Agrotowns, a Brief History and Review of Resources

ABSTRACT

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union first proposed developing agrotowns in the 1930s, though the concept of the agrotown is an ancient one, prevalent in the Mediterranean basin for centuries. The term was given a new, precise meaning by Soviet leadership. A few examples of the agrotown model were implemented in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and then again in the late 1940s and 1950s. Some of these model towns were quite successful and greatly improved productivity and the conditions of workers. There is revived interest in agrotowns as a part of ongoing work in agro-ecology and sustainable development. Soviet agrotowns were designed to combine food production with the industrial and cultural facilities of a city. Early examples provide evidence that if these large towns are correctly planned, they can play an important role in the implementation of agro-ecology and other sustainable development planning goals. This paper is a brief review of the history and a guide to resources. Further research on agrotowns in Soviet archives could positively contribute to current discussion among planners and agriculturalists.

KEYWORDS:

• Agrotowns
• central planning
• Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• agrarian policy
• Marxism

Acknowledgements

Wadi’h Halabi of the CPUSA (Communist Party of USA) Economics Commission and the Center for Marxist Education inspired and contributed to this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Donald Donato has worked with community-based organizations in support of economic, social, and cultural development for over 20 years, and in sectors including public administration, infrastructure and construction, business development, distribution, and social services planning. Donato is a researcher at the Center for Marxist Education, and a regular contributor to the newsweekly People’s World.

Notes

1 Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy is one of the oldest agrarian educational institutions in Russia. It was founded on December 3, 1865. It is under the Supervisory of the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. It was named for Kliment Timiryazev, a Russian botanist and physiologist and major proponent of evolution by natural selection.

2 Berg references a meeting in which Bogorad, a doctoral candidate in Economics claimed that contemporary policy decisions on planning in Moscow urged construction to use existing infrastructure and resources. It is important to note that the Zaiukovo settlement did exactly that, while its Ukrainian counterpart was more ambitious.

3 Berg notes: Historians have claimed that Khrushchev presented the agrotown as a “gift” to Stalin, and it seems to come from John Alexander Armstrong’s The Politics of Totalitarianism: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1934 to the Present. He cites a January 17, 1951 article in Izvestiia that mentioned that two “agrocities” “were founded . . . on Comrade Stalin’s seventieth birthday” (Armstrong 1961, 207). The decision to dedicate the agrotown on Stalin’s birthday was taken at a gathering of party cells from all the collective farms involved on December 10, 1949 (coincidentally, it seems, the same day that Khrushchev learned of his promotion to Moscow).

4 Artemy Kalinovsky does not make any claim that agrotowns were implemented in the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1972. He does show that I. K. Narzikulov organized a research program within the SOPS (Committee for the Study of Productivity) to prepare mountainous districts for modernized agricultural production and light industry.