Developments over the Past 40 Years
P. V. VASILIEV, Deputy-Director of the Institute of Forestry, Soviet Academy of Sciences
OF all countries, the Soviet Union has the most extensive forested area. But it is not for this reason alone that foresters throughout the world have the highest interest in our forestry. It is rather because of the originality and special nature of its development, especially during the past 40 years, when it began to be conducted entirely on the basis of State ownership of forests.
Both the general practical lines of development of forestry and the scale of the various forestry projects in the U.S.S.R. have been determined in the past 40 years, first and foremost, by the importance of forests as a source of raw materials for industry and, consequently, by advances in the main branches of the wood treatment and processing industries of our country and the supplying of timber for them. The growth of these branches of production is shown in Table 1. 1
1 From the statistical volumes, Industry of the U.S.S.R. and National Economy of the U.S.S.R., Gosstatizdat, Moscow 1967. Data for 1913 for the territory within the contemporary frontiers of the U.S.S.R.
TABLE 1. - GROWTH OF OUTPUT OF WOOD AND THE MAIN WOOD PROCESSING INDUSTRIES
|
Industries |
1913 |
1928 |
1940 |
1956 |
|
|
in million ruble meters |
|||||
|
Output of: |
|||||
|
|
Fuelwood |
36.5 |
26.7 |
128.2 |
120.0 |
|
|
Industrial wood |
30.5 |
36.0 |
117.9 |
219.5 |
|
Production of: |
|||||
|
|
Saw timber |
14.2 |
13.6 |
34.8 |
a 70.0 |
|
|
|
in thousand cubic meters |
|||
|
|
Plywood |
203.5 |
185.0 |
731.9 |
a 1 100.0 |
|
|
Paper |
269.2 |
284.0 |
812.0 |
1 993.0 |
a For 1955.
Besides the extraction of timber and the widely organized utilization of the forest for water conservation and protective purposes, the State and the population have obtained from our forests huge quantities of fodder, food and technical by-products, furs, etc. The annual income from forestry in terms of money amounts to over 1,000 million roubles, not counting the value of by-products supplied free of charge and the value of pelts, which in some years have provided the country with up to 15 percent of its total foreign exchange receipts from exports. ²
² See Lyesnoe Khozyaistvo (FORESTRY) No. 4 for 1967, page 5.
Forestry, lumbering and the wood treatment and processing industries in our country constitute the daily employment of a huge army of people. At present, about 500,000 workers are directly employed in forestry, no less than 2 million in lumbering and over 600,000 in the wood treatment and processing industries, i.e., altogether approximately 3,100,000 men, or 6 percent of the total number (62 million) of workers and employees in the country. Of the industrial workers, however, those in the timber conversion and the wood treatment and processing industries alone amounted to 15 percent in 1955. ²
² See Lyesnoe Khozyaistvo (FORESTRY) No. 4 for 1967, page 5.
During the postwar years, the technical equipment of the lumbering industry has been greatly expanded and improved and much work has been done to bring into use the almost inaccessible large forests in the northern regions of the European part of the country, those in the northern Urals, and the taiga ³ of western and eastern Siberia and the Far East. The rate of logging in the European north increased from 5.3 percent in 1913 to 13 percent by the end of the fifth Five-Year Plan; in the Urals, from 9.8 to 20 percent; in the regions of western Siberia, eastern Siberia and the Far East, taken together, from 8 to 30 percent. ²
² See Lyesnoe Khozyaistvo (FORESTRY) No. 4 for 1967, page 5.
³ The coniferous forests in the far northern regions of Eurasia.
Spearheaded by the lumbering industry, there have appeared in the formerly inaccessible taiga ³ regions, roads, settlements, schools and clubs, while local industries are springing up and farming is being started.
³ The coniferous forests in the far northern regions of Eurasia.
Principal developments
The growing timber requirements of the country are being met to an ever-increasing extent through the opening up of remote forests in the central, western and southern regions of the European part of the country. It has, therefore, been possible in the last 40 years to halt an intensive process of forest destruction that had been going on for two centuries in most of the sparsely-wooded regions. In this connexion, Table 2 merits close attention. 4
4 Data for 1696-1914 taken from M. A. Tzvyetkov's book Changes in the Rate of Forestation of European Russia from the End of the XVII Century to 1914, published by U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, 1967, and for the year 1966 according to the data of the latest estimate of forest resources. As there is some difference in the frontiers of the compared territories for 1914 and 1956, the given index must be considered approximate.
TABLE: 2. - CHANGES IN THE PROPORTION OF FORESTED AREAS IN THE EUROPEAN PART OF RUSSIA OVER THE PAST 260 YEARS
|
Areas |
Percent of forested area for the years |
||||
|
1696 |
1796 |
1868 |
1914 |
1956 |
|
|
Territories of 7 Regions around Moscow (Vladimir, Kaluga, Moscow Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver [Kalinin], Tula): |
53.2 |
41.6 |
31.0 |
22.2 |
22.2 |
|
Tambov and Penza regions |
46.1 |
32.6 |
24.0 |
16.2 |
14.5 |
|
Middle Volga regions (Simbirsk [Ulyanovsk] Samara [Kuibyshev], Saratov): |
18.0 |
16.4 |
15.3 |
12.1 |
12.6 |
|
Baltic regions (now Republics): |
36.1 |
36.1 |
31.7 |
23.5 |
19.0 |
Increased logging meant, in the first place, that extensive measures had to be taken for the study and management of the stands in the newly worked, thickly forested regions. But, in the course of this study, it became evident that Soviet Russia had considerably more forests than was estimated, both in 1914 and in the 'twenties and 'thirties under the Soviet regime. Thus, whereas in 1914 the forested area of Tzarist Russia was reckoned at approximately 570 million hectares 5, by 1937, as a result of inventory corrections, this figure was increased to 628 million hectares 6, while according to the data available on 1 January 1956 it comprises 681 million hectares, even without reckoning the collective farm forests. Estimates of the growing stock of timber have risen from 45,000 million cubic meters, according to 1937 calculations, to 78,000 million cubic meters, according to the latest data.
5 M. I. Ivanovsky, Essays on the Economic Geography of the Forest, State Publishing House, 1926.
6 See volume 50 entitled U.S.S.R., of The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, 1957.
However, the main bulk of the forest resources of the country, including those newly come to light, are still as before, in the regions of the north and of the Asiatic part of the country, remote from the centers of economic life. As a result of the efforts to supply the central provinces and the sparsely wooded regions of the south with timber from the remote, well-forested regions, timber transport by rail is being rapidly extended over greater distances. Average transport distances throughout the country rose from 415 kilometers in 1913 to 1,293 kilometers in 1966. An excessive increase in transport distances and in the volume of the timber conveyed causes an economically unjustifiable rise in the cost of timber at the place of consumption. If one takes into account that, according to present forecasts, timber consumption throughout the country is expected to increase, even discounting possible economies, to no less than 450 million cubic meters by 1975, then the unfavorable consequences of a further increase in the distances timber is transported can easily be imagined. Hence, of late years, side by side with the problems involved in putting more and more forests of the well-wooded regions to industrial use, there has arisen with no less urgency the problem of definitely increasing the forest stocks in the central provinces, in the west and south. This is to be effected by afforestation of all suitable but, for various reasons, unproductive lands of the State forest reserves, and by a broad scheme of measures for increasing the stand yields (introduction of fast-growing species, land drainage, restocking of low-grade coppice, etc.). Only in the course of the sixth Five-Year Plan was provision made to plant up to 3,000,000 hectares of forest with economically valuable and fast-growing species, mainly in the poorly wooded areas of the European part of the country. In carrying out this task, the experience of the foresters of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy and other countries has been very useful to the U.S.S.R. The sixth Fire-Year Plan also provides for projects promoting natural regeneration on an area of 3,800,000 hectares and in establishing over 800,000 hectares of protective forests.
Such projects ensure an increase of forest resources on a wide scale in the central, western and southern regions, as can readily be seen from the following data. In 1955, the felling area in the Volga region comprised 28,400 hectares, while the area reserved for natural and artificial regeneration comprised 34,300 hectares, or 121 percent. The area of regenerated forest in the northern Caucasus exceeded the felling area by 25 percent: in the western region, including the Baltic Republics and the Byelorussian S.S.R., by 34.5 percent; in the southern region by 181 percent. The situation was approximately the same in 1953 and 1954. It is easy to see how profoundly these indices differentiate the Soviet economy from that of the prerevolutionary period. 7
7 Data for 1953-1954: see Lyesnoe Khozyaistvo, No. 5 for 1966, page 56.
In recent years, altogether 700,000 to 800,000 hectares of new forests for various purposes have been planted annually in the U.S.S.R. on the lands of the State forest reserves, whereas in prerevolutionary Russia the number of hectares planted in the Crown forests during the whole period of the development of silviculture was only slightly higher, altogether 891,000 hectares.
The dynamics of the growth of the work of forest planting is significant. In the years 1921 to 1928, 410,000 hectares were planted; during the first Five-Year Plan, 534,000 hectares; during the second Five-Year Plan, 684,000 hectares; during the three years of the third Five-Year Plan, 964,000 hectares; during the fourth Five-Year Plan, 1,716,000 hectares. Moreover silvicultural work embraces up to 800,000 hectares annually as compared with 50,000 to 60,000 hectares in the State forests of Tzarist Russia. Large-scale projects are in hand for guarding forests against fires and protecting them from disease and pests, for both of which purposes, as well as for carrying out forest inventories, aircraft are now being widely used. Nevertheless, success in guarding and protecting the forests is still far from satisfying either the foresters themselves or the public, representatives of which have recently repeatedly expressed their views in this regard in the form of critical articles.
Organizational structure of forestry
In the U.S.S.R., the logging and distribution of timber from the State forests are centralized under a single economic plan. Recently, in connexion with the reform of industrial management, as in the case of other industries, a start has been made to put forest industries under the direct administration of the newly-created local centers of the Soviet national economy. The forest resources of the State forest reserves, however, remain as before under the central authority of the forestry agencies of the Ministries of Agriculture of the U.S.S.R. and of individual Union Republics. This organization of the country's forestry ensures that both national and local interests in forest utilization and production are taken into account.
To meet local requirements and, especially, those of the collective farms and the rural population (apart from the sale to them of timber from the State lumbering industry and from logging carried out by local authorities) special timber resources, namely, the collective farm forests, are allotted throughout the U.S.S.R. These stands, formally and in principle assigned by the State to the collective farms for their perpetual use, in many regions comprise 20 to 25 percent of the total forested area. It is characteristic that, in many poorly wooded regions, the collective farm forests cover a much greater proportion of the total forested area than was formerly taken up by the peasants' forests. Thus, in the central regions, in 1913, the combined area of peasant's forests was 6.5 percent of the total forest area, whereas now the collective farm forests comprise 19 percent. In the south of the European sector of the country, the proportion of such forests rose from 13.6 to 19.5 percent and in the western region from nil to 26.2 percent.
Although, in recent years, wood supplied from the State forests has had to be paid for, most of the by products are free. This contributes in no small measures to increasing the prosperity of the inhabitants of the forest regions.
Succession of species: birch with advanced growth of spruce. Danilovsky leskhoz, Yaroslavl Region.
Research and training
Outstanding successes have been achieved during the last 40 years in developing scientific research in forestry and in the sphere of training the necessary technical personnel.
In prerevolutionary Russia, only two university-level institutions trained foresters, whereas at present there are 11 university-level specialized forestry institutions and several schools of forestry in the universities as well as in polytechnic schools and agricultural institutes in the U.S.S.R. There are also 26 secondary technical schools of forestry and 19 schools that give one-year courses. Altogether, 10,000 students are studying in various specialized fields of forestry, while 12,000 young people are being trained in technical schools.
Over 12,000 engineers, 22,000 technicians and 46,000 junior foresters hold responsible forestry positions. Recently, it has been decided to appoint technician-foresters with specialized training instead of forest rangers.
Research on problems of forestry as a science, which was mainly done in the past only at university-level forestry institutes and at eight experiment stations, is more recently being conducted by a number of specialized forestry institutes and departments in the network of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. and its branches, as well as by the Academies of Sciences of the Union Republics, the Forestry Department of VASKHNIL and eight research institutes of the Ministries of Agriculture of the Union, the Russian Socialist Fedderal Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and others, and a large number of forest experiment farms (leskhozes) and stations in various parts of the U.S.S.R. The number of workers in forestry research has increased tenfold in the past 40 years.
The future
Naturally, forestry in the Soviet Union owes a considerable part of its success to the results of the work of these people and institutions.
It would, of course, be wrong to think that the present level of our forestry ensures a scientific and full-scale utilization of all the resources and values that are created and can be created in the forests of the country. In many regions, especially in the north and in the Asiatic part of the country, forestry is still at a low level. There are many shortcomings both in the organization of logging and in the whole forest industry. The elimination of such defects is one of the important tasks of the daily work not only of the various units of the Soviet Forest Service but also of all organs of the Government, national and local. For this reason at the present time the Soviet people, and in particular the forestry workers, noting with satisfaction the successes achieved in the past 40 years, continue with undiminished zeal to criticize the backward sectors and aspects of their forestry, so that by overcoming the shortcomings, they may go forward to new successes.
Article translated from an original Russian text
