Reinventing the Steppe: The Agromeliorative Complex in the Russian Periphery

Abstract

For centuries, the steppe had served as a frontier and as a borderland to the Russian empire. In the 1930s, however, the semi-arid fields to the northeast of Stavropol became the object of intensified agricultural reclamation. Following the Central Asian example of dryland irrigation, the Soviet leadership dreamed of transforming the steppe biome into an oasis of high-modernist progress. Promises of plentiful yields fueled the planning of new hydro-infrastructures devised to counter the destructive forces of nature and to make the steppe bloom. Poverty, hunger, and natural disasters were to be threats of the past. As large swaths of land in the North Caucasus were re-imagined on the drawing boards of Soviet hydro-engineers, an agromeliorative complex evolved that favored large-scale solutions over locally adapted means. From 1965, this complex was represented by the Ministry of Melioration and Water Management (Minvodkhoz). It was supported by leading members of the nomenklatura like Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev. However, their one-sided reclamation policies ignored ample warnings on soil erosion and agricultural degradation that were caused by excessive irrigation. As a result, yields declined whereas state investment continually increased. This paper shows how the vision to convert semi-arid lands into blossoming oases of progress created a path dependency with largely devastating consequences, as the hydro-engineers did not acknowledge the fragile ecosystem of the steppe. This reveals a deep and systemic sustainability crisis within Soviet agriculture that contributed to the economically fueled collapse of 1991.