Border Crossing Blog

To Far Land We Go, My Friends/Едем мы друзя в далне край

A piece in the Context section of the Moscow Times prompted me to go see the exhibit named after a popular folk song (which is the title of this post) of the time held at the Russian State Archives (formerly the Communist State Archive). This exhibit details the history of the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) settlers who went out to work the land in these sparsely populated but agriculturally exploitable regions in what was then Kazakhstan SSR and other nearby regions. The Moscow Times noted that while traditionally this settlement had been celebrated in the Soviet curriculum, many of the documents now put another face on the experiment.

The exhibit was well laid out with photographs, paintings and hundreds of official pieces of communication from the era. Though there were dark spots, notably some people were forced to go, in this immigration in which 350,000 people participated in the first year, what struck me was the general ideological exuberance with which the young Komsomols set out on their mission. In fact, in the first years the mission was a large success in many ways because of the tremendous efforts that these young people exerted despite the conditions they lived under. There are photographs of the primitive canvas tents under whose roof many of these settlers at first lived—even through the brutal winter.

What was newly released to the public and was fascinating to read, were all the official documents that illuminated the disaster that was Soviet central planning. Many of the newly released documents show how the workers in Kazakhstan were continually promised expertise and tools that they were never given. Much correspondence dealt with the fact that a certain number of tractor operators had been promised in the wave of new settlers, and, as usual, the real number of tractor drivers was a small percentage of those promised. Supply requests were also not met, and you could almost see through the official Communist party language, the frustration felt by the people on the ground in Kazakhstan.

On the other hand, the exhibit also shows the public face of the campaign. On display are a number of pictures of Communist Party bosses enveloped in the fields of wheat as well as Soviet realist watercolors of young men and women piling hay into truck. These were the images that were shown to the masses back home and which represented the regimes success.

The shortcuts that were taken at the outset in order to boost production also led to serious long-term problems. In many of the later documents and photographs the devastation of erosion were shown. Because of the lack of proper agricultural techniques thousands of tons of topsoil blew away in the steppe winds. In addition, the harsh climate also often got the best of the settlers. One official communication explains how, because of frost and snow, only 8 percent of the crop was harvested. Pictures of tractors plowing through fields with over a foot of snow on them elucidate this quite well.

For me, this campaign is interesting to compare on several fronts. I have been meaning to read David Laitin's book about the 25 million Russians who live in the near abroad and make up one of the world’s largest diasporas. I wonder how Kazakh’s current perception of the Russian population in Kazakhstan is influenced by the original reason why much of this population came to Kazakhstan. I also wonder how Russians thing of the land they moved to in order to great the Soviet bread basket. Another interesting point of comparison would to compare the Soviet back to the land movement with other such movements such as the kibbutz movement in Israel as well as the back to land movement in the west of the United States. Any comments of these issues would be most appreciated. Posted by Aaron at July 26, 2004 5:14 PM