Back in the days when I was studying the lost science of Sovietology, every year the Soviet newspapers would boast of record harvests that had overfulfilled the plan, while the reality was much grimmer. Even if the numbers weren’t doctored, the sad fact was that a very large part of this grain never made it far past the collective farm. In these days of the extenuated economic crisis and low oil prices, I think we are seeing the return of this kind of official hyperbole and Stakhanovite ambition, as an article we have translated after the jump reports on the curious combination of a “record” grain harvest yet continually higher prices for bread.

In the past, it wasn’t hard to see through the ruse on the grain harvests.  First, there was always a shortage of hands to harvest it, and college students would be forced to leave their studies to go help the peasants; not that there were any living facilities for them in the middle of the steppe. Second, there was always a shortage of working farm equipment, so some of the grain was never even harvested, and was simply left to rot on the stalk, while what had been harvested would be piled uncovered in the open fields due to a shortage of storage elevators and trucks to transport it to them, and would spoil at the first autumn rain. Finally, much of the grain that did manage to get put on trucks would spill out of holes in the rusty vehicles as they bounced their way along Russia’s notoriously horrible roads.