The Last Laugh

Back in 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev's risky gamble on the Virgin Lands seemed to be paying off, the Soviet ruler gleefully gibed at Western predictions that his pet scheme for plowing up 100 million acres of marginal land in Siberia and Kazakhstan could never solve Russia's chronic food shortage. "He laughs best who laughs last," chuckled Khrushchev. "So let us laugh at how these sorry forecasters have miscalculated."

But Nikita laughed too soon. Yields in Kazakhstan slumped from an initial 16 bu. per acre to 5 bu. per acre last year, and Moscow was forced to buy more than 11 million tons of grain abroad. Inevitably, rumors spread that the Kremlin would scrap the Virgin Lands experiment. Sure enough, an official declaration last week implied just that. After spending $7.4 billion and drafting 350,000 fulltime farmers to work on the dubious project, the regime seemed to feel it was time to stop cultivating additional acreage in the far-off Virgin Lands, concentrate instead on raising output in the more fertile regions of European Russia.

Presumably, it was too early--and too embarrassing--to talk about actual abandonment of the whole scheme and the return of the workers to more fruitful pursuits elsewhere in the Soviet Union. After all, Khrushchev's reputation was at stake, which was why Pravda last week was still calling the experiment "a remarkable page in our country's history."

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