan. The key political figures of that time (among them were H.A. Borkov, Zh. Sh. Shayakhmetov, P.K. Ponomarenko, L.I. Brezhnev) are described in the article on the basis of publications and memoirs written by the prominent statesmen. The author reveals interrelations between Khrushchev’s virgin lands program and state and party leadership change in Kazakhstan.