Seeing this title, I should have guessed that I want to write about the Soviet Union again.
Some friends may wonder, how many problems did the Soviet Union have? Financial, light industry, oil, now there is another agriculture?
Yes, the problems in the late Soviet Union were systematic and there was almost no problem. Just like the Titanic , there are 16 watertight cabins. After hitting the iceberg, if the 4 watertight cabins are knocked through, nothing happened to crash into 5, then you will be exhausted and jumped into the ship and escape.
If the Soviet Union had problems with one department, other departments could also make up for it, but almost all departments had problems with it, and they all counted on finance to make up for it. The finance itself had no money, so why wouldn’t it just split up? Let’s focus on agriculture today.
It can be said that the Soviet Union's agriculture has always been not very good and has been inherently deficient since the beginning. As early as the Soviet Union during the Stalin period, the per capita grain output was not as good as the Tsarist Russian . I checked and found that in 1951, the average Soviet population was 450 kilograms, while in 1913, Tsarist Russia was 540 kilograms. But later it got better, surpassing Tsarist Russia, but it has never been able to compare with developed countries.
So why does this problem occur? There are many reasons, and there is a less critical issue, which makes it very difficult for agricultural development in the Soviet Union. That is, the Soviet Union was very large. The biggest advantage of the Soviet Union was that it was big, and the fault was also big.
is the issue of
. You can understand it by putting yourself in your shoes. Russia's economic center is their "two cities" , St. Petersburg and Moscow. You live too far from these two places, so you may be able to support your own food, but many delicious and fun things will not arrive, and it will be ridiculously expensive after transporting them to you.
, and you will understand this point by thinking about "free shipping on Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai" and "no free shipping on Xinjiang region". If you live too far from the core area of the economy, not only will you not be able to buy many things at all, but even if you buy them, it will be much more expensive than normal, and even several times more expensive. If you build some modern things in those places, such as tap water, toilets, and apartment buildings, you have to pull them from the core area of the economy. The workload is too high, and in the end it is still the old problem, and the price is ridiculously high. If it is broken, it is difficult to maintain.
What’s even more outrageous is that from the Soviet Union to Russia, their road development was very backward. Railways are the main artery, highways are capillary, and the Soviet-Russian railway is still docile. The highways have been very poor, and they are not good until now. There are almost no expressways in Russia now. Mainly because of the special climate factors in Russia, the road costs are ridiculously high. As the main way of short-distance transportation, highways have not developed, making short-distance transportation costs very high.
This is why the large number of Gongqingcheng opened by the Soviet Union were abandoned later because the maintenance cost was too high. For Russians, unless they have to die, they will not go to remote areas like exile. Even if it passes, whenever you have the chance, you will immediately run back to Europe.
So the Soviet Union's grain production areas did not bloom everywhere, but were mainly concentrated in the current areas of Ukraine and Kazakhstan . If it is too remote, or slightly farther from the railway, it can be produced and cannot be transported. Now when you go to Russia, you can also notice that their roads are very poor and there are pits everywhere, which is also a kind of continuous damage to the car.
The grain production areas of the Soviet Union did not manage them well. As we all know, after the founding of the People's Republic of my country, China has been engaged in water conservancy facilities, but the Soviet Union has never done this. It’s not that they don’t want to do it, but they are really too busy. Since World War I , Russia has been on the line of life and death. First, it fought a lot with Germany, and countless people died, and only then did it seek peace by ceding a large area of territory.
Then the Soviet Union was established, and bought equipment from Germany and the United States to carry out industrialization. Industrialization had just been completed. World War II broke out again, and tens of millions of people died to win the war. After the war, it did not immediately fight a cold war with the West, and there was neither resources nor manpower to engage in water conservancy.
"World 2 " The Soviet Union lost too many men, more than 20 million people died, most of whom were young and middle-aged people of childbearing age, resulting in serious insufficient population. The people did not want to stay in the village to farm, so they all went to the city, and the agricultural population was even smaller.
It needs to be said here that many people in China are also heartbroken that farmers are unwilling to stay in the village to farm, and some even say that they are forcing them not to enter the city. This is a bit unethical. It’s like your company’s treatment is poor. If you want to resign, your boss will not let you resign. Are you a hooligan? A real good approach is to increase agricultural subsidies so that the people's farming income will not be too far behind the city, so that farmers will naturally be willing to farm in the village with peace of mind.
is not over yet. I have checked these two days and found that the main problems in each stage of the Soviet Union are still different. For example, the problem during the Stalin period was that collective farm destroyed everyone's enthusiasm. The food grown by the farmers does not belong to them, so isn't it "farming with the flow"?
For example, a "bald method" was popular in the Soviet Union at that time. Since all the grain grown by farmers will be taken away, they don’t care about the harvest, and they can fool them as much as they can. All aspects are mainly performed. Whether sowing or fertilizing, they are mainly done seriously in the field, and the more they go back, the more they fooled it. When the harvest season comes, the problem is exposed. The crops grow like bald, and only those areas where fertilization is carefully grown well, and most of them are bare.
is also this model that is unsustainable. After Khrushchev came to power, he no longer did it.
Khrushchev's mind was normal in the first few years, such as reducing the burden on farmers, abolishing collective farms, and raising the agricultural purchase price. Farmers have benefited, not as foolish as before, and grain output has greatly improved. In addition, there were also large-scale land reclamation. From 1954 to 1958, the government invested 6.7 billion rubles to reclaim land, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of volunteers to settle in the eastern region, and reclaimed a total of 40 million hectares of land. Later, the Soviet Union and even Russia's agriculture can survive now, which has a lot to do with this land reclamation.
But you see that "volunteer". Many people are actually not willing to go there. Khrushchev got them over. Later, these people ran back to the west after finding the opportunity. This is also the reason why the Communist Qingcheng was abandoned as mentioned above.
The first half of the baldness was normal, but later the disease occurred.
Khrushchev actually cannot be a leader and has poor qualifications. After Stalin's death, it was not his turn. The core of power after Stalin's death was known as the "three troika", Beria , Malenkov , Khrushchev, and Khtu had the least power. But he is very good at using methods. The third brother joined hands with the second brother to defeat the most powerful spy leader Belia. After Belia was shot, he used methods to defeat Malenkov and inexplicably took over.
But the biggest problem with this kind of gameplay is that your reputation is too small and it is difficult to convince the public, resulting in a lack of prestige. In order to recharge your reputation, you have to do a great career that is more awesome than Stalin.
So the more you go, the more you go, for example, you have set unrealistic production goals to the agricultural sector. The Soviet Union used a rotating planting system before, and planted a piece of land for a year or a year. Now it is planting every year, and fishing out of its waters. It’s not because Khrushchev didn’t understand agriculture and directly issued orders to do this, but because the above tasks were too heavy and the grassroots could not complete it anyway, so he had to do this.
not only set goals, but also make corn.
I have mentioned in my previous article that after Khrushchev went to the United States to see American corn, he looked calm on the surface, and said it was very indifferent and his tricks were not worth mentioning. After returning, he promoted the cultivation of corn crazily, and no one dared to tell him that the Soviet Union's national conditions were different from those of the United States, so many lands that were not suitable for growing corn were also planted, and finally the crop yield was reduced on a large scale.
As for why they are so enthusiastic about growing corn, it is not a complete whim. On the one hand, the Soviet Union did not have enough food. In the years when they were growing corn, the Soviet Union once took out 372.2 tons of gold reserves for grain imports, and the Soviet Union's top leaders really wanted to solve this problem.
And Khrushchev has always wondered why the American people eat so well, and the consumption of meat, eggs and milk is much worse than that of the Soviet Union. Later, after witnessing the United States connecting to the cornfield in the sky, I discussed with the people under my command and felt that I had found the key to the problem. He planned to grow corn in the Soviet Union and feed pigs and cows with the harvested corn, so that he could improve meat, eggs and milk. The logic of
is correct, and it will be wrong as soon as it reaches the execution stage. Because the Soviet area was at a high latitude and lacked sunlight, it was not suitable for growing corn at all, so naturally nothing was planted.
However, the Soviet leaders had a strong obsession with meat, eggs and milk, which is easy to understand, because the living standards of the people are closely related to meat consumption. It is hard to say that the people's living standards will be very high when they eat meat once a year, right? In order to solve this problem, leaders of all generations have been working hard one after another. Unexpectedly, Russia solved it unexpectedly, let's talk about it later.
not only can't grow corn, but the Soviet Union has never solved the enthusiasm of the people, which is the famous "They pretend to pay me a salary, and I pretend to give them work."
This problem is almost unsolvable under the planned economy. Inadequate incentives and innovation are the two fatal points of the planned economy. They may be solved in a very small number of places or in a short period of time, but the overall and long-term inefficiency cannot be solved, which has been repeatedly confirmed in the practice of various countries. In order to avoid inducing war, I won’t talk much.
Khrushchev finally failed to survive the fierce competition among his colleagues. In 1964, when he was on vacation in Black Sea , Brezhnev and others launched a coup in Moscow. He Tu was removed from all positions and was laid off from his posts. Later, he focused on writing and died of a heart attack 7 years later.
Hetu should be the leader who cares about agriculture on Soviet history . When the coup was about to overthrow him, he lied to him to return to Moscow and said that he wanted him to go back to hold an agricultural conference. Khrushchev went back excitedly and was announced to be removed from his post.
The one who came to power was Brezhnev, the famous "dorse lover", also known as "Su Xunzong". He surpassed the United States in his hands. In addition, the United States was deeply trapped in the quagmire of Vietnam War. Oil prices rose. The Soviet Union's national strength reached its peak during the reign of Su Xunzong.
He worked from 1964 to 1982, and he had just spread the oil cycle. You can see that when he was in office, the oil price was getting higher and higher every year. The Soviet Union made a lot of money selling oil. The United States was about to go bankrupt and was in chaos.
Everyone knows the famous "Western-81" exercise . This military exercise involving 500,000 Soviet troops shocked the West. You can see the picture above. It happened to be the peak of oil prices and the peak of Soviet national strength.
It was precisely because of the high oil prices during the Brezhnev period and the Soviet Union was in sufficient finance. The Soviet Union used the money to sell oil to support the Third World Revolution and purchased Western food on a large scale. At that time, it was mainly purchased from the United States, , Brazil, , and Canada. I bought grain to feed pigs, sheep and cattle, and bought a large number of light industrial products, forming a "oil for grain" strategy at that time.
If there was any place in the Soviet Union needed funds in those years, its first reaction was to approve the oil quota to the Planning Economic Committee. It is precisely because they need too much oil and are crazily exploited that they have ruined their best oil fields in just 15 years.
The Soviet Union was very happy in those years. It not only maintained its strong position over Europe and the United States in military affairs, but also greatly improved the living standards of the people. Cold War entered the stage of Soviet offensive and defensive defense.
From the rearview mirror, it is not that there is a problem with importing food, but that the Soviet Union has always been too unmotivated to improve its "internal strength". At that time, he was too subsidized for heavy industry and he always paid little attention to agriculture. Farmers were on the side where they were "cut" by scissors. In the entire Soviet era, farmers did not get any benefits, and the overall situation was very negative.
Around 1986, the oil finance basically collapsed. The Soviet Union was extremely short of money, so naturally there was not enough food. It might not be able to get bread in line every day, which eventually triggered the dissatisfaction of the masses. Everyone knows what happened afterwards, and it completely collapsed in 1991.
So people often see people debate, saying that the benefits of the Soviet Union were very good and all kinds of quotas were sufficient, and the other was saying why do you line up everywhere to receive bread?
may not be talking about the same period. The Soviet Union before the oil price plummeted and the Soviet Union after the oil price plummeted are completely different. The photos you often see are lined up to receive bread, which are basically the case during the war and after the plummeting oil prices. The Soviet Union lacked enough food and had no money to buy Western food, which led to a serious lack of food and side dishes, so everyone had to queue up.
Then there was a drastic change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union became Russia. Who would have thought that Russia, which had been short of food, suddenly became the fourth largest food exporter in the world within a few years. The meat problem that could not be solved during the Soviet era. Now Russia basically has no meat prices. Now Russia’s meat prices are similar to those in ours, but vegetables are very expensive. Russia has not achieved many outstanding achievements in the overall years, and agriculture is definitely one.
Then what has Russia done right?
I carefully checked and found that in the years since the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia adopted a laissez-faire attitude and grain production plummeted.
Later until 2007, the Russian government issued a new policy to benefit farmers and provided large-scale subsidies to agriculture. Farming was no longer profitable, so many Russian companies rented large areas of land to farm, and the grain output increased like this.
Russia's arable land is much less than that of the Soviet Union. The reason why it can make such great progress is mainly due to the large-scale introduction of technical equipment and good varieties driven by profits. In addition, Russia's terrain is flat and suitable for mechanization, and has entered a normal cycle in recent years. Farming is profitable. After making money, you can buy more equipment and fertilizers, and produce more in the field and make more money. After Russia's next arms business is out of business, grain exports should be able to bear the burden.
The only problem is that Russians are not willing to go to East and West Siberia. In recent years, many Chinese companies have farmed there, but Russia has laws that prevent foreign companies from buying their land, so some Chinese companies are farming there and renting their land.
ending
If the Soviet Union went to Russia could give us any notice, it was undoubtedly food security concerning the country's foundation and the most important thing to be careless.
But we must realize that Russia is very different from us. Russia has too much land resources. Their biggest problem is population and transportation. We may never be able to compare this point. Our cultivated land is only so much, and we can only cultivate carefully.
However, it can indeed learn from their experience in benefiting farmers and technology. Technology is always the primary productive force. Secondly, if you want to develop agriculture, you must give farmers real benefits and benefits. If farmers can get real benefits, who is willing to leave your hometown and go to work in a big city?
Overall, my country has done very well in recent years. I checked the data and found that from 2012 to 2022, my country's grain production capacity has increased steadily, and output has remained stable at more than 1.3 trillion jin for seven consecutive years. Now my country's per capita grain possession reaches 483 kilograms, higher than the internationally recognized 400 kilogram food security line.
I still hope to further improve farmers' income levels in the future. After all, farmers and agriculture are the foundations of this country.
full text. If you think it is well written, then please like
