Stalin's "The Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature"

About the Author: Mikhail Bogdanovich Voitsekhovsky - Doctor of Technical Sciences, General Director of OJSC "ROSGIPROLES".

State forest beltPeople are not able to foresee drought, and it from time to time, but always unexpectedly falls on them. In this connection, it would be interesting and important to understand the essential content of the so-called Stalin's plan for the transformation of nature. It was under this name that the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) Of October 20, 1948 entered into history. 60 years is a good reason to conduct such an analysis.

Child of drought

There is a lot of irony about the Stalinist plan for the transformation of nature. They wanted, say, using the forest belts to change the climate. But is it? What were the main goals of this plan?

First of all, it should be noted that the decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) of October 20, 1948 "On the plan for field sheltered forests, the introduction of grass-field crop rotations, the construction of ponds and reservoirs to ensure high sustainable yields in the steppe and forest-steppe areas of the European part of the USSR" dictated by the effects of the drought of 1946. Drought in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Black Earth, the Volga region, the south of Western Siberia and Kazakhstan led to the famine of 1947. From hunger, according to various estimates, then died from 0.5 to 1 million people who survived the most grandiose war in the history of mankind.

The climate of forest belts, of course, does not change. Nobody thought so. But to change for the better the microclimate of fields by selecting the optimal ratio of arable land, meadow, forest and water - you can. Drought can only be resisted by retaining moisture in the soil for as long as possible. Nothing better than snow retention and the creation of dams, for this is not invented.

But in open fields, despite all the efforts to snow retention, 50-80% of thawed water slides into beams and ravines. But on the sheltered forests - 80% of moisture absorbed into the soil. Hence the unity of the forest and field is obvious and the need for their unified management. According to the plan, the plowing was decided to be divided into rectangular arrays, limited by forest belts with a width of 6 to 200 m. At the same time they play the role of protection against erosion.

The plan also included the introduction of a grassland cropping system developed by outstanding Russian scientists V.Dokuchaev, P. A. Kostychev and V.V. Williams. According to this system, a part of arable land in crop rotations was sown with perennial legumes and meadow grasses. Grasses served as the forage base of animal husbandry and a natural means of restoring soil fertility. The forest belts contributed to this process. One mulching of fields of fallen leaves of broadleaf trees leads to the formation of a pronounced layer of humus rich in calcium and evenly impregnating the mineral part of the soils. Great importance was attached to the creation of fish-breeding ponds.

The global scale

The implementation of the plan for the transformation of nature was perceived by the population with enthusiasm. The upper parts of ravines and gullies were planted with trees, the mouths of gullies were fixed with fences and hedges, ponds with trees were built in natural hollows. To maintain the life of small rivers, dams were built with water mills and power stations.

To implement the plan, an institute was established - the Agrolesproject. (Nowadays this is a well-known ROSGIPROLES.) Four large watersheds of Dnipro, Don, Volga, Ural, and European South Russia basins were covered with forests. The first state forest belt projected by Agrolesproekt stretched from the Ural Mount Vishnevaya to the Caspian coast, a length of over a thousand kilometers. These were ecological objects of a global scale. Such projects are not known not only domestic, but also the world history of afforestation.

The plan envisaged not only the absolute food self-sufficiency of the Soviet Union, but also the expansion from the second half of the 1960s of the export of domestic grain and meat products. The created forest belts and reservoirs had to significantly diversify the flora and fauna of the USSR. Thus, the plan combined the tasks of protecting the environment and obtaining high sustainable yields.

The concept of the plan not only preceded modern constructions on sustainable ecological development of territories, but also surpassed them. "The world gasped at the grandeur and grandeur of this plan," noted writer Vladimir Chivilikhin. It was the world's largest environmental program, which was not realized.

Environmental frameworks

Calculated before 1965, the plan for the transformation of nature was actually rolled up to 1956-1959. Many forest belts were cut down. Modern history is full of references to dozens of hectares of cut down vineyards at the end of the USSR, and about hundreds of thousands of hectares destroyed in the 1960s, the forest belt does not recall.

Created in 1949-1955, 570 forest protection stations were also liquidated. With the de-Stalinization of Soviet society, there appeared a steady tendency to consider nature-transforming projects, conducted in Stalin's times, exclusively in a negative aspect. In the scientific literature, it still dominates. At the same time, the negative consequences of the very de-Stalinization of the country for the state of its natural environment escape.

Suffice for a long time and persistently mocked grass farming system, so much so that no one already remembers what its essence is. She was replaced by recommendations on increasing soil fertility, related to irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides. Now, when many of our chernozems have turned this way into saline "belozemy", it's time to think about the experience of field-protective afforestation.

Fragments of the state forest protective bands have survived to the present day. In dry years, yields in the fields that are limited to them are two to three times higher than in unprotected areas.

The forest belts reduce the air temperature and wind speed in summer, protect the fields from harmful dry winds. Twenty years after the dusty storms of 1959, under the forest belts of the Rostov Region and the Kuban, instead of the southern chernozems noted on the map, typical Middle Russian ones are found. Their thickness increased during this time from 40 to 70 cm, and at a depth of 30 cm there is a layer of buried leaves and grasses. The forest belts provide shelter to squirrels and hares, mushrooms and wild boars, decorate the landscape, increase its biodiversity.

Today the links of the plan being developed in the USSR are being realized in the USA, China, Africa and Western Europe. Only call it not a plan for the transformation of nature, but the creation of green ecological skeletons. They are given a significant role in connection with the foregone consequences of global warming. At us in the country process more likely return.

If in 1995 field shelterbelts on agricultural lands were planted on an area of ​​19.8 thousand hectares, in 2007 this figure did not exceed 0.3 thousand hectares. At one time the forest belts along with the rural forests were almost orphaned. But this is about 5% of Russia's forests. Until 2006, they were part of the structure of the Ministry of Agriculture, and then were statistically liquidated. Having turned out to be a draw, the forest belts became extensively cut down for cottage development or for the purpose of obtaining wood.

So, in the year of the 60th anniversary of the plan for the transformation of nature, celebrations dedicated to this first large-scale environmental program would be appropriate. Perhaps, with them we would begin to renounce the demonization of the history of our Fatherland in its economic and environmental manifestations.

From this website http://www.ng.ru/science/2008-11-26/14_forests.html