Throughout Russian history whether it was under tsarist or communist rule the problems they faced were both similar (e.g. war, famine or agriculture). Most of the sources agree that the Russian government polices on agriculture consistently failed and each gives its own explanation for this failure; “stupid decisions”, “ill-conceived strategies” or “adverse weather”. The sources may criticise the “stupid decisions” but understand that the problem of agriculture was too big of a problem for one man to handle, whether this be the tsars or the dictatorships under communism. However as the sources agree on constant failures of the reforms, they are quite divided on the resistance of the peasants. Many of the sources fail to refer to the resistance and those that do refer to it see it more of resentment rather then a resistance.

Many of the sources agree that the agricultural reforms made between 1856 and 1964 consistently failed whether this be the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, Stolypin’s land reforms in 1907, Stalin’s collective

“I can clearly recall this grandiose but poorly organised virgin land era” states Eduard Shevardnadse in source 4. The reason for the failure and the demise of Khrushchev’s agricultural policy is “stupid decisions” and “ill-conceived strategies”. Shevardnadze testament suggests that people were only too willing to be involved in the execution of the policy but the eventual decline seems far more evident due to the “breakdown” of machinery and “no place to store grain”. From this source it is debatably that Khrushchev’s theoretical idea was far harder to implement then at first perceived, and in context the “billions of roubles…equipment….manpower” lost in the virgin lands policies led to the downfall and eventual dismissal of Khrushchev. Aside from the capitalistic connotations that the title of Shevardnadse book suggests along with the date it was published in 1991, it seems that his roots lay with communism and his pragmatics suggests a genuine remorse of the failure of the “virgin land era”.

Source 5 backs up the previous sources interpretations of the virgin land failure. Illustrating on a table, the source shows the failures to reach the 1965 set target on crop and livestock. Taken into context the source does not specify whom the figures were for and who complied them, also whether this was an official government document.

The final source takes the blame of the Virgin land failure from Khrushchev and hands it to the peasantry. Stalinist lifestyle which was forced on the peasantry meant that honesty between the government and the peasantry could not be achieved, while people were “cooking of the books” so “to report what Moscow wanted to hear”. This created miscommunication between Moscow and the rural population. In context this source suggests that 25 years of Stalin’s regime, had meant that peasants feared the consequence of their failures, and the de-Stalinisation proposed by Khrushchev to end social paranoia and “Stalin’s epoch” did not affect the peasantry as it had done so prolifically the Russian workers in the cities.

Source 3 by itself shows

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