Then 40 years ago, Nikita S. Khrushchev announced the Virgin Lands campaign, intended to bring the enormous acreage of pastureland here under the plow.

Many more Russians arrived in the years 1953-1965,during the so-called Virgin Lands Campaign of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Colonel Fedosov grew up in northern Kazakhstan, near the former Tselinograd - now Akmola - the center of the Virgin Lands campaign of the 1950's.

The intensive monoculture farming of the Virgin Lands campaign, with 83% of the total cropland in 1958-1959 being covered by grain, depleted the soil of necessary nutrients.

During the 20th century, Kazakhstan was the site of major Soviet projects, including Nikita Khrushchev Virgin Lands campaign, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and the Semipalatinsk Test Site, the USSR's primary nuclear weapon testing site.

In the spring of 1954 Rabinovich, with a brigade of fellow artists journeyed to southern Siberia as part of Khrustchev's Virgin Lands Campaign, working on a collective farm in the Omsk Region and at the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station.