Reform In The Khrushchev Era

7 Pages 1633 Words

s introduced in 1953 and opened up a great deal of land for farming. “42 million hectares of land, mostly in Northern Kazakhstan, were ploughed and sown for the first time, starting in 1954, with a net gain of 30-40 million hectares to the total area sown to crops in the USSR” (Hanson 54). Khrushchev’s formula was simple and would prove to effective in the short-run. These lands, with a little luck from the weather, flourished in the early years of the program but soon were plagued by droughts and high winds. Beginning in 1953 the agricultural sector experienced considerable growth and vast improvements were made. However, the rapid growth in the sector would not be without costs. As time past Khrushchev “got carried away” he now “developed grand ideas about agronomy: that growing maize was the answer to almost everything” (Hanson 56). The growing of maize was intended to increase the production of meat and increase production of dairy. Many of Khrushchev’s ideas seemed to contradict one another and therefore did not work. Moreover, Khrushchev’s inability to foresee consequences led to c...