Peasant Academician Maltsev

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This "key" was worth decades of persistent searches, disappointments and discoveries.

Look into the distance, not under your feet

“Looking at the map of the Trans-Urals, you will see in the valley two rivulets flowing into the Tobol, Shadrinsky District. Here I am doing experimental work. " So, back in 1934, Terenty Maltsev's article began in the Kolkhoznik magazine. Maxim Gorky, who took part in its publication, having read the manuscript of a peasant from Siberia, wrote in colored pencil: "This is how people who are useful to the Motherland grow up."

The writer was not mistaken. A modest field grower has grown into a prominent scientist, an honorary academician of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after Lenin, twice Hero of Socialist Labor.

He invaded agrarian science, in fact, without knowing its established canons.

Only perennial plants are capable of enriching the soil with nutrients: clover, sweet clover, alfalfa, and others. After them - deep plowing, with a seam turnover. And then - please, cultivate other crops. These were the immutable rules binding on the agriculture of all immense Russia. In fact, the grass-field system was based on them, confirmed and strengthened by the authority of the famous soil scientist Vasily Williams.

Terenty Maltsev, on the basis of his own experience, came to a different conclusion: annual crops also have the ability to enrich the soil. They leave more organic matter in it than they manage to take during the growing season. If they did not possess such a property, there would be no soil as such. Plowing with a turnover of the seam changes the living conditions of microorganisms, destroys the structure of the soil. This means that surface loosening is preferable. And deep, dump-free, perhaps once every four to five years.

They say that living life is not a field to cross. But crossing the field is not easy if you are not an idle passer-by. For Maltsev, it is a laboratory, a school. He did not go to school for a day. “You can live without reading and writing,” my father instilled. - Why is she? Everything is from God, just pray harder. And Terenty Semyonovich told me, how passionate I wanted to learn to read and write. Guys to classes, he - in the field, meadows, in the garden. Dig, water, weed beds, graze cattle. I learned letters and numbers from peers. There was no paper, no pencil. In winter he wrote with a stick in the snow, in summer - on the coastal sand, in the roadside dust. At the age of nine he was known among the villagers as a literate. I read letters from husbands from the Russian-Japanese war to women-soldiers, wrote the answers.

Unbeknownst to his father, he took out books. Biology, natural science, history, geography. The world became wider for him, and with new knowledge, new questions appeared. Why do some have a good harvest, others a poor one? Why is late sowing, as a rule, luckier than early sowing in the Trans-Urals? How to manage to grow and harvest bread in the short Siberian summer?

A plant, Terenty read in one of his books, is a factory where organic matter is created under the influence of solar energy. But if it was a factory, he reasoned to himself, then it was of a special kind. With the most sophisticated technology, secrets. What are they, how to get to them?

The First World War began. I had to change the plow for a rifle. Trenches, attacks, retreats, death of comrades. Then four years of German captivity. He quickly learned the language, made friends with the local communists.

In 1919, together with other prisoners of war, he created the Russian section of the German Communist Party. Decades later, already at the 27th Congress of the CPSU, he met the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unified Party of Germany, Erich Honecker. At his invitation, he visited the places of his soldier's captivity.

Those four years were not in vain. I watched the farm there. The land seems to be no better than ours, they pray to God not harder, and the harvest is higher. Why? He returned home in a lean, hungry 1921. Spring came early. It was possible to start field work, but no one went to the field before Easter: this was the local tradition.

“I decided to go to the field alone,” Terenty Semyonovich recalled. - Despite the protests of his father, he began to harrow. By breaking down the crust, I reduced evaporation."

Hot winds blew, drying up the soil. On the site of Maltsev, she retained moisture. The weeds sprouted together. Before sowing, he destroyed them by cultivation, so that the seeds lay in well-prepared soil. Neighbors also started sowing. The deadlines were pressing, and they had no time to fight the weeds. Already gaining strength, they, of course, stunned wheat seedlings. In autumn, the villagers were expecting a meager harvest. Only with Maltsev, he turned out to be excellent. This was the first victory, albeit a serious risk. After all, failure could turn into a shortage of bread for the family, hunger.

More than once Terenty noticed: seeds that accidentally fell into the edge of a field road, literally trampled into the earth's firmament, give excellent shoots, develop well. I wondered why? Maybe it’s not worth trying hard with deep plowing? Wrap up the layer, inevitably drying up the soil, and spend precious time and effort on this?

I tried to loosen only the top layer, by four to five centimeters - the depth of seeding. Father, noticing this, lamented: "Leave without bread!" Allowed to "be clever" only on one plot. In the fall, she gave, per hectare, 26 quintals of wheat. The rest of the area barely collected five centners.

The old grain grower Semyon Abramovich reconciled with his son, began to obey in everything, to help. Terenty plunged headlong into his experiments. He selected larger seeds for sowing, planted them in the soil, when the danger of an early spring drought passed, and fertile rains would fall. But then a new obstacle arose. The wheat did not have time to ripen before the autumn storm. This means that we need other, early-maturing varieties.

During the years of collectivization, fellow villagers elected Terenty as a collective farm field breeder. Now under his command were hundreds of hectares, which were supposed to feed families, give bread to the country. One, it is known, is not a warrior in the field. And to fight for a good harvest, he has already realized this from his own experience, you need to competently, with a scientific approach. He created an agricultural circle. At first, only a few enthusiastic men signed up for it. The collective farm allocated premises for a "hut-laboratory", helped to buy instruments and chemicals. Experiments were carried out in the "hut", in the field. Many of them turned out to be successful and encouraging. The number of members of the circle has already exceeded forty people.

“The earth is more generous with the one who treats it creatively,” he turned to the members of the circle. - Imagine a chessboard with many squares. There are two at the board: man and nature.

She always plays White, with the right of the first move. Determines the sowing time, admits heat or cold, dry winds, rains, frosts. And a person, in order not to lose, must adequately respond to any, even the most insidious move.

Having heard about the Siberian experimenter, his "hut-laboratory", the employees of the Leningrad Institute of Applied Botany sent for testing two hundred grams of wheat seeds of a new variety. I sowed it, looked after the plot as if it were a little child. "Guest" has shown itself well in the local conditions. Several years later, Maltsev collected more than one centner of this wheat, provided the collective farm with seeds of an early-maturing, promising variety. But the unexpected happened. While Terenty was in the field, the district commissioner ordered the delivery of wheat to the elevator, at the expense of the obligatory supply of bread to the state.

It is more than twenty kilometers to Shadrinsk, the regional center. Maltsev ran there. He rushed into the warehouse - his wheat had not yet been mixed with other grain. He begged to keep it separately, and he himself - in the regional center. Achieved: returned the seeds. The next fall Terenty willingly shared them with other farms.

By that time, Maltsev had developed an approach, tested by personal experience, to the local conditions of arable farming. The main thing is to preserve moisture in the soil, to “hit” exactly at the optimum sowing time. This allows you to "provoke" weeds to sprout sooner, destroy them, wait out the dry winds, which are repeated in these places at the same time of the year.

To achieve the desired, as he was convinced, allows loosening to the depth of planting seeds, varieties with a short growing season, in order to have time to harvest before the onset of the autumn storm. The field creates both crops and organic fertilizers at the same time. Moldless tillage, thus, increases fertility, protecting the land from erosion.

Agrotechnics "according to Maltsev" required special agricultural implements. And then he proved himself to be an innovator, a designer. According to his drawings, local factories made flat cutters that loosen the soil without wrapping the seam, plows for moldboard-free deep plowing, and disc cultivators.

In the post-war years, the Maltsev farming system was gaining strength and fame. Guests from the farms of the Volga region, the North Caucasus, and the steppe regions of Kazakhstan often visited him. But its widespread use, even in the Trans-Urals, was held back by the lack of special equipment.

In February 1947, Maltsev was invited to the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks so that he could talk about his method. The problem of grain and food was especially acute. Before the meeting, I managed to visit the Minister of Agriculture, asked for help with tractors. He promised to allocate a dozen, but hundreds were needed. And here is Maltsev on the podium.

My archives have preserved the typewritten pages of the transcript with his speech, donated by Terenty Semyonovich. From year to year, he said, more and more bread is required. Whereas arable land capable of giving birth to it is declining due to construction and mining. But bread is the most important product, and this kind of energy, without which not a single gear at the machine will turn. The time will hardly come when it will be possible to say: now it is enough. Everyone understands: the more grain, the richer the country.

Talking about my experience, I asked you not to repeat it stereotypically. Everywhere there are climatic and soil characteristics that must be taken into account. Sitting on the podium, I. V. Stalin listened attentively, at times he wrote something down.

And when it came to technology, he asked:

- How many tractors do you need, comrade Maltsev?

- Five hundred.

- What else do you need?

- And thanks for that, Comrade Stalin.

The answer to the leader seemed witty. He smirked slightly. The audience, and these were members of the government, party leaders, famous scientists, practitioners, also greeted the Siberian's speech with applause. There was also Trofim Lysenko, director of the All-Union Agricultural Academy and a favorite of the Kremlin. He did not like "upstarts" from science, as well as deviations from the canons of agrobiology. He could "facilitate" the sending of freethinkers "to places not so distant." But Maltsev was not one of the simpletons, he was not going to enter into an open dispute with the scientists - “grass-workers”. The forces are unequal. He explained his agricultural techniques by the peculiarities of the Siberian climate. Moreover, he volunteered to test wheat varieties under the conditions of the Trans-Urals, which were then worked on by breeders under the leadership of Lysenko.

He readily agreed. So that Maltsev would not be hindered from doing this, he personally turned to Stalin with a proposal to create a Shadrinsk agricultural station at the "Zavety Ilyich" collective farm "for conducting experiments by the field grower Maltsev." In the summer of 1950, she appeared here, with a staff of three people: the director, his deputy and the manager. Maltsev received a "letter of protection", a mandate guaranteeing immunity from all kinds of authorized, local bosses.

In the spring of 1953, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences instructed a team of scientists to check and summarize the results of the station's activities. From the report of the director of the Research Institute of Plant Physiology N. A. Genkel: “The environment in which the plants are found completely changes when the soil is cultivated according to the Maltsev method, especially in subsequent years after deep loosening. All changes create conditions for good growth and development of plants."

Maltsev thus strengthened his position as a successful experimenter.

The unprecedented for those times wheat harvest on unplowed land - more than 20 centners per hectare - became the object of constant attention of the press, high party and Soviet leaders. There were innumerable newspaper and magazine publications, radio and television broadcasts.

In August 1954, Maltsev received delegates to the All-Union Conference on Agriculture in his village.

Nikita Khrushchev made the event happy with his presence. For about five hours, he meticulously surveyed the fields. Was delighted with the sight of wheat. Thick, spiky, waves shimmering in the breeze. He tossed his hat, admiring how it lay on the ears, without bending them, as if on a table.

“So everyone in the country would work like Comrade Maltsev,” said the distinguished guest. "There would be nowhere to put the bread." In just two and a half years, the collective farm, after Khrushchev's visit, was visited by about 3, 5 thousand people.

However, the press gradually fell silent about him, and the number of guests dwindled. By that time, the "corn procession" had begun. Khrushchev hoped that Maltsev would support him in this endeavor. But he did not respond to signals given through intermediaries. The "queen of the fields" did not fit into his soil protection system in any way. And Khrushchev, at one of the high meetings, out of vexation called Maltsev "a wheat aristocrat."

In the country came the fashion for intensive technologies, the expansion of cultivated areas due to the plowing of virgin lands. Echelons with tractors, tents, volunteer Komsomol members went to Siberia, North Kazakhstan.

In the first years of the development of virgin lands, she paid well for the work of a grain grower. Thus, the average annual grain production in Kazakhstan in 1961-1965 increased to 14.5 million tons. For comparison: up to 1949-1953, 3, 9 million tons were collected here.

But soon the soils crushed by the caterpillars of tractors, plows, heavy rollers, and cultivators became easy "prey" for dry winds. The cultivation system led to the fact that black storms whirled over the Kazakh virgin lands, Siberia, Altai. I remember that in Kazakhstan, on the way from Tselinograd to Pavlodar, on a clear May day we had to go by car with the headlights on. And then they stopped altogether on the side of the road, tightly closing the car doors. The day turned into an impenetrable night. Snowdrifts of chernozem blocked the highway, towered near forest belts, on rural and city streets. The fields were bared to the mainland …

In the same Kurgan region, the grain yield fell from 19 to six centners per hectare. The soil is so dead that the eternal companions of the plowman, the rooks, stopped walking for plows. And what about Maltsev? He continued his work. His district, collective farm was not affected by these misfortunes.

Wind erosion has captured not only Siberia, Kazakhstan, Altai Territory, but also the Volga region, the North Caucasus. And then many seriously started talking about the massive introduction of a soil-protective system of agriculture.

On the Kazakh virgin lands, this, even before large-scale dust storms, was taken up by the director of the All-Russian Research Institute of Grain Farming, in the village of Shortandy near Tselinograd, Alexander Baraev. The technology is about the same as that of Maltsev: gentle processing, without turning the layer, leaving stubble. It reduces the onslaught of the wind, in winter it retains the snow. Plus there are clean couples. That is, the earth rests for a year, accumulates fertility and moisture.

Khrushchev, who considered himself an expert in agriculture, did not perceive the "empty" arable land, was its ardent opponent. The peasantly cunning Maltsev diplomatically avoided public discussions on this topic.

Especially with the bosses. Baraev, the son of a St. Petersburg railroad worker, was of a different warehouse. He proved to his opponents, regardless of ranks and titles: “In the arid steppe, it is impossible without clean vapor. The earth will be depleted. And the yield in pairs is twice as high."

I remember one of Khrushchev's visits to Shortandy. Alexander Ivanovich showed an experimental field, divided into four equal parts: pure fallow, winter crops, fallow in spring and wheat without steam. Seeing the empty square, Khrushchev frowned in displeasure. On the second and third plots, the wheat looked great, on the fourth - frail, undersized, mixed with weeds. “What kind of nonsense is this?” The guest asked discontentedly. “Here we, Nikita Sergeevich, sowed according to your recommendation, without pure vapors,” he heard.

The answer to Khrushchev seemed insolent and defiant. He started shouting something about negligence, deliberate distortion of agricultural technology and urgently left Shortandy. I ordered the director to be transferred to ordinary agronomists …

Throughout his 99 years, Terenty Semyonovich strictly honored his father's behest: do not drink, do not smoke, do not take cards and weapons in your hands. True, I had to take the rifle, not of my own free will. He kept the rest of the commandments holy.

Moreover, I have never taken a vacation in my life. Everything is in the field, in the meadows. When asked about the secrets of longevity, he shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment. Say, I live, and that's it.

Although he endured everything in his lifetime. Buried three children who died of hunger. The fourth, Kostya, graduated from high school before the war, dreamed of becoming an agronomist. He went to the front directly from the meadows, carefully wiping the scythe with a bunch of grass and handing it over to his parent. In August 1943, he died heroically in a battle near the village of Verkholudki, Sumy region. At the same time, Maltsev accompanied another son to the front, Sawa, who returned seriously wounded.

Once, while in Moscow, Terenty Semyonovich called me from the hotel at about seven in the morning, although there seemed to be no rush. According to our urban concepts, it is not accepted to disturb unnecessarily so early. He was used to getting up at four in the morning. And seven is already the most working time. We agreed to meet.

Came in the afternoon. Thin, stooped, but cheerful. He was wearing a good-quality dark suit, a motley checkered shirt, and the same motley tie with a bright pattern. But the shirt is worn out. "Grandfather" was clearly dressed up for city visits. At home, in the village, I saw him more barefoot, in a shirt, tricot pants. A practitioner, scientist, philosopher, public figure, he equally cordially, easily met in his hut the leaders of the state, writers, military leaders, and fellow countrymen from the surrounding villages.

He sat down. Complains:

- Legs start to hurt.

- From a cold? - I ask.

- I'm not afraid of a cold, and I walk barefoot in the snow. Only the throat sometimes hurts, tonsils.

- You probably love the bathhouse?

- When I was young, when I was mowing, I got caught in a nettle, it burned badly. It passed in the bath. For several years after that I went to bathe. Now I wash in the apartment.

Apologized for being late for the meeting. Explained the reason. I was walking past the GUM department store and saw an electric kettle in the window. I went in and bought it. I, he says, have a whole collection of them at home. The teapot on the table is boiling all day. I like tea.

- Strong?

- A spoonful of tea leaves in a glass. I brew it right in a glass. Bread and butter, sugar, tea. Here's my breakfast.

- And what about lunch?

- The same.

- Dinner?

- The whole days are the same. I eat little. Only I consume a lot of sugar. Everyone says it's harmful. And this is probably what I hold on to.

What, I ask, will be the spring for the harvest, what do the old-timers say about it? “Anything. And what will happen - then we will find out. Potayki (snow melting in the sun during the day - A. P.) began early, and at night it was still frosty. This is bad. The moisture evaporates. Again, the winter crops are bare, they can freeze and weaken."

His speech is simple and expressive. He speaks about the subject of his constant worries with love and affection: "land", "wheat", "rain".

I remembered everyone with whom I had a chance to communicate at least once by name and patronymic. He could quote from memory whole pages from his favorite books. Lamented: the youth shuns peasant labor. And specialists do not have due diligence, diligence.

“When my father would not let me go to school, fearing that having learned, I would leave the earth, he, in his own way, was right,” he told me. - And now in the village you cannot do without a letter. Another thing is how to dispose of knowledge. In 1913, there was one agronomist throughout the Trans-Urals. Now, only in our collective farm there are three of them, although the land has not increased. At one time I did not have a desk in my office, from dawn to dawn in the field. Now they rarely approach the ground. Everyone is chained to papers. Of course, you can't do without documentation, but everything should be a reasonable measure.

Talking to me, he kept glancing at his watch. It turns out that he arrived in the car of the VASKHNIL administration, he was embarrassed to delay state transport for a long time …

In the last years of his life he often turned to young people. He dedicated many pages of his two-volume Duma on the Harvest to her.

“Even in old age, I do not have a feeling of fatigue,” he wrote. I continue to learn from nature, from wise books. If a miracle happened, and I could start life anew, I would live it the same way. On one condition: let the accumulated knowledge and experience be with me. And let there be the same opponents. For in disputes, truth is born. If the dispute is in her name, and not for the sake of the conjuncture, ranks and titles."

“In the twenties,” he writes further, “a bicycle was sold to me for the agricultural products handed over to the consumer cooperation. I bought it, but I can't drive it. If I move a little, I fall. A neighbor who watched these ordeals of mine remarked: “Down, Terenty, you look, that's why you fall. Look ahead. " I listened. I began to look not at the wheel, but into the distance. And let's go! So I advise everyone, especially the young: look into the distance, not at your feet. Then everything will work out."