In 1954, the Central Committee of the CPSU made a historic decision (however, any decisions of the Central Committee should have been considered historical at that time) "On the further increase in grain production in the country and on the development of virgin and fallow lands." This decision, historical without quotation marks, was not made from a good life.
In the middle of the 20th century, our country from the main granary of Europe turned into an importer of bread. They had to buy from the "damned capitalists", giving up the few petrodollars for bread that remained after spending on the defense industry. It was planned to plow up to 43 million hectares of land in Kazakhstan and southern Siberia.
The party said: "We must!"
It must be said that the Central Committee was unoriginal: the development of virgin lands in the aforementioned regions, in fact, began at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, with the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Now an unprecedented in scale, but alas, not too deeply thought-out campaign began.
In the regions under development, there was practically no infrastructure: no roads, no granaries, no repair bases. Moreover, there was virtually no one to carry out the decision of the Central Committee: the country, not yet recovering from the war, was in a demographic crisis. But "the party said: 'IT IS NECESSARY!" the Komsomol replied: "THERE IS!" "And echelons were drawn from all over the country. Destination stations - Kokchetav, Kustanai, Omsk and other regions. Komsomol volunteers, university students, mobilized machine operators were traveling, and military echelons were traveling. Hooligans, prostitutes and other dubious element were evicted from large cities to virgin lands. As is customary, the development of virgin lands took place in the form of a struggle, and not for life, but for death, sometimes in the literal sense. Many people died at the beginning of the epic: they fell with tractors under the ice on unfamiliar rivers, froze in tents,defeated in the bare steppe, perished in man-made accidents, aggravated by the extremely low level, and sometimes complete absence, of qualifications of most of the new settlers.
Still, they did a lot: more than 41 million hectares were plowed up, 425 large grain state farms were created. It is believed that the virgin land epic lasted seven to eight years. Later, the idea itself, the methods of its implementation and the main inspirer Nikita Khrushchev were subjected to harsh and fair criticism. We will not judge who is right and who is wrong, having noticed: it is always easier to criticize than to create. It is better to tell about what the author saw with his own eyes, having spent about six months on the virgin lands.
Promotional video:
Molotov was against
In 1957, as a student at the Leningrad Voenmekh and having received a Komsomol permit, I went to the virgin lands. A train was waiting for us on the freight tracks: 20-25 teplushek (or "calf" cars, as they were called in the old days). In each - bunks for 20 people, straw mattresses. When they started, in one of the carriages, someone began to pull up: “Forgotten, abandoned from a young age …” The song was picked up by the entire train. The accompanying mothers put handkerchiefs to their eyes.
We drove for eight or nine days. Comfort was bad, but fun. The virgin echelons went under the auspices of the military enlistment offices. Food was provided by the military at the stations in specially set up tents. Since there were no timetables, they often lagged behind the echelon, catching up later on fast passengers. From the Taincha station of the Kokchetav region, trucks took us three or four hours to the central estate of the Molotov state farm.
We were distributed among the brigades. The cemetery of broken equipment immediately caught my eye - they had already managed to break a lot in three years. The next day it became clear that our state farm was no longer Molotov, but Tikhookeansky. The fact is that while we were on the road, the notorious "faction" ("Kaganovich, Malenkov, Molotov and Shepilov, who joined them") was exposed in the capital. Their position on virgin lands played an important role in the overthrow of the four. Molotov believed that it was too early to master the virgin lands, and suggested investing in the Non-Black Earth Region.
1957 turned out to be cold and not too fruitful, and at the time of our appearance there was nothing to harvest - it was not ripe. Our sixth brigade was stationed on the farm and loaded with whatever they have to. I was elected a foreman. The local bosses did not annoy. We were self-service, we prepared the food ourselves. Harchi were given to us as an advance for future earnings on the central estate of the state farm, which was five kilometers away. Therefore, the horse Vaska with a gig was allocated to us. Having some childhood experience of village life, I boldly took over the reins of Vaska's government and went for groceries myself.
Polar Lights
Finally the harvest was ripe, and we moved to the field camp. A carriage, two tents, a stove and a board table near the walls of the carriage - that's the whole camp. Conveniences, as they say, are in the yard, which in the conditions of the bare steppe created some problem - after all, there were ladies among us. We were assigned to units. The unit is an ancient, even for those times, combine "Stalinets-6", towed by a T-54 tractor, behind a stacker for threshed straw. The crew of four people: the combine operator and the tractor driver are professionals, we are the operator's assistant (steering wheel) and a man with a pitchfork on the stacker.
My pros were Kazakh brothers Omarovs, great guys. The senior is a combine operator, the junior is behind the tractor. Asked about city life, the younger dreamed of an army in order to travel by train, which he had never seen. They brought us a simple dinner to the field, and the brothers treated us to kumis. The harvester incessantly - 10 times in a 12-hour shift - broke down: the chains broke, the teeth of the cast-iron sprockets flew off. In this case, I was busy with a box with spare parts (spare parts, tools and accessories). Repaired in the field on their own.
The harvest was poor, and the harvest took no more than three weeks. Then days of idleness dragged on, until the time of plowing came, where we were assigned the boring role of a plow - to raise and lower the plow shares when turning on the borders of the endless field. With luck, sometimes it was allowed to sit at the tractor levers. Night walks on tractors became a kind of entertainment during the plowing period. After the shift, the tractor drivers went home, leaving their steel horses in the camp. Some of us (including the author), having mastered the difficult procedure of starting tractor diesel engines, drove out into the steppe where our eyes were looking (fortunately, roads were not required for this). The main thing is not to get lost in the darkness, because there are no landmarks.
It is impossible not to recall the enchanting sight that we watched on dark September nights. Somehow the whole brigade was sitting by the fire, when on the horizon in the southeast direction the sky for a moment lit up with a bright flash, and then began to be painted in a whole range of colors. The mysterious phenomenon lasted for several minutes, slowly fading away, then light green reflections ran across the sky, and it was all over. Naturally, we were at a loss - what would this end of the world mean?
Our virgin land epic ended in the already familiar Tynche, where a completely civilian train from reserved seat cars was waiting for us. Four more days - and we are in Leningrad. And on the first day of the journey, while stopping in Petropavlovsk, we read an article in the local newspaper: "A phenomenon unusual for our latitudes is the polar lights." And they even believed. Only later, when it became known about the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site (where ground and air explosions were carried out until 1961), and I had seen enough of the aurora borealis in the Arctic, I realized what kind of "lights" we saw in September 1957.
60 years have passed since that time, but our short virgin epic remains in the memory to this day.
Constantin RICHES