Khrushchev’s Economic Reforms: Industry, Agriculture and the Virgin Lands Scheme (AQA A Level History: Component 1: Breadth study): Revision Note

Summary

• After Stalin, Khrushchev shifted economic priorities away from heavy industry

  • He focused more on light industry, chemicals and consumer goods

• The Seven-Year Plan of 1959 promised rising living standards

  • It promised a 40-hour working week

  • It also pledged to overtake the USA

• In 1957, Khrushchev decentralised industrial planning

  • He created 105 regional economic councils (sovnarkhozy) to replace central ministries

• Agriculture became a central focus, with higher procurement prices, reduced quotas and the Virgin Lands Scheme

• The Virgin Lands Scheme, from 1954, ploughed huge areas of Kazakhstan and western Siberia

  • It created a short-term grain boom

  • Soil exhaustion and the 1963 harvest crisis later exposed its weaknesses

• Historians debate whether Khrushchev's economic reforms modernised the USSR or damaged it through poor planning

  • Figes stresses rapid growth, expanding consumer ownership and rising Soviet prestige

  • Deutscher argues the Virgin Lands and maize campaigns were imposed recklessly, against expert warnings

Why did Khrushchev focus on light industry, chemicals & consumer goods?

Heavy industry dominated the economy that Khrushchev inherited

• Stalin's economy had prioritised heavy industry and the military

  • Consumer goods and needs had been neglected

• By 1950, real household consumption was only a tenth higher than in 1928

• Housing, clothing and household goods were in seriously short supply

• Khrushchev believed higher living standards would strengthen loyalty to the regime

  • A better daily life would show that socialism could outperform Western capitalism

His motives combined ideology, politics and economics

• Ideologically, Khrushchev linked consumer abundance to full communism

  • The 1961 Party Programme declared that communism would be fully built by 1980

• Politically, moving away from heavy industry helped separate Khrushchev from Stalin

  • He eased Cold War pressure by cutting military spending from 12% of GDP to 9% in 1958

• Economically, chemicals were treated as the key to modernisation

  • Chemical fertilisers would raise crop yields

  • Synthetic fibres would help supply clothing needs

Reforms to light industry, chemicals & consumer goods under Khrushchev

The Seven-Year Plan set the new economic direction

• Khrushchev launched the Seven-Year Plan in 1959

  • It replaced the over-ambitious Sixth Five-Year Plan

• The plan promised:

  • a 40-hour working week

  • a 40% wage rise by 1965

  • to catch up and overtake the USA by 1970

Light industry and chemicals expanded

• Investment was redirected into:

  • chemicals

  • plastics

  • fertilisers

  • artificial fibres

• Housing factories produced prefabricated sections for new flats

• Consumer durables were produced in much greater numbers

Industrial planning was decentralised in 1957

• In 1957, Khrushchev abolished around 60 central ministries in Moscow

• He, instead, created 105 regional economic councils

  • These were called sovnarkhozy

• The aims were to:

  • make planning more responsive to local needs

  • cut bureaucracy

• A Supreme Economic Council was set up in 1959

  • This restored some central coordination

The reforms exposed weaknesses in the command economy

• Centrally set targets encouraged quantity over quality

  • Targets were often set by weight

    • This meant factories favoured heavy goods, even if people did not need them

• The sovnarkhoz reform created confusion rather than efficiency

  • Factories were unsure whether to follow regional councils or central planners

  • The decentralised system was largely reversed and abandoned by 1965

• Industrial growth slowed despite the new priorities

  • Annual growth fell from over 10% in the previous decade to 7.5% by 1964

Why did Khrushchev reform agriculture?

Soviet agriculture was in crisis after Stalin

• Stalin's focus on heavy industry had left farming neglected and under-mechanised again

• The 1945 harvest produced less than 60% of pre-war output

• Collective farms remained inefficient

  • Yields were low

  • Incentives were weak

• In 1953, Khrushchev told the Central Committee that grain and livestock output had fallen below the last years of tsarist Russia

Reform was also a political necessity

• Khrushchev had defeated his rival Malenkov partly on agricultural policy

• Delivering more food became central to:

  • Khrushchev's authority

  • his promise of abundance

Incentives to raise output

• Khrushchev raised the price the state paid for farm produce

  • Grain procurement prices rose by about 25% between 1953 and 1956

• He reduced compulsory quotas

• He cut taxes on peasants' private plots

  • Private plots made up only 3% of cultivated land

  • However, they supplied over 30% of produce

Reorganisation of the collective farm system

• The number of collective farms was roughly halved between 1950 and 1960

  • Farms merged into larger units

• The Machine Tractor Stations were disbanded in 1958

  • Their machinery was sold directly to collectives

The Virgin Lands Scheme: aims, implementation & impact

The scheme aimed to expand grain production rapidly

• From 1954, Khrushchev ordered the ploughing of grazing land in Kazakhstan and western Siberia

  • These semi-arid steppes had never been put under the work of the plough before

• The state mobilised huge resources to settle and work the land

  • Komsomol volunteers were sent to build settlements and farm the new land

  • By 1956, 35.9 million hectares had been ploughed

    • This was equal to the entire cultivated area of Canada

The corn campaign extended Khrushchev's agricultural vision

• From 1958, Khrushchev promoted maize as the answer to feeding livestock

• After visiting the USA in 1959, he pushed maize cultivation across the country

• He also planned "agrocities"

  • These never moved beyond the planning stage

The scheme delivered early successes

• Grain harvests rose sharply at first

• Meat and milk output also climbed as investment increased

Average production, in millions of tons

Longer-term results were disappointing

• The land was farmed too intensively

  • Crop rotation was not used correctly

  • Soil erosion set in

  • Yields began to fall after 1958

• The wider campaigns ran into practical problems

  • Maize was often planted in unsuitable soil and climate

  • Fertiliser shortfalls caused heavy waste

• A poor harvest in 1963 forced the USSR to import grain from North America

  • Khrushchev's target of 180 million tons of cereals was never met

Did Khrushchev’s economic reforms help or hinder the Soviet economy?

• Khrushchev's reforms produced real gains, but they also caused serious disruption

  • Historians weight these two sides differently

The reforms modernised the economy and raised living standards

• The economy grew strongly in the second half of the 1950s

• The output of consumer durables and food rose sharply across the period

• The shift towards chemicals and consumer goods broke from Stalinist priorities

  • This was a genuine attempt to modernise and diversify the economy

• Scientific and technological success raised Soviet prestige

  • The space programme became a powerful symbol of Soviet progress

Key historian

• Figes points to:

  • rapid growth

  • expanding consumer ownership

  • rising international prestige

• This supports the view that Khrushchev's reforms delivered genuine, if uneven, progress

The reforms were erratic and ultimately fell short

• Agricultural gains were not sustained

  • Virgin Lands yields declined

  • The 1963 crisis forced grain imports

• Constant reorganisation destabilised the planning system

  • The sovnarkhoz experiment caused confusion

    • It was later reversed

• Cold War pressures diverted resources away from the reforms

  • Military spending rose from 9% of GDP in 1958 to 11% by 1964

  • Industrial growth slowed, with many targets missed

Key historian

• Deutscher sees the agricultural campaigns as reckless

  • They were imposed against expert advice

  • They exhausted the soil

  • They ignored local conditions in the search for quick results