Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2019 number

The article objective is to analyze the project of agricultural development adopted for West Siberia northern regions in 1935. Assessing prospects for their further development, regional authorities set the main task to create powerful grain base there. It was intended to supply local population and meet intraregional needs. Put forward by the regional authorities, the project was approved by the Centre. Within five years, the project assumed the double increase of the arable lands, the expansion of motor and tractor stations’ network, provision of northern farms with equipment, and animal husbandry development. The project included socio-political measures in addition to economic ones. According to the political leadership’s opinion, the kulaks opposition in collective farms of northern regions hampered implementation of the project. It justified carrying out a “cleaning” campaign against the management of collective farms, which took place in spring-summer of 1936. The objective reason for this was that the state agrarian policy was opposed by leaders and ordinary members of newly created collective farms in the northern regions. Besides, the post of party organizer was introduced in the collective farms of the northern regions. The project of agrarian development was not implemented, but the repressive campaign of 1936 became its most prominent episode. Acreages remained virtually unchanged, and new motor tractor stations were small and not provided with their own repair base. The reasons that led to the project failure included both overestimating the agricultural sector potential of northern regions, and shortcomings of the Soviet economy planned system. The subjective factor - changing leadership of the Novosibirsk region that was allocated from West Siberian territory in 1937 - played a certain role.