Agrarian reforms of 1953—1964: advances and imbalances in agriculture of the Ryazan region
Mikhail O. Maslovsky, Junior Research Fellow
Museum of the History of the Youth Movement, Ryazan, Russia, maslovskijmihail26@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8397-2936
Abstract
The article examines the agrarian policy in the USSR in 1953—1964. It analyzes the state of agriculture after the Great Patriotic War and substantiates the need for reforms. The article describes the laws and regulations, as well as the government measures taken, aimed at boosting the agriculture of the Soviet Union, including taxation changes, the government policy towards private subsidiary farming, the development of virgin lands, the use of corn as a fallow crop, and the consequences of the competition with the United States in terms of meat production and sales. The article also compares the goals and outcomes of the government agricultural policy, studies the main methods and techniques used by the authorities to influence the masses in order to achieve the goal of boosting the agricultural sector. The analysis of appeals from citizens allows to recreate a reliable picture of Khrushchev’s agricultural reforms.
Keywords
Agriculture, reforms, collective farms, state farms, Komsomol members, youth, virgin lands, corn, meat production and sale, private subsidiary farming.
Acknowledgments: The study was carried out with the financial support of Grant from the Russian Science Foundation No. 24-28-01217 “Soviet Everyday Life in Citizens’ Letters to the Government in the 1950s and 1970s”, https://www.rscf.ru/project/24-28-01217/
For citation:
Maslovsky M. O. Agrarian reforms of 1953—1964: advances and imbalances in agriculture of the Ryazan region. Vestnik of Orenburg State Pedagogical University. Electronic Scientific Journal, 2025, no. 4 (56), pp. 150—166. DOI: https://doi.org/10.32516/2303-9922.2025.56.10.
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