The Onset of Rural Transformation

Abstract

Khrushchev’s political demise in October 1964 marked a turning point for rural development. As Brezhnev moved to consolidate his political position, agriculture increasingly became a major priority and gradually a new disposition of political forces emerged that was in favour of raising agricultural inputs. The political stalemate over investment policy that characterised Khrushchev’s latter years in power was finally broken. With the political will established among the central elite and the conceptual framework of rural transformation largely complete, from the mid-1960s rural settlement planning and construction entered a new stage, a stage in which the fully formed model of rural development was, for the first time, applied to the countryside.