Siberian farmers are called heroes for weathering terrible conditions but likely feel more like martyrs

The Battle for the Siberian Harvest

by Georgy Borodyansky

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy to the Urals recently praised the region’s farmers for their heroic efforts to save their doomed harvest. On his return from a visit to farms in the Urals, Igor Kholmanskikh told a press conference that the early arrival of wintry weather had put farmers in a difficult position but that in many places the harvest was in full flow. “I saw it for myself in the Tyumen region,” said Kholmanskikh, a former foreman at one of Russia’s largest defense contractors who shot to fame after offering to help the presidentbreak up protests on Bolotnaya Square in 2012. “I was amazed the machinery was working! They were harvesting the grain from under the snow!”

Kholmanskikh was telling the truth. Farmers in neighboring regions such as Novosibirsk have been working flat out. “Yes, they’re harvesting,” says Pavel Beryozin, editor in chief of Predsedatel (Chairman), an independent publication popular with local growers. “They are threshing water and snow, trying to harvest what grain they can, to sell it for kopecks. But it’s nothing to be happy about – it’s sheer desperation.”

Beryozin notices a certain tendency toward Soviet hyperbole creeping into official statements of late. Back then, sowing and reaping were invariably described as “the battle for the harvest,” a pompous turn of phrase, which frequently masked administrative incompetence. And the bombast of today’s Kremlin slogans (such as “Russia is rising from her knees” and “Crimea is Ours”) are equally out of touch with the state of Russian agriculture. “Perhaps things are different in some other agricultural areas. But in Siberia we’re staring into a black hole,” Beryozin tells me. At least a fifth of the harvest in the Novosibirsk region has been lost and, according to Beryozin, nearly a third of large commercial farms and 80 percent of small farmers are behind in their loan repayments. “They’re just waiting to find out whether the banks will foreclose on them or give them a bit more time.”

In some areas the situation is even worse: in the Kurgan region, for example, where 40 percent of the grain to be harvested is lying under snow, a state of emergency has been declared.


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