The implementation of N. S. Khrushchev's "virgin lands campaign" in the Krasnoyarsk Territory

The purpose of the study is to identify the main features of the virgin land campaign in the Krasnoyarsk Territory during the years of N. S. Khrushchev's leadership. The article highlights the main measures for the organization, conduct and elimination of problems during the virgin campaign. The paper also provides quantitative and qualitative indicators of agricultural development, on the basis of which the impact of the virgin land campaign on the increase in grain production in the Krasnoyarsk Territory is considered. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the weak knowledge of the topic of agricultural transformations by N. S. Khrushchev on the territory of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, as well as relying on archival documents that were first introduced into scientific circulation. As a result of the study, it was found that the virgin land campaign contributed to a significant increase in grain production in the region, rapid economic growth in the main areas of its implementation, and improved working and living conditions of the Soviet peasantry. At the same time, the slowdown in the virgin land campaign in the second half of the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s was due to the persistence of a number of agricultural production problems. The unsuccessful completion of the virgin land campaign demonstrated to the Khrushchev leadership the exhaustion of the potential of an extensive course of agrarian development, and also determined the turn of agrarian policy towards the intensification of agriculture.