Was the Virgin Lands Campaign a Venture? To the 70th Anniversary of the New Land Use

10.33876/2311-0546/2024-4/395-407

Abstract

The issue of developing new lands continues to be relevant in our country and around the world. On a global scale, the world's population is actively growing, people are increasingly bringing undeveloped lands into the agricultural cycle, thus increasing the space for living. On the world stage, Russia ranks first in terms of land resources that need to be further developed. Proper use of vacant land will give our country the opportunity to solve the problem of food security and become independent of food imports from abroad. In addition, it will be possible to increase the export of food products to other countries. The purpose of this work is a comprehensive review of the historical experience of the Soviet Union in the development of the virgin lands in the middle of the 20^th century. In particular, the study pays attention to the problem of participation of the Upper Volga economic region in the development of the virgin lands. The study is based on scientific and research literature and on archival data. Using the method of regional research, it was possible to determine the volume of work done by the people of the Upper Volga region in the virgin lands of Kazakhstan in 1954–1956. The results of the study revealed that in the first years of the development of the new lands in the Kazakh SSR, the people of Ivanovo, Kostroma and Yaroslavl managed to organize 13 new grain farms on their own, to staff collective farms and state farms with qualified personnel, thereby laying the foundation for the development of virgin lands infrastructure. We came to the conclusion that the personnel from Upper Volga played a notable role in the development of the regions of Northern Kazakhstan. Today, the Republic of Kazakhstan is the largest producer and exporter of wheat, the gross harvest in 2022–2023 amounted to 16.4 million tons. In many ways, today's success is based on the economic transformations of the mid-20^th century, when agricultural and industrial infrastructure was built in the empty steppe.