Rapid Turnover on the Farm

In Moscow eyebrows arched last week when the name Ivan Volovchenko appeared conspicuously in a major Pravda article discussing Soviet farm production This was sudden prominence indeed far the man who had been merely head of a big state farm southeast of Moscow for the past dozen years. Through the Moscow grapevines swept rumors that a big shake-up was coming in the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture.

The rumors were right. Forty-eight hours after Volovchenko, 46, made his Pravda debut, he was named Russia's farm boss, succeeding the hapless Konstantin Pysin, who had held the job for less than a year. During his brief tenure, Pysin tried his best to coax more production from the collectivized peasantry. He even squeezed in a month-long tour of U.S. farm lands last September, hoping to pick up a few pointers. Alas, nothing seemed to help. The Soviet grain harvest last year was 16 million tons less than the quota under the seven-year plan, and Nikita Khrushchev's promise to give the Soviet people more bread again was thwarted. The fall guy for 1962 naturally was Pysin; this year it could very well be Volovchenko. As the new Agriculture Minister must be painfully aware, he is the fourth man to occupy the perilous post in three years.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.