Soviet Agriculture

Old Airman

Banned
Some kind of re-instated NEP, removal of collectivised farms
They did it post-1991. It caused total collapse of agricultural production (it took Russian agriculture more than a decade to reach pre-1991 levels). So, unless you cobine it with heavy protectionism (which kind of kills the idea)....
 
Beria reintroduced small private plots and allow the private ownership of animals during his short reign after Stalin's death. If he could have avoided the coup of Krushcev then Russian agriculture would be much more sound. I wouldn't be surprised if he slowly eases off of collectivism. If not Beria than perhaps Molotov and the so called Anti-party group, could prevent Kruschev from taking power.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I think I'll be stealing that one for my no-Stalin TL. Thanks Mac :)

Go for it.

A lot of people are pitching these ideas, but there's no starting point for them, and I figured a Soviet John Deere would be the best way, at least from an agricultural machinery perspective.

Sure, the USSR still isn't going to turn out better stuff than International Harvester, but it'd be pretty hard to make stuff that sucks as bad as it did in OTL.
 
What would have prevented the Soviets from buying (or spying on) US Agricultural manufacturers, seed breeders, etc.? (It would be supremely ironic if they stole seed varieties from Pioneer Hi-Bred...)
 
What would have prevented the Soviets from buying (or spying on) US Agricultural manufacturers, seed breeders, etc.? (It would be supremely ironic if they stole seed varieties from Pioneer Hi-Bred...)

Nothing would have prevented the Soviet's from conducting espionage on American agri business. The problem is, how effective would that have really been in the long term. American agribusiness was built around the concept of scientific farming, with trained and specialized farmers seeking to maximize along the lines of profitability. Soviet agricultural was largely conducted by peasants, along the dictates of a centrally planned quota system. There was little incentive to improve yields beyond the quota, and soviet farmers would lavish far more time on their own private plots, than the multitude of state owned acreage.

But this isn't the only problems facing the soviet agricultural. There was also a serious lack of rural infrastructure. There were inadquete roads and railroads for the transport of agricultural inputs (farm machinary, fertilizers, pesticides etc.) and grain alike. Their shoddy agricultural tractors suffered from a lack of replacement parts, an educated core of people to use and maintain them. Even when they had sucesses, such as during the early years of the Virgin lands campaign, there wasn't enough grain silo's/elevators to store the surplus produce. Throughout soviet history, a shocking amount of tis grain rotted before it could be exported.
 

Hendryk

Banned
I've got one: instead of a Korolev, you get a Soviet John Deere. They had to have one or two in the gulags, rotting with ideas for better combines and spreaders in their brains.
The question is, why would they be let out of the gulags, let alone allowed to develop their ideas on an industrial scale.

Plus, the problem was systemic. Better technology wouldn't be a lasting solution--it would be bandaging up a wooden leg.

Several of the ideas suggested so far are good: gradual de-collectivization, relaxation of the rules on private plots and sale of produce in markets, no hubristic attempt to develop irrigated cotton culture in Kazakhstan, etc. No single measure would make Soviet agriculture productive, but together they would make a difference over time.
 
The question is, why would they be let out of the gulags, let alone allowed to develop their ideas on an industrial scale.

Plus, the problem was systemic. Better technology wouldn't be a lasting solution--it would be bandaging up a wooden leg.

Several of the ideas suggested so far are good: gradual de-collectivization, relaxation of the rules on private plots and sale of produce in markets, no hubristic attempt to develop irrigated cotton culture in Kazakhstan, etc. No single measure would make Soviet agriculture productive, but together they would make a difference over time.

There were a lot of people let out of the Gulags. Beria opened the Gulags when he came to power, and the average time spent in Gulag was less then 4 years.

Also the Gulag system did take advantage of skilled prisoners:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka
 

MacCaulay

Banned
The question is, why would they be let out of the gulags, let alone allowed to develop their ideas on an industrial scale.

Simple. Some minister without portfolio takes a drive, realizes how much better those IH and Oliver tractors were that he saw when he was overseas as a (insert job in America) in World War II, and puts a bug in another person's ear to let a certain someone out of jail who drew up some plans for a better planter.

Plus, the problem was systemic. Better technology wouldn't be a lasting solution--it would be bandaging up a wooden leg.

Totally. It seems like it's right up the Soviets' alley, then, doesn't it? The Soviet leadership isn't all of the sudden going to start making smarter decisions at every level. This is just a hiccup.
 
In Red Storm Rising, Clancy had the idea that simply increasing the size of the private farm plots would do the job... no real need for farming new (and marginal) lands. Is it that simple? It seems to me that the USSR already had a lot of perfectly good farmland (the Ukraine in particular), it just wasn't being used well...
 
After the Krushnev era, a radical new idea came as to how to increase agricultural production, make the climate better.

By 1968, submarine exploration had revealed the presence of massive amounts of methane trapped under the arctic ocean.
1969: The Politurbo gives authorisation to the project. A great number of "old" thermonuclear bombs (most still powerfull enough to completely level London or Washington in a single blast) are drafted and modified.
In the summer of 1970, over 200 "old" H bombs are detonated in the Arctic Ocean (among which at least several dozens Tsar Bomba models :D ), the entire world is surprised at the strange tests. Much complaints among the hippies and the counter-cultural movements. Some claimes it is not a classical test but an attempt at climatic manipulation
Winter of 1970-1971 is already slightly warmer than normal, the following year the Arctic ice sheet almost completely breakes down releasing even more methane and green-house gases. Agricultural production is reported approximatively 25% higher, despite some negative effects.
1972: climate warming continues, existing agricultural regions produces more, plans for farming in southern Siberia are made. Arctic ocean is completely ice-free during the summer, 1/3 less permafrost territories.
1973: Agriculture in souther Siberia becomes possible. Northern regions are prooved to benefite greatly from the Change.
1974: Canada begin its own agricultural projects.
1975: Global warming starts to cause concernes, Greenland´s ice is starting to melt at an accelerated rate. Sea levels have risen by 20-30 centimeters since 1970.
Climate change and the speed of it have prooven to have some negative effects but these are outweighted by the beneficies, especially for the soviet-union.
1975-1977: Global warming panic in North America and in a lesser measure, europe, with catastrophe scenarios given much media attentions.
Populist governement takes power in the US, the new US president cleverly exploits fears of global warming for his own benefice, along with that of a number of his backers.
1978-1980: The climate keeps getting warmer, some countries suffer massively but the apocalyptic scenarios occures. The new controversial governement of the US falls.
By 1981 onward, more and more people start considering the soviet project a mixed blessing.
In the US, the "Global Warming Apocalypse Swindle" have cost the people several trillions to crooked capitalists.
Ecopurists uproare continues but looses it´s influence on governement policies despite the Democrats taking back the White House.
 
That's mad, but in a good way. :D

Simply decollectivizing would be a better a solution, but it doesn't have the global effect of your idea.
 
Dismantling the collective farms alone won’t fix the problem, especially if the goal is to improve exports.
a) There was an agricultural crisis of sorts in the Russian empire prior to the Bolsheviks even seizing power. Basically the peasantry were willing to withhold their grain, waiting for better prices, and in some cases converted it into samogon (a very rough grain spirit) because it could fetch a higher price. So perhaps without some form of compulsion there could be a repeat. Prior to the war there were issues with too many small farm holdings etc. which might be recreated with the breakup of the collectives.
b) It doesn’t solve structural issues, like the weather and poor transportation (...which was often impeded by the weather). Another issue was that there had been a brain drain in agricultural workers. The best and brightest had been creamed off to work in factories. Those same people were the most likely candidates to make best use of new techniques like mechanisation etc. Oh, and the perennial issue of lack of parts for machines, which was a product of the whole system.

The private plots might have been effective because they were small enough that they could be micro-managed with infusions of labour. It might not have translated well into a larger land holding. Keep in mind post-Soviet Russian agriculture was not a great success story, and it wasn’t always for lack of decollectivisation.

The Chinese agricultural reforms of the mid-late 1970s are probably a step in the right direction, although there would have to be modifications. Chinese agriculture had been less collectivised than the Soviet equivalent, and there had been less of a drain because of the method/speed of industrialisation.

The Chinese household contract system would be a good for compulsion to meet deliveries, and is similar to the zveno system tested out under Brezhnev (although the two might have differed in their relationship to the collective work). So that might be your POD there, a wider appreciation and implementation of zveno over things like the brigade system (which only ever worked when central support was immense).

I think a better POD would have been prior to the death of Stalin. Maybe if the productive middle peasants (kulak is such a loaded work) had, at least initially, been coopted by the Soviet government, and essentially been allowed to run their own areas... Sort of a Sovietised landlord ;)

IIRC, Khrushchev had that grand scheme where a big bit of the central Asian plateau would be redeveloped as agricultural land and Russians would be moved there to work it, which worked for about 10 years and then the crops failed because they hadn't had a broad enough range of crops and thus all the minerals had been exhausted. WI they had had at least a mediaeval grasp of crop rotation?

You’re referring to the Virgin Lands program I think, but crop failures weren’t the big problem with the project. Indeed, those farms continued to produce under Brezhnev, which was a useful offset to the black soil regions, which tended to get knocked out together by weather.

What really went wrong with the Virgin Soil was the high cost of production, and the lack of community groundwork meant that few wanted to stay. Infrastructure, as always, sucked too.

Beria reintroduced small private plots

They hadn’t been banned in the first place from memory, it was part of the final compromise on collectivisation. Beria might have increased their size or usage, but they were already there.

What would have prevented the Soviets from buying (or spying on) US Agricultural manufacturers, seed breeders, etc.?
As King Gorilla noted, nothing. The added catch is that technology that is stolen is harder to translate into long term development... so the Soviets would have been trapped perpetually (and desperately) trying to steal the next big thing, because they couldn’t quite figure it out themselves.
 
The Chinese agricultural reforms of the mid-late 1970s are probably a step in the right direction, although there would have to be modifications.


Actually Chinese agricultural production was quiet good already in the latter 1960s, quality and health wise at least, better than what east Siberians had during that same period.
Then again, Mao´s brand of communism focused on the peasants rather than industrial workers(which makes sens, considering the lack of urbanisation at the time) and a large chunk of China have a far better climate than the Soviet-Union.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
As King Gorilla noted, nothing. The added catch is that technology that is stolen is harder to translate into long term development... so the Soviets would have been trapped perpetually (and desperately) trying to steal the next big thing, because they couldn’t quite figure it out themselves.

There actually was some of that. There's a story about Kruschev's visit to Iowa, when he went through the Oliver plant up in Charles City and that guy's hog farm as well. Everyone saw Soviet trade delegation members snapping (not very) secretive pictures of new tractors and other equipment that were there in much the same way they'd done for years in British iron foundries or military plants.
It's pretty much the same idea, and you're totally right with them not being able to develop it. You're only as far as whatever the company you're stealing from has in production, which means idea-wise you're about 2-4 years behind the times.
 
WI they had had at least a mediaeval grasp of crop rotation?

That's because he was interested in having an American-style agricultural sector - no rotation, industrialized monoculture, reliance on chemicals to keep things going.

Unfortunately the USSR had neither the infrastructure nor the expertise nor the climate nor the soil to get away with it.
 
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