Agriculture Scapegoats

The U.S.S.R.'s perennial agricultural crisis has once again taken its toll in fall guys. This time the Kremlin abruptly removed Vladimir Matskevich, 63, as Minister of Agriculture. A two-time loser, Matskevich had been fired from the same job in 1960 for "mismanagement," then shunted off to be chairman of Nikita Khrushchev's much criticized "virgin lands" project before being restored to the agriculture ministry five years later. Earlier this month Izvestia reported that Sergei Shevchenko, the ministry official in charge of farm machinery, had also been discharged for "violating state discipline"--Soviet jargon for quarreling with the boss or gross incompetence. Sovietologists predicted other top agriculture officials would also lose their jobs.

Although the Soviet Union's capricious weather and its inefficient collective farm system are the basic causes for crop failures, such scapegoats as Matskevich and Shevchenko serve handily to divert public discontent away from top Kremlin leaders. And shortages in 1972 of basic foodstuffs provided ample grounds for discontent, as citizens queued for bread in major Soviet cities last fall (TIME, Oct. 30). A recent Soviet statistical report showed that grain production fell 30 million tons below expectations in 1972, while the potato crop was down 14.5 million tons. That disaster forced the Soviets to contract for $2 billion worth of agricultural products from the U.S., Canada and other countries, temporarily relieving shortages.

Prospects for the 1973 harvest look almost as dismal. A virtually snowless winter has deprived huge areas in central and western Russia of the snow cover that ordinarily protects grain from killing frost. Massive planting this spring is scarcely expected to make up for the damage to winter wheat, which might force the Kremlin to turn to the West again for heavy imports of grain.

Matskevich's successor turned out to be First Deputy Premier Dmitri Polyansky, 55, who has had overall policy charge of agriculture for several years in the Politburo, but now assumes daily operational control of the Soviet Union's $100 billion investment in farms. Some specialists view his appointment as a demotion. They speculate that it may be a canny move to unseat him from the Politburo altogether, reflecting an obscure Kremlin power struggle.

"If Polyansky accomplishes anything," says a top U.S. State Department expert, "it will have taken a miracle." English Kremlinologist Robert Conquest thinks that Polyansky, a former protege of Khrushchev's, has been maneuvered into a position of "succeed or else." Says Conquest: "Since he can't succeed, he will be the next fall guy."

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