The Virgin Lands program in Soviet Central Asia became a crusade in which a million young people dedicated years of their lives to increasing the production of food. How it worked out in practice is another matter. We have the memoir of F.T. Morgun, the supervisor of one of the Soviet state farms in Kazakhstan. Some of the details of the operation of a state farm in the virgin lands program are given below. There is one incident that shows the intrinsic problems of having productive organizations under the control of a hierarchical bureaucracy.

When the wheat crop in the virgin lands region of Kazakhstan was to be harvested in 1957 a directive went out to the state farms that all the wheat was to be cut first before the threshing would start. Morgun, being on farm realized that there was a good chance that any cut wheat would get soaked by the sporatic rains that were occurring from time to time. Therefore Morgun ordered his people to cut a parcel of wheat and then threshway it and store the wheat before going on to the next parcel. The central authorities were furious with Morgun for disobeying their order. One authority wanted Morgun expelled from the Party. He wasn't expelled but he was officially reprimanded. Another state farm cut 7500 acres of wheat. This was widely publicized and hailed as a great achievement. by the central authorities. They did not however reveal that the 7500 acres of wheat did not get threshed because a rain storm soaked and ruined it.

(To be continued.)