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The Problem of Soviet Agricultural Regionalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Extract

It was not surprising that after the death of Stalin, early in 1953, the new regime should take another look at the condition of Soviet agriculture. While agricultural output had probably reached prewar levels, the needs of the state had risen, too, especially since the urban population had continued to grow steadily. Responding to the problem of insufficient supply, the regime introduced a number of projects and reforms designed, if not to solve, at least to alleviate some of its aspects. Millions of acres of little used or unused land were plowed and cultivated; there were attempts to improve the livestock feed base through the wider cultivation of corn; the Machine and Tractor Stations were abolished and the system of procurements was changed; and further efforts were made to increase yields per acre through improved methods of land utilization. Still more comprehensive in its scope was the call for a national inventory of both the natural and economic conditions of crop cultivation and livestock raising, whose objective was the establishment of a more “scientific” scheme of agricultural regionalization of the country in order to ensure more effective planning than had hitherto taken place.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1961

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References

1 Since 1953 the Soviet regime has set as its goal the overtaking of the United States in the per capita production of basic foodstuffs.

2 Saushkin, Y. G., Economic Geography of the Soviet Union (Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1957), p. 65.Google Scholar

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4 These statements are summarized from both of the above editorials.

5 Saushkin, op. cit., pp. 79-81; XVIII-XX 66 (Moscow, 1957), pp. 133-40.

6 Saushkin, loc. cit.

7 Arsenev divided Russia into regions on the basis of the following criteria: (a) the way and method of utilizing the land; (b) a surplus or deficit of agricultural production; and (3) fodder resources and animal husbandry. The ten regions included: North, Northwest, Baltic, West, Carpathians, Steppe, Central, Urals, Caucasus, Siberia. Arsenev further subdivided these regions on the basis of their specialization; i.e., Northwest—where Arsenev recognized a specialization in flax cultivation and, in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, vegetable gardening.

8 CCCP (Moscow, 1959), pp. 89-90; op. cit., pp. 300-317.

9 (1941), III, 227-28. See also 1957, pp. 79-89.

10 op. cit., pp. 266-69.

11 Political Economy (London, 1957), pp. 526-43.

12 1925-1939 (Moscow, 1941), pp. 393-436.

13 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930), pp. 33-34. Iakovlev was People's Commissar of Agriculture.

14 No. 7,1930, p. 76.

15 People's Commissariat of Agriculture.

16 op. cit., pp. 36, 38.

17 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1931), p. 214.

18 Ibid., pp. 220-21.

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24 See (Moscow, 1951,1953).

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26 No. 1, 1959, p. 28.

27 (Moscow, 1957), p. 6.

28 p. 21.

29 No. 4, 1955, pp. 61 ff.

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