Original subtitles

Gorky Television

This is Central Russia.

There's no other earth as black or as lush and vivid on Earth.

Although known as

"a harsh and severe land",

it is also called "the land of great possibilities".

For this reason, our occupations and thoughts

have much to do with this land.

THE MOST MUNDANE OCCUPATIONS

This is the Gorky region,

one of the most important in Central Russia.

In recent years, agriculture has developped considerably here.

The grain harvests are plentiful

and there are new zootechnical complexes

whose numbers are constantly growing.

Ample collective farms were established recently

in the surrounding areas of Gorky, Dzerzhinsk and Kstovo.

A recent government decree

for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

announces a considerable increase in the agrarian production,

notably in qualitative terms.

A complex government plan

seeks the development of the material and technical bases of the local agriculture,

improvements in the management of natural resources,

and the rationalization of all means necessary to achieve these goals.

In order to face the needs of the Gorky farmers,

the government has pledged them 2 billion rubles along the next 5 years.

Yevgeni Romanovitch Repnikov

director of the main food company in Gorky, Tresta-Milevod-Stroy,

supervises the construction of a water reservoir.

The farmers' concerns will be addressed

by the director of the Dzerzhinski sovkhoz, Yuri Stepanovitch Kniaziev.

At the Novolekeyevski sovkhoz, another interview.

We'll bring together labour heroes

from the brigade of Anna Ivanovna Kondratieva.

Our foremost interest in the interviews was to highlight and review

the most pressing problems

the government is dedicated to resolve.

These interviews constitute the core of our film.

Some of the farms can only be sown with the support of machines.

It's too exhaustive to do it with our bare hands.

The manual proccess requires the worker to water the farms by hand,

while with the machines, irrigation is mechanized.

The cucumber harvest is the most exhausting.

When the cucumbers are harvested, one has to bend down.

Sometimes it seems that your back will break.

The most labour intensive sector

is the horticulture.

Nowadays the levels of mechanization have increased.

The sowing machine.

For weeding and fertilizing,

these machines can deploy chemical products.

Even with all these improvements,

horticulture is still a very labour intensive activity.

And if sometimes the uninvited snow covers the ground,

even threading through the fields becomes difficult.

AGRICULTURAL MECHANIZATION

The most recent technological innovations are presented at the farming fair.

Something new for the farmers, a weeding tractor.

It has room for four persons.

This machine was projected for the first weeding.

This tool is then operated by each of the farmers.

In spite of all innovations,

no harvesting machines have been produced for the horticulture yet.

All the more pressing thus is the need to solve the problems

linked with the mechanization of the harvesting process.

Low levels of application of the new technologies

impose a high demand for supplementary labour even from within the big cities.

Further specialization of the material and technical bases for farming development,

especially of those related to the horticulture, is crucial for solving the problems.

Long gone are the days of the 1976 drought,

when the labourers who came from the city had to carry water to the fields in their own cars.

Just as they helped then, they're helping now in the harvest of vegetables.

Two years passed and today there are no more irrigation problems.

Now all crops are irrigated automatically.

Each irrigated hectare provides the guarantee

of an ever more abundant harvest.

Before, we used to water the fields manually,

we used tubes laid by men and women across the fields.

With a full-time irrigation system

we managed to irrigate everything. This year, however, there's no water.

The equipment is working, but there's no water.

No reason to worry.

The Kudma river has plenty of water to offer.

In the Gorky region there is no shortage of water resources.

The Volga, the Oka, the Vetluga...

Nine thousand rivers, canals and springs

along a total of 32,000 km.

Around 3,000 lakes, water reservoirs

and subterranean springs that have just begun to be explored.

The exploitation process of the volumous Kudma river

conveys an appreciation of the Gorky region in all its complexity.

The flood-lands along the Kudma river,

if well exploited, are very fertile.

The irrigation systems along the Kudma have been built 30 years ago,

but they have deteriorated due to deficient exploitation.

In 1971 the construction works have started

for the first irrigation system supplied by the Kudma river.

The first plan had an estimated coverage

of 1,500 ha of arable land.

Sure. In order to irrigate such a vast land,

much more water will be needed.

And for that reason, not even the whole Kudma would be enough.

That's why a project was devised to flood its marginal lands

and to construct the Lakshansk water reservoir.

Here we are, comrades, at the construction site of the Lakchansk reservoir.

This reservoir's function is to store water

to compensate for the scarce water volume of the Kudma river

for the period when irrigation water is most needed.

The construction began in 1971

and it will be finished this year.

In the area to our right we can see all that will be flooded

of the Lakshya and Polta rivers, each one providing half the total volume.

This reservoir's capacity will reach 9 million cubic meters of water.

Right now we are building the main portion of the dam.

It will be 1.2km long

and it will reach 13m on its highest point.

It will resist pressures equivalent to a 11.5m column of water.

A secondary construction project is planned,

it will provide water for the less irrigated terrains,

connecting them with the primary system and extending the coverage to a further 5,000ha.

On the other hand, we must build new roads,

because you cannot harvest vegetables without transporting them.

As a result, it will be possible to establish sovkhozy dedicated to vegetable farming

and build houses for the workers

involved in the manifold construction projects along the Kudma river.

With the improvements in these 5,000ha,

all the problems related to the provision of vegetables in the city of Gorky will be solved.

This system is especially efficient because everything will be produced in the region

and the main result is that vegetables won't have to be shipped in

from distant producing regions.

Coming from the Bogorodsk settlement, workers specialized in mobile mechanization

are building for the Lakchansky sovkhoz

an irrigation system for another 120ha of arable land.

Another 2,000ha have been irrigated and are ready to be cultivated.

In the present situation,

a rational management of irrigation systems is crucial to enhance agricultural production.

For that reason, improvement specialists are required.

They have designed and installed the Fregat irrigation system,

but it was only their latest achievement.

There's still a lot to be done.

The agricultural plan for this region of the RSFSR has been approved.

The plan includes goals that

both in developmental and organizational terms, for the food factories in the Gorky region,

are perhaps hard to achieve.

But we are equipping ourselves for this task.

Orienting ourselves towards more ambitious goals might help to assess

whether we are ready to face the challenges we will have to face ahead.

Many problems have been an obstacle to our work.

There are not enough industrial resources.

We have no pre-fabricated materials, such as iron or cement,

there are no factories producing them.

If they were available, it would be easier to advance in our construction works.

We have neither big companies to provide the necessary materials

nor an organized transport system to support our work.

I'll give an example.

On the Kudma river We have built a lock based on the same system.

It took us two years.

If the project had incorporated and provided for pre-fabricated elements,

that would have been brought in from an external industrial plant

- in this specific case, from any big cement factory -

it wouldn't have taken us two years, but only one.

The difficulties on the path of improvement

are objective and evident.

But we can overcome them.

The State will provide the technical instruments

and in due time we will surpass the difficulties.

The government decree is quite reassuring by clearly stating:

"We demand the Ministry of Hydric Resources of the Soviet Union

and the Ministers Council of the Russian Republic

to give particular attention to the development of water management plants,

to the accomplishment of the necessary construction works

and adequate housing for the workers,

as well as making the means available for the cement factories and construction companies involved."

We must make sure that our improvement efforts

won't interfere with the complexities of the ecosystem.

And we must manage efficiently the available means.

The specialized agriculture is the most profitable.

Let's take the Dzerzhinski sovkhoz as an example.

It is specialized in the greenhouse cultivation of vegetables,

supplying onions to the city throughout the year.

Tomatoes are grown from April to October.

The first cucumbers can already be harvested right after New Year's Eve.

They are still costly, but they'll get much cheaper in the future.

This structure is very efficient,

but also here there are still many difficulties.

In order to build this agro-industrial complex, with its 46,000 square meters,

we have spent 3.6 million rubles.

That ammount was necessary to build only the basic structure,

that is, the offices and the greenhouse, not including the equipment.

During this period, we have done a lot to improve

the general working conditions.

In order to further cut the costs of the vegetables we produce,

we still have to increase the production.

So that we won't waste the resources of our farm, as well as our invaluable human resources,

we must take further the mechanization process.

We have set our goals to improve working conditions.

First: to mechanize irrigation.

A worker needs 2 to 3 hours to water the plants manually,

which means 30% of the working hours.

It's simply too much.

Then we have mechanized ploughing.

In the beginning, when we first established this farm,

we used to till the soil with spades.

We had to request help from the city, cause we couldn't handle it on our own.

Then our designers developped an electric plough.

A great invention that is still being used today.

We can plough the whole farm with it.

Our farm is quite profitable,

but we are not the direct beneficiaries of these earnings.

And the funds that are invested in further development of the farm

are scarce in relation to our ambitions.

They cannot cover all the necessary investments.

We shall expand the basic structure, build houses for the workers,

but we must take into account our limited funds.

At the Dzerzhinski sovkhoz, many things are still needed.

New technologies, further mechanization, new funds, more space.

All this is needed to develop the agricultural system.

We have the means for this development and we will grow further.

At the Dzerzhinski sovkhoz, new equipment and new greenhouses are being built.

It's important to put in practice the already gathered experience.

We have mechanized part of the work.

The Moskovsky sovkhoz, in the Moscow region,

is completely mechanized.

Temperature is automatically regulated,

as well as humidity levels.

Also supplies of water and fertilizers are automatically controlled.

Here we have opted to mechanize first

the temperature control,

which is automatically regulated within the greenhouses.

So many ideas, so many thoughts,

so many proposals arise regarding the new decree.

We have only regarded some of them.

Lush and vivid Central Russia.

This black soil needs all the warmth and care human hands can provide.

People care about the future of this land.

And for this reason they face the problems in all earnestness.

Upon their efforts depends the future of this land.

Faith in change!

Script: V. Ternovoy

Director: A. Sokurov

Camera: A. Barishkov

Subtitles: bastelik