How did the Virgin Lands campaign influence Soviet identity among the population ofKazakhstan?One of the important changes in the history of the USSR has been the national Virgin Lands initiative. The Virgin Lands Campaign was planned as both administrative and agricultural strategy for unharvested land under the leadership of Nikolay Khrushev. The key aims of this campaign wereto organize the land into separate administrative units and to increase the quantity of harvest. First ofall, intentions of Khrushev can be clearly observed in the Micheala Pohl’s The planet of One Hundred Languages (2007). According to this source: “In 1960 Khrushchev decided to carry out an administrative reorganization to get this problem under control, based on the same thinking that led him to institute sovnarkhozy in 1957. The new unit was the so- called Virgin Lands Region or Tselinnyi krai,”(Pohl, p. 253) . This means that Khurshev was interested in arranging virgin lands into administrative units that would develop the management of the region. By transforming the landinto arable pasture, Khrushchev planned to dramatically increase grain production - and deal with the food deficit in the USSR. It was held between 1953-1965. Also, this Virgin Land Campaign caused important demographic dimension and deportation of different nationalities.The campaign relied on the labor of Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Cri mean Tatars, Volga Germans, and others exiled from their homelands, in addition t o the indigenous Kazakhs and colonists recruited from theSlavic population. Therefore, there was a propaganda for Virgin Lands Campaign, while for resettlement there was not such thing and they just provided them with
View Full Document