Visiting the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements: An Overview

The USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements, 1959 Part II

The second in a new series looking at the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements in Moscow from the Soviet Press, 1959.

By Vladimir Novakovsky, Deputy Director, USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements

FIVE hundred and twenty acres in the northwest of Moscow have been converted into a mammoth fairground for the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements. The broad avenues are lined with 71 strikingly designed pavilions that house thousands upon thousands of displays, and with theaters and concert halls that accommodate 6,000 people simultaneously, set amidst 40,000 trees and masses of flowers.

This is not the first such exhibition of the country's work, but it is the most comprehensive ever held, larger in size and scope than the whole of the Brussels World's Fair .

In essence, the Exhibition is a visual summary of 41 years of accomplishment, the springboard from which the Soviet Union is able to make the gigantic economic leap forecast by the seven year plan.

The exhibitors are industrial plants, collective and state farms, construction enterprises, research institutes, design offices, educational and cultural centers. Those Soviet citizens of all trades and professions who have made an especially significant contribution to the country's industrial, agricultural, scientific and cultural progress are also exhibitors. Displaying their work are 1,300 industrial enterprises, 350 research and design organizations and 300 individual inventors.

The industrial section of the Exhibition shows newly developed equipment and machinery for both light and heavy industry, the new automatic lines and automated aggregates that have vastly increased the productive capacity and potential of Soviet factories.

The keynote of the agricultural exhibit is also higher production. Here past achievements are contrasted with new approaches to demonstrate the ways in which output of wheat, cotton, sugar beet, potatoes, vegetables, meat, butter, milk and wool is being raised. Dramatized displays show the changes that have been taking place in the collective farm villages in these past five or six years.

The section of the Exhibition devoted to construction displays model houses and apartments that are being built by the many thousands everywhere in the Soviet Union today. Prefabricated sections delivered to the building site from the factory and assembled there and other such advanced construction methods make it possible to forecast that a third of the total Soviet population will be rehoused within the next half-dozen years.

The pavilions of the light industries and the meat and confectionary industries are graphic evidence of the marked rise in the standard of living already achieved and the very high level aimed at by the target figures of the seven-year plan for food production, clothing, footwear, furniture, appliances and many other items that make for easier living.

 15 Republics on Display

Each of the 15 republics has its own pavilion designed to reflect the traditional architectural motifs of the region. The displays show the independent economic development of the republic as well as its peculiar contributions to the national economy.

Three pavilions dramatize the position the Russian Federative Republic occupies as the large industrial base of the country.  Its newer industrial regions - Siberia and the Far East - are developing rapidly alongside the older and more developed industrial centers.

Visitors at the Ukrainian Pavilion are met with an enormous three dimensional, sound wired map. Its 420 bulbs show the location of the republic's industries, farm regions and mineral deposits.

Byelorussia's transformation from a region of bog and marginal farm land into a highly industrialized production center is illustrated by its display of tractors, metal cutting lathes, motorcycles and radio and TV sets.

Kazakhstan now holds a leading place in the country for lead, copper and zinc. Its new industry concentrations are chemicals and machine tools. The republic's pavilion displays material on the big metallurgy plant now being built near Karaganda. Also shown are models of the centralized control and automatic block system used for mine transport, models of new shaft sinking machines and the tunneling machine "Karaganda-1".

On exhibit at of the pavilion of the Uzbek Republic are new spinning machines, a model of the unique Bukhara gas deposits, and a miniature of a cotton plantation with tiny sprinklers operating between the rows.

Among the displays at the Kirghiz Pavilion is an electrified, sound wired model of the rejuvenated Chu Valley, turned into flourishing sugar and jute country by irrigation.

The Turkmen Pavilion has a working model of the Kara-Kum Canal irrigating desert land and beautiful samples of the world famous Turkmen rugs.

Of particular interest in the Tajikistan Pavilion are an operating model of a cotton refining factory and a floating pumping station.

The Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian  Pavilions display illuminated maps and panels that describe the economic progress of their republics and dramatic material that pictures the Baltic people at work and play. There are displays of schools, community centers, summer camps and the famous Baltic Seacoast resorts.

The pavilions of the Trans-Caucasus republics Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia all illustrate through a variety of interesting visual media progress in industry, farming and education.

The stands of the Moldavian Pavilion are loaded with succulent fruits and grapes, fine tobacco and samples of the republic's canning industry.

The Innovators

Guides at many of the exhibits are the very people who invented the machine on display, or harvested the bumper crop described, or engineered the irrigation project shown in model.

Vladimir Karasev, a Leningrad lathe operator, tells interested visitors at his stand about the method for cutting metal he innovated. Alexander Gitalov and Nikolai Manukovsky  describe the methods they used to grow record corn crops. Sergei Mitrofanov explains his technique for group-machining of parts.

Guidebooks and descriptive folders are available in Russian and foreign languages. Lectures, seminars and technical and scientific conferences are held daily at the Exhibition and reported in newspapers and on radio and television.

The Exhibition has attracted great crowds of visitors from the very first day it opened, hundreds of thousands who come to see what the Soviet Union has already achieved and what it will be achieving tomorrow.