Catching Up and Overtaking America: 1959
Why Khrushchev’s “Ryazan Miracle” Ended in Disaster At the end of 1959, the First Secretary of the Ryazan Regional Committee of the CPSU, Alexei Larionov, reported that the plan for the delivery of meat to the state was exceeded by three times. But, as it turned out, the “outstanding” economic victory turned into a resounding failure. Overtake America! In May 1957, the head of the Soviet state, Nikita Khrushchev, at a meeting of agricultural workers of the regions and autonomous republics of the USSR, expressed confidence that our country was able to “catch up and overtake America” in terms of economic indicators, as well as create conditions for the complete victory of communism in 1980. Nikita Sergeyevich was not the first to challenge the West. In his time, Lenin said that in terms of its political system, Russia has caught up with the advanced countries, but now it is important to catch up and surpass them economically. In 1933, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Stalin confirmed the relevance of these theses. At the time of Iosif Vissarionovich’s death, the Soviet Union was in a difficult situation. The country continued to rebuild cities destroyed by the war, build factories, lay highways, and replenish the army with modern equipment. All this required colossal human and material costs. The USSR could not squeeze the maximum resources out of all spheres of the economy: the flip side of the rapid development of heavy industry was a drop in agricultural growth rates. Thus, according to statistics, if in 1940 the USSR harvested 2 billion 225 million poods of grain, then in 1953 this figure barely reached 1 billion 850 million. The population wrote indignant letters to the editorial offices of the newspapers. For example, Fedoshkina, a resident of Novocherkassk, complained about empty shelves, “no cereals, no sugar, no vegetables,” and food, according to her, could only be purchased at exorbitant prices from speculators. Khrushchev, who came to power in 1953, tried to somehow influence the situation in the agricultural industry. He understood that administrative-command methods alone were not enough, the peasant himself must be interested in the productivity of his labor. The new general secretary reduced the size of the tax on the household plots of collective farmers: they were offered to develop subsidiary plots in their free time, and sell surplus products to the state at high prices. But Khrushchev didn’t just want to fill the shelves of Soviet stores with food, he wanted to compete with the developed capitalist countries. The General Secretary, in particular, believed that if the USSR produced more meat and milk than the United States, then the Soviet people would live better. However, Khrushchev’s seemingly laudable ambition to rival the West was met with hostility by his associates. Malenkov and Kaganovich said that it was simply unrealistic to increase meat production by 3.5 times (as much as it was needed to catch up with the United States) in a short time. According to economists, it was not until 1975 that parity with the United States in meat could be achieved. Khrushchev replied: “There are skeptics among economists who do not believe in the possibility of our agriculture to triple meat production. But how did they approach this case? As usual, we took a pencil and calculated what the increase in livestock could be and for how many years. Comrades, it must be understood what forces the Soviet people have now accumulated. This is a political phenomenon, the result of many years of work by our party.” But Nikita Sergeevich’s adventurous plan still found support from the heads of some regions. First Secretary of the Ryazan Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Alexei Nikolaevich Larionov publicly announced that his region will be able to triple state meat procurement in just one year. Larionov was a party member who was accustomed to being held accountable for his words. During the war, as chairman of the Yaroslavl City Defense Committee, he was able to organize an uninterrupted supply of ammunition and food to the front. This task was fulfilled by the region largely due to the expansion of subsidiary farms of enterprises and the organization of private gardens. But now the situation was different. Larionov’s initiative, despite its adventurous nature, was approved at a regional party conference, and in early 1959, at Khrushchev’s request, it was reported by the newspaper Pravda. Now the zealous official had no way back. The Ryazan region had not yet had time to start fulfilling the promises of its head when it was awarded the Order of Lenin. The meat farms of the Ryazan region responded to this with shock work. To begin with, by order of the regional committee, they slaughtered the entire offspring of cattle, as well as most of the dairy herd and bulls. However, these measures were not enough. Larionov ordered to organize the purchase of livestock in neighboring regions (they even traveled to Kazakhstan), spending public funds allocated for the purchase of machinery and equipment, the construction of schools, roads and other needs. But even this did not give the necessary figures. Many farms were ordered to slaughter chickens, and rural schools were ordered to equip rabbit houses. Sometimes it came to outright theft of cattle. By hook or by crook, the Ryazan region was still able to fulfill the declared plan, which it reported on December 6, 1959. Formally, it sold 150,000 tons of meat to the state, increasing its production by 3.8 times compared to the previous year. In 1960, Larionov, intoxicated with victory, promised to exceed this norm by procuring 180,000 tons of meat! Khrushchev reacted immediately – before the end of the year, Alexei Larionov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. The reality turned out to be not so rosy. In reality, the record figures existed only on paper: in fact, the Ryazan Region was unable to fulfill even a sixth of its obligations. But Moscow turned a blind eye to this, because the country needed an infectious example of the selfless work of collective farmers. To give this event the appropriate sound, the artist Ilya Glazunov was sent to Ryazan to create a portrait gallery of the leaders of agricultural production. Sobering up came a year later, when the Ryazan region was able to scrape together only 30 thousand tons of meat in its bins, which was a consequence of the mass slaughter of 1959. All meat resources of the region were exhausted – meat in the Ryazan region actually disappeared from sale. It was no longer possible to hide the scale of the disaster. A commission was urgently sent to the region, which uncovered the scam. Larionov had no choice but to shoot himself. Over time, these events went down in history as the “Ryazan miracle”. But Larionov’s case continued to live. In the mid-1970s, the Uzbek SSR, led by Sharaf Rashidov, reported to Moscow on the annual delivery of 3 million tons of cotton, although in fact there was not even half of this amount. A commission from Moscow went to Tashkent and found colossal additions to the volume of cotton harvested. Rashidov died of a heart attack as a result. The party ordered the Larionov phenomenon haunts researchers. They often wonder if he was such a short-sighted leader that he deliberately embarked on an adventure that did not bode well for him. No, Alexei Nikolayevich understood everything perfectly, as did his comrades-in-arms. It is said that the wife of one of the members of the Ryazan regional committee asked her husband: “Well, you put the cattle under the knife, and then where will you get the meat from? Cut off your own thighs?” Her husband just shrugged his shoulders and looked up. It is necessary to understand Larionov’s character: the official spent his entire mature life on party work and was accustomed to unquestioningly carry out the instructions of his superiors. Therefore, he understood Khrushchev’s slogan “Let’s catch up and overtake America in meat procurement” as a guide to action, without calculating the possibility of its implementation. Of course, Larionov was optimistic about the support promised by Khrushchev, including with fodder for livestock. But no help was received in the Ryazan region. I had to get out on my own. There is one more nuance. Larionov was one of the few acting heads of the regions who began his political career under Iosif Vissarionovich. For him, responding to Khrushchev’s call meant a great chance to curry favor with the new leadership of the country during the period of exposure of Stalin’s cult of personality. Larionov’s excesses in fulfilling his obligations did not become an extraordinary phenomenon. As Denis Konyshev, Candidate of Historical Sciences, notes, at the same time, the Lukoyanovsky District Committee of the Gorky Region, in order to increase the volume of meat procurement, introduced a food tax on everyone who had at least some farm, some of them withheld part of their salary. The population was sternly warned: “Get meat, wherever and however you want, but so that the norm is met.” Otherwise, people were threatened with problems at work. However, it was in the Ryazan region that the scale of the obligations assumed most of all contrasted with the real state of affairs. The death of Alexei Larionov caused a lot of misinterpretations. At that time, the newspapers were silent about what had happened, they wrote that the first secretary of the Ryazan regional committee died of a heart attack. There are discrepancies in the versions regarding the place where Larionov shot himself. Someone believes that it was a study, someone says that he took his own life at home. There is a version of Larionov’s death from an excessive dose of sleeping pills, there were talks about an accident. Alexei Nikolayevich’s colleagues were sure that their boss had simply been driven to suicide, leaving no other way out. Curiously, at the time of Khrushchev’s dismissal from the post of general secretary, the “Ryazan miracle” was among the accusations. Along with the fall of Khrushchev, the slogan “Let’s overtake America!” also disappeared into oblivion. Nikita Sergeyevich did not manage to improve agriculture, his mistakes, which led to a shortage of meat and dairy products and unreasonably inflated prices, Brezhnev had to unravel for a long time.