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| CATEGORIES ABOUT VIRGIN LANDS CAMPAIGN | |
| history of the soviet union and soviet russia | |
| agriculture in the soviet union | |
| 1954 establishments | |
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, a romanticised view of the Campaign]] The Virgin Lands Campaign was an initiative by Nikita Khrushchev to open up vast tracts of unseeded (virgin) Steppe in the northern Kazakh SSR and the Altay region of the Russian SFSR , started in 1954 . In the first year of the programme, 190,000 km&2 were was charged with recruiting them. More than 300,000 people, mostly Ukrainians and Russians , arrived in the Virgin Lands to begin new lives as Farmer s. Hundreds of thousands of Soldier s, Student s and Combine Harvester operators would join them; however, these people would stay for only a year's Harvest . By the end of the mass Immigration s to the Virgin Lands, Slavs outnumbered Kazakh s in many areas. The main town was renamed ''Tselinograd'', "Virgin Lands City" (today's Astana ). For a brief time, Khrushchev inspired a Communist zeal in the peoples of the Soviet Union, and concentrated that zeal on a task that, for an equally brief time, produced the expected results. THE FIRST HARVEST The first harvest on the Virgin Lands, in 1956 , was a stunning success. Of the 125 million Tonne s of Grain produced in the Soviet Union that year, more than half of it came from one eighth of the country. The Soviet Union was producing, Per Capita , twice as much wheat as the West . However, harvests would never again reach the level of 1956. FAILURES Nearly all of the . By the 1960s , the Soil had been drained of all its Nutrient s beneficial to wheat, and before long, due to lack of any measures to prevent Erosion , much of that soil was simply being blown away by the Wind to leave bare, useless steppe behind. Also, much of the crop that could be harvested was wasted, as there were not enough Storage Silo s, so it had to be thrown away. Therefore despite the initial success of the Virgin Lands Campaign, the Soviet Union was forced to buy grain from Canada to meet its needs. Ukrainians and Russians who were brought in for the Virgin Lands Campaign and who remained became widely hated by the native Kazakh shepherds, who blamed them for the loss of forage grounds at the steppe. Despite the return of many Kazakhs to their former homeland following the Collapse Of The Soviet Union , the hatred remains. SEE ALSO |
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