The Importance of Sufficiency

Once upon a time, Nikita Khrushchev was wont to boast that the Soviet economy would surpass that of the U.S. by 1970. His successors have been far more realistic. A recent Kremlin report suggests that instead of being on the verge of world championship, the Soviet Union's populace barely managed to surpass Bulgaria in 1963 in per-capita purchasing power. In fact, by Moscow's own admission, four Comecon countries --East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland--enjoyed higher standards of living than Russia itself three years ago.

In other categories, the Soviet Union fared slightly better; Russia ranked third after East Germany and Czechoslovakia in per-capita industrial output. But in agricultural standings, Russia ended up in fifth place behind Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and East Germany.

The Soviet admission of its economic woes comes at a time when Party Boss Leonid I. Brezhnev and Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin are launching a major attempt to correct the Soviet Union's underlying economic ill: its troubled agricultural system. Though a grain exporter under the Czars, Russia under the commissars is unable even to feed itself; it imported almost as much grain (25 million tons) during the past three years as India and China combined.

As Brezhnev explained to a party meeting in Moscow last week, the Soviet Union will spend roughly $45 billion during the next five years to 1) mechanize the farms, 2) increase chemical-fertilizer output, 3) irrigate 6,500,000 acres of arid soil, and 4) rehabilitate and drain an estimated 11 million acres of potentially tillable land. Unlike Khrushchev, who concentrated on opening up Asian virgin lands, Brezhnev and Kosygin plan to put the main emphasis on improving already cultivated areas west of the Urals. Brezhnev also put his prestige behind the most unusual departure in Soviet agriculture since the 1930s: a guaranteed wage for the kolkhozniks (collective farm laborers) that will make their income nearly equivalent to the earnings of factory workers. The move reflected the government's desire to make farm jobs attractive enough to lure and hold skilled labor, which tends to flock to cities.

The Soviets intend to use much of the irrigated acreage for wheat. No other large-scale wheat producer uses irrigation, for the simple reason that the method is so costly that other nations prefer to grow more profitable crops and buy the wheat abroad. But the Soviet Union is apparently so set on self-sufficiency that it is willing to pay almost any price for home-grown grain.

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