The Virgin Lands since Khrushchev

The passing of primacy in party and state from Khrushchev to Brezhnev and Kosygin in October 1964 was bound to have repercussions on the rural sector of the economy. The ebullient V. V. Matskevich, banished to northern Kazakhstan in I960, was recalled to Moscow to resume his duties as USSR Minister of Agriculture. Under his forceful guidance the Ministry was to regain much of the influence it had lost during Matskevich’s spell in Kazakhstan. The First Secretary of the GG of the CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev, had had first-hand experience of the virgin lands in Kazakhstan and was no stranger to the controversies which had raged on the agrarian front during the Khrushchev years. Brezhnev and Matskevich were, at long last, able to put the new land project in perspective and at liberty to adopt a policy influenced more by economic and agricultural criteria than by political.