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.
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].
Cont. In comments
According to the plan, the forestry plan should consist of a number of small forest belts, “ribbons” (usually 2–4) 60 m wide each with a distance of 300 m between them. In addition, the decree obliged the USSR Ministry of Forestry to take measures to preserve valuable forest areas in the steppe and forest-steppe regions of the European part of the USSR (Shipov Forest, Khrenovsky Bor, Borisoglebsky Forest, Tula Forests, Shatilovsky Forest, Black Forest, Veliko-Anadolsky Forest, Buzuluksky Bor, Leninsky and Manychsky Forestries of the Rostov Region, watershed e woodlands Kuibyshevskaya and Ulyanovsk areas Seigniorial hut, Feodosiyske forestry and forest Beshtaugorsky et al.) [Spitcin, p.20]. “The implementation of all these activities will be a wonderful example of a scientific alteration of the nature of the steppes, which until now has not been known to mankind,” stated one of the most active participants in the acad plan. L.I. Prasolov [Prasolov, p.11].
Implementation of the plan was entrusted to the Central, regional and local institutions for forest protection under the leadership of the Main Department of forest protection under the Council of Ministers of the USSR [Koldanov, p. 39]. By 1951, the formation of a network of steppe afforestation institutions was completed, which included territorial forest plantation departments, forestry departments, forest protection stations, steppe forestries and forestries, state forest nurseries, expeditions of the design and survey association “Agrolesoproekt".
As of 1 January 1953, the system of these organizations employed 6,000 professionals with higher and secondary vocational education.
During the first three years of the plan implementation (from 1949 to 1951) 119 thousand tons of seeds were harvested for the purpose of afforestation, 105 thousand tons of them were acorns, for the transportation of which up to 3000 cars were engaged in every autumn from the places of harvesting to the plantations [Ibid., p.51]. During the same period of time, about 14 billion seedlings were raised in the forest nurseries and other forest management organizations of the USSR, 3890 million of them in 1949 4719 million units in 1950, and in 1951. - 5130 million units. [ibid., p. 52]. Over 4 years, 64.6 thousand hectares of forest crops were planted on the GZLP routes [ibid., P.69].
Forestry and agronomic measures stipulated by the decree of 1948 required in-depth agrobiological and related studies, which significantly enriched science with knowledge about the design of sustainable agroforestry. When developing and at the initial stage of the implementation of the plan, scientific work was carried out by the All-Union Research Institute of Forestry, the All-Union Research Institute of Agroforestry, the Ukrainian Institute of Agroforestry, the Uzbek Institute of Forestry and the Institute of Agriculture named after V.V. Dokuchaev [ibid., P. 47].The network of scientific institutions included about 20 experimental stations and up to 40 reference points [ibid.]n addition, specialists from the Institute of Forestry, the Komarov Botanical Institute and the Integrated Expedition on Field Protection Forestry developed programs the following programs:
1: survey geobotanical studies (routing); (b) study of vegetation as a forage base; (c) stationary and semi-stationary studies of forests, the study of the underground part of plant communities (forest and herbaceous), the seed bank and its restoration, etc. Instructions were prepared for each group of programs to carry out the relevant work Zoning of the forest protection afforestation was carried out by such scientists as A.E. Dyachenko (1948), V.A. Bodrov (1940, 1951) and others [Logginov, p.15]. Additional geological (including geomorphological and hydrogeological) and geographical studies were carried out in 1949 by I.P. Gerasimov, N.E. Ivanov, N.I. Nikolaev, N.N. Slavyanov [Koldanov, p.48].
Since artificially created field-protective forest plantations are expected to bring about deep changes in the composition of the local entomofauna, Soviet zoologists at the early stages of the plan actively began to study the community of insect pests that damage trees and shrubs of the plantations. A large amount of research in this area was carried out by E.N. Pavlovsky, G.Ya. Bei-Bienko, L.V. Arnoldy, M.S. Gilyarov, A.N. Kirichenko, M.N. Nikolskaya, A.A. Richter, G.H. Shaposhnikov, etc. [Bei-Bienko, p.4]. At the same time, ornithologists (Spangenberg E.P., Shaposhnikov L.V., etc.) considered the possibility of regulating the number of pests by natural, ecological methods, i.e. through the introduction of useful bird species into the field protection zones, including by attracting birds. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to solve a number of complex biotechnical problems, because without human intervention, the settlement of artificial plantings by birds occurs quite late (up to 6 years of age, the diversity of ornithofauna varies between 7 and 15 species), and the migratory species are not included in the reserve for settlement [Spangenberg, pp. 3-4, 19; Shaposhnikov].
In those years and subsequent years of research, it was established that the field protection belts made it possible to regulate a wide range of abiotic environmental factors, primarily microclimatic ones, such as surface air temperature, relative and absolute humidity, snow cover distribution (the length of the snow plume from the forest belts), and snow cover height. Also, forest belts actively influence hydrothermal properties of the soil (temperature in the surface layer, moisture content, structure of soil aggregates, content of toxic salts, etc.) [Gostyshchev, p.39; Mikhin]. In addition, the content of humus and biofilm elements in the zone of influence of FTZs increases, microbiological processes are activated [Gostyshchev, p.39]. All this leads to an increase in the average yield of grain crops under the protection of plantations by 18-23%, industrial crops - by 20-26%, fodder crops - by 29-41% [Ibid.]
Naturally, the results at different sites varied greatly, since the efficiency and activity of the bands' influence on the interstrip fields depend on the age of plantations (usually not younger than 3-5 years), on the species composition of the latter, the method of planting, the structure (blown, openworked, openworked, dense), and, in addition, on the local physical and geographical conditions, types and properties of soils. It is important to note that the creation of forest belts will not bring the expected results, if it is not accompanied by other forest engineering works (strip packing, maintenance) and agronomic works (stubble preservation, competent placement of crops, cracking, etc.) [Paramonov, p.34]. Unfortunately, these measures were not observed everywhere, which is why in some places there was a death of the LNP. Later, the consequences of negligence and banal laziness of responsible persons began to be presented by the opponents of the Stalinist plan as evidence of its "thoughtlessness" and even "malignancy".
Nevertheless, the task of economic stabilization was generally solved, and the Soviet Union reached such a level of management of large agrobiotechnical systems that guaranteed the sustainable development of artificially designed agroforestry landscapes. GOELRO's plan (also 15 years old) gave the country a unified state energy system for industrial growth based on new technologies; the process of electrification was accompanied by the unification of enterprises into large regional complexes. The plan of nature transformation opened a new page in the economic zoning of the USSR, as it was aimed at building a unified agricultural system with controlled landscapes. In the future, it would be possible to synthesize systems with combined resource management and technology (primarily integrated land, water, forest and subsoil use).
But even before such a synthesis was achieved, the problem of food security of the population was removed, which was obvious to Western experts. Thus, in 1948, the American newspaper "The Washington Post", touching upon the fact of exhaustion of fertile soils in the U.S. after the ecological catastrophe of the “Dust Bowl", noted that "if the Cold War turns into a long-term conflict, the achievements in respect of land reclamation can solve the question of who will be the winner in this war" [quoted from: Spitsyn, p.19; Brian, p.91-92]. At the same time, the United States definitely lost to the Soviet Union in the matter of agroforestry, because the Great Plains afforestation program progressed only at a rate of 3.3 thousand hectares per year and, being implemented by 12-14%, was curtailed [Bovin, p.93].
Winding down the Great plan
In March 1953, i.e. immediately after the assassination of I. V. Stalin, the Ministry of forestry was liquidated and the pace of implementation of the nature transformation plan began to decline sharply [Pisarenko, p. 9; Yarygin, p. 201]. Khrushchev, who seized power, led the onslaught on all large-scale projects designed to increase the population (population) of territories, the manageability of territorial and industrial complexes, the complexity of the Soviet technosphere. At the end of March 1953 the secret decree of the USSR Council of Ministers cancelled the construction of the Main Turkmen canal, a Gravity canal Volga–Ural, the second branch of the Volga-Baltic waterway, waterworks don, Ust-Donetsk port is the polar TRANS-Siberian railway, tunnel under the Tatar Strait and a number of other industrial and infrastructure projects [Spitsyn, p. 140]. The curtailment of the Great plan for the transformation of nature is included in the list of Khrushchev's "reforms" to dismantle Soviet civilization.
All work on the state stripes of Saratov - Astrakhan, Stalingrad - Cherkessk, Chapaevsk-Vladimirovka and Mount Vishnevaya - Caspian (total forested area of 46.41 thousand hectares) was mothballed; these forests were abandoned for gradual extinction [Koldanov, p.71]. By the fall of 1953, compared with 1952, the proportion of surviving PLNs fell from 95 to 63% [ibid.]. By 1960, the total area of state forest belts was reduced by 2000 ha [Yarygin, p.201]. Along the way, Khrushchev eliminated 570 forest protection stations [Spitsyn, p.21]. In general, for the period 1954-1966. the planting volume of protective forest stands fell to 70 thousand ha / year, and 53% of 950 thousand ha planted during these years remained [Pisarenko, p.9]. These harmful actions led to an ecological catastrophe on the virgin lands in 1962–1963, which undermined the country's food security, forcing the authorities to sell gold for grain purchases for the first time in the post-war years (600 tons of gold were sold and 13 million tons of grain were purchased) [Spitsyn , p.21]. Thus, the destruction of agriculture by Khrushchev simultaneously put an end to Stalin's policy of accumulation of gold reserves of the state.
Only in March 1967. the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "on urgent measures to protect the soil from wind and water erosion" was adopted, which to a certain extent revived the practice of protective afforestation [Yarygin, p. 201]
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