cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/149520

One of the most large-scale projects of the world history - the so-called Great Plan of Nature Transformation, called “Stalin’s Plan”, because its development and approval at the legislative level (October 20, 1948) were initiated and personally controlled by I.V. Stalin [Bushinsky, p.9]. The plan was intended to solve several problems at once: the tasks of the immediate future were the rapid restoration of the national economy after the devastation caused by German Nazism; the next set of tasks covered the general improvement of the culture of land use in order to ensure the food security of the population in the long run; and finally the third set of tasks included the further evolution of large socio – technical systems through the acquisition of innovative technologies of environmental management, and therefore-a new civilizational leap of Soviet society.

SECTION 1: Background behind the creation of the Great plan for the transformation of nature

Direct material damage from the war and temporary occupation of part of the territory of the USSR by the enemy is estimated at 678 billion rubles (in pre-war prices), which is close to the total value of all Soviet investments for the first four five-year plans [Chuntulov, p.261].

Hitlerites and their accomplices completely or partially destroyed 1710 cities and over 70 thousand villages and villages, liquidated 31,850 enterprises, plundered 98 thousand collective farms, 1876 state farms, 2890 MTS, destroyed 65 thousand km of railways from 4100 railway stations, blew up 13 thousand bridges, caused other destruction. [Criminal goal…, sec. 310-311]

The plan for the post-war reconstruction of the national economy of the USSR provided for the allocation of 338.7 billion rubles to the economy in order to restore 3200 enterprises in the former occupied territories and build another 2700 new industrial facilities in other regions of the country [Chuntulov, p.262]. This breakthrough was to a large extent facilitated by monetary reform, the idea of ​​which was born back in 1943–1944. [Zverev, p.231–232], however, the implementation immediately after the war turned out to be impossible, largely due to the consequences of the monstrous drought of 1946 [Spitsyn, p.17].

The drought zone of 1946-1947 occupied 5 million square kilometers (over 20% of the territory of the USSR) within the limits of the European part of the country at latitudes from 55° in the north to 35° in the south, which included Ukraine, Moldova, the Lower Volga region, the North Caucasus and the Central Black Earth region of the RSFSR [Koldanov, p.32; Spitsyn, p.17].

Because of the drought, the delivery of grain to the state only by collective farms of the Lower Volga region, for example, fell in comparison with 1945 by 21.7% in the Astrakhan region, 2 times in Saratov, 2.1 times in Stalingrad [Kuznetsova, p. 235]. In the first post-war years, the main production of legumes and many industrial crops was concentrated within the drought zone, as well as the largest industrial settlements with a high population, so the agrarian crisis was not only of local importance, but threatened to disrupt the plan for the restoration of the national economy and provoke a decline in the whole. The agricultural problem had to be solved against the background of the rapidly deteriorating international situation: as part of the policy of “containment of the USSR”, according to the Truman Doctrine (March 12, 1947) - an American echo of the Fulton speech of W. Churchill (March 5, 1946) - the US government in March 1948 introduced export licenses that prohibited the export of most American goods to the Soviet Union [Katasonov, p. 32].

Under these conditions, Stalin returned to the project of integrated agroforestry in the steppe zone, the idea of which was first proposed in 1924 [korchemkina, p. 31]. For these purposes, it was planned to allocate 15 million rubles, but then the country, which was preparing for forced industrialization and had not yet completed collective farm construction, did not have the material resources or the human resources to implement such a large-scale task.

Forest plantations in the steppe and forest-steppe zones were carried out in Russia-the USSR long before 1948. but until the 19th century, it was mainly aimed at restoring the ship’s and commercial forests. The practice of reforestation was established by Peter the Great in the 1720s, but until the 19th century it was mainly aimed at restoring the ship’s and commercial forests. Exceptions to this rule are rare (e.g., protective forest plantations of the Don Cossacks on the Khopor River in the 18th century). [Mikhin]). The scientific substantiation of steppe afforestation for the purposes of protective, erosion control and reclamation purposes was an outstanding discovery of the Russian scientists of the XIX century - P.A. Kostychev, A.A. Izmailsky, V.B. Dokuchaev, N.G. Vysotsky, etc., who developed the system of dry agriculture [Logginov, p.5]. At the same time steppe forestries were created, the first of which was the Veliko-Anadolskoye (1843) in Yekaterinburg province [Yerusalimskiy, p.123].

A turning point in the history of steppe agroforestry is considered to be the period of Activity of V. V. Dokuchaev’s Special expedition of the Voronezh province (1892-1898) in response to the drought of 1891, which covered 26 provinces and was accompanied by a terrible famine. During the expedition on the territory of the so-called Stone Steppe the system of protective forest plantations was created for the first time, an integral part of which were ponds [erusalimsky, p. 124]. As a result of the research, Dokuchayev proposed, among other things, a program of the following measures to regulate water management in the open steppes: (a) creation of pond systems in watershed steppe areas, the banks of which should be planted with trees; (b) planting of hedge rows; © continuous planting of forests in all areas inconvenient for arable land, “especially if they are open to strong winds” [Dokuchaev, p.104]. Similar conclusions were reached independently by climatologist A.I. Voyeikov, geologist V.A. Obruchev, chemist and economist D.I. Mendeleev [Kovda, p.16]. The latter in his “Explanatory Tariff” (1892) emphasized that “not only measures protecting forests from further reducing their proportion in all provinces where forests are less than 20% in area, but also stimulating intensified afforestation, are of particular state and direct agricultural importance. where the forest area is less than 10% of the entire surface ”[Mendeleev, p.306].

Like D.I. Mendeleev, many Russian scientists believed that growing forests in the steppe was a matter of national importance and, moreover, a manifestation of patriotism. In 1884, the forester M.K. Turskiy, having visited the Great Anadolu, said with fervent love: “You have to be there, on the spot, you have to see the Great Anadolu forest with your own eyes to understand all the greatness of the steppe afforestation, which is our pride. No words can describe the satisfying feeling that this forest oasis causes among the vast steppe on the visitor. It is indeed our pride, because in Western Europe you will not find anything like this” [quoted from: Koldanov,]

In Soviet times, the beginning of protective afforestation occurred in 1918, when the “Basic Law on Forests” was adopted (May 27), where the planting of forest crops was included in the number of planned reforestation measures. More detailed instructions are given by the Decree of the Council of Labor and Defense on combating drought (April 1921). The second period of steppe afforestation in the USSR is associated with the results of the All-Union Conference on Combating Drought (1931), where it was decided to plant 3 million hectares of forest mainly in the Volga region [Koldanov, p.23]. In total from 1931 to 1941. 844.5 thousand hectares of forest lands were laid, of which 465.2 thousand hectares fell on the share of field-protecting forest strips [Pisarenko, p.8]. The Great Patriotic War interrupted the development of steppe afforestation in the country. However, the drought of 1946 showed that in the experimental plots protected by forest belts, the grain yield is 3-4 times higher than on neighboring lands and reaches 6-17 centners per ha [Koldanov, p. 28; Prasolov, p.11]. The fight against drought by afforestation is one of the most important work vectors of the newly formed (in April 1947) USSR Ministry of Forestry [Koldanov, p.32]. In 1948, the third period began in the development of steppe afforestation in the Soviet Union, when, based on the teachings of Dokuchaev-Kostychev, a comprehensive 15-year project for agroforestry in the arid zone was created - the Great Stalinist Plan for the Transformation of Nature.

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