Agriculture of the Novosibirsk Region under the state agrarian policy on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War

Земледелие Новосибирской области в контексте аграрной политики государства накануне и в годы Великой Отечественной войны

Sharapov, Sergey (Шарапов, Сергей) ()
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Sharapov, Sergey (Шарапов, Сергей): Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Russian Peasant Studies, 2022, vol. 7, 52-68

Abstract: The article considers the impact of the Soviet state agrarian policy on the agricultural production in the Novosibirsk Region. In 1930s, the government was not far-sighted for short-term gains (growth of production volumes) the long-term prospects were sacrificed. The ever-growing state plans for sowing and harvesting prevented the development of the rational agricultural system in Siberia. By the early 1940s, in most collective farms of the Novosibirsk Region, elementary agrotechnical rules were broken, fallow lands were reduced, deadlines for agricultural work were not kept, rules for crop rotation and seed production were ignored. Therefore, the long-term clogging and depletion of soils, among other factors, determined extremely low grain yields during the Great Patriotic War. In the prewar period, the state agrarian policy led to the rapid depletion of the agricultural production in the Novosibirsk Region. By 1941, the region was in a critical situation of an acute shortage of seeds, food, and livestock feed. In 1942, the Soviet government continued its blind sowing policy and obviously underestimated the negative impact of such a policy on production under the reduction in labor and inputs. Planning errors led to a sharp reduction in gross grain harvests from 1942. Until the end of the war, the Soviet agriculture was negatively affected by the short-sighted state policies that significantly reduced possibilities for the productive use of the local agricultural potential.

Keywords: agriculture; state agrarian policy; agricultural technology; Great Patriotic War; peasantry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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