Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of Stalin's crimes, and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program, and enactment of relatively liberal reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin leadership stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
Coon Rapids is a city in Carroll and Guthrie counties in the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 1,300 at the 2020 census, which is a decrease of 5 from the 2000. The small portion of Coon Rapids that lies in Guthrie County is part of the Des Moines–West Des Moines Metropolitan Statistical Area.
In the USSR, during the eleven-year period from the death of Joseph Stalin (1953) to the political ouster of Nikita Khrushchev (1964), the national politics were dominated by the Cold War, including the U.S.–USSR struggle for the global spread of their respective socio-economic systems and ideology, and the defense of hegemonic spheres of influence. Since the mid-1950s, despite the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) having disowned Stalinism, the political culture of Stalinism — a very powerful General Secretary of the CPSU—remained in place, albeit weakened.
Agriculture in the Soviet Union was mostly collectivized, with some limited cultivation of private plots. It is often viewed as one of the more inefficient sectors of the economy of the Soviet Union. A number of food taxes were introduced in the early Soviet period despite the Decree on Land that immediately followed the October Revolution. The forced collectivization and class war against "kulaks" under Stalinism greatly disrupted farm output in the 1920s and 1930s, contributing to the Soviet famine of 1932–33. A system of state and collective farms, known as sovkhozes and kolkhozes, respectively, placed the rural population in a system intended to be unprecedentedly productive and fair but which turned out to be chronically inefficient and lacking in fairness. Under the administrations of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev, many reforms were enacted as attempts to defray the inefficiencies of the Stalinist agricultural system. However, Marxist–Leninist ideology did not allow for any substantial amount of market mechanism to coexist alongside central planning, so the private plot fraction of Soviet agriculture, which was its most productive, remained confined to a limited role. Throughout its later decades the Soviet Union never stopped using substantial portions of the precious metals mined each year in Siberia to pay for grain imports, which has been taken by various authors as an economic indicator showing that the country's agriculture was never as successful as it ought to have been. The real numbers, however, were treated as state secrets at the time, so accurate analysis of the sector's performance was limited outside the USSR and nearly impossible to assemble within its borders. However, Soviet citizens as consumers were familiar with the fact that foods, especially meats, were often noticeably scarce, to the point that not lack of money so much as lack of things to buy with it was the limiting factor in their standard of living.
Roswell "Bob" Garst was an American farmer and seed company executive. He developed hybrid corn seed in 1930 that allowed greater crop yields than open-pollinated corn. He was perhaps most well known for hosting Nikita Khrushchev on his farm in Coon Rapids, Iowa, on September 23, 1959. He sold hybrid seed to the Soviet Union beginning in 1955 and played a role in improving US-Soviet communication.
David Garst, was a seed industry leader, farmer, and former Executive President of Garst Seed Company. He also worked in the livestock, fertilizer, and chemical businesses, and contributed to foreign agricultural development projects in Eastern Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. Garst believed that farming in the United States is fettered by governmental and environmental regulation.
Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. is a U.S.-based producer of seeds for agriculture. They are a major producer of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), including genetically modified crops with insect and herbicide resistance.
The Wendelin Grimm Farmstead is a historic farm near Victoria, Minnesota, United States, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The farm is located within the boundaries of Carver Park Reserve.
Garst Seed Company was a U.S.-based subsidiary of Syngenta that produced hybrid seeds for agriculture.
Whiterock Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) land trust located in west-central Iowa that stewards over 4,000 acres of contiguous land located in the Middle Raccoon River watershed, and an additional 1,000 non-contiguous land located in the Brushy and Middle Raccoon River watersheds. The Whiterock landscape almost exclusively made possible by an extraordinary planned land gift from the Garst family to Whiterock Conservancy. The landscape is a mosaic of agricultural land, wetlands, preserved prairie and oak savanna, riverine woodlands, and upland forest. The land is also home to the historic Roswell and Elizabeth Garst Farmstead, which hosted Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1959, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The land is used for recreation, environmental conservation, and for the production of agricultural products, and is managed as a working landscape where cultural, environmental, agricultural, and recreational land uses are held in equal importance.
The William A. Leet and Frederick Hassler Farmstead District, also known as the Leet/Hassler Farmstead or Glenhaven, is a nationally recognized historic district located in Manning, Iowa, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. At the time of its nomination it contained 12 resources, which included four contributing buildings, three contributing structures, four contributing objects, and one non-contributing building.
The Vander Wilt Farmstead Historic District, also known as the Heritage House Bed and Breakfast, is an agricultural historic district located north of Leighton, Iowa, United States. At the time of its nomination it included three contributing buildings, three contributing structures, one non-contributing building, and two non-contributing structures. The significance of the district is attributed to its association with progressive farming and the Country Life Movement, which sought to improve the living conditions of rural residents. The contributing buildings include the 1904 barn, the house (1920), the corn crib (1953), dairy barn (1955) and the feed lots. The two-story house was built by Douwe Sjaardema, a contractor from Pella, Iowa. The corn crib was built by the Iowa Concrete Crib & Silo Co. of Des Moines. The farm also includes a former landing strip for airplanes. It featured a 1,500-foot (460 m) grass runway where cows grazed on certain days. At one time it had a windsock and homemade landing lights. A hangar, no longer in existence, had been built in 1955. An automobile garage and two silos are the non-contributing resources. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. The 1904 barn has subsequently been torn down.
The Andrew P. Hansen Farmstead is a collection of historic domestic and agricultural buildings located northwest of Brayton, Iowa, United States. Hansen was born in Fyn, Denmark, and was five years old when the family immigrated to the United States, settling in Avoca, Iowa. He worked for the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad there before buying his first 40 acres (16 ha) from the railroad. The farm eventually grew to 120 acres (49 ha). It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. At the time of its nomination the farm included five contributing buildings including the transverse-frame dairy barn (1894), the hog house, the 1½-story American Foursquare house (1901), the Midwest three portal cattle barn (1903), and a garage (1910s). It also includes one contributing structure, the double corn crib. The house and the barns are characteristic of the building trends that are associated with Danish immigrants during the period of significance, in this case 1894–1924.
Tyden Farm No. 6 Farmstead Historic District is an agricultural historic district located east of Dougherty, Iowa, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
The Reeves Farmstead Historic District is a nationally recognized historic district located north of Le Mars, Iowa, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. At the time of its nomination the district consisted of 13 resources, including 11 contributing buildings, one non-contributing building, and one non-contributing object. The contributing buildings include an American Four Square house, a barn, cob house and wash house, hen house, outhouse, machine shed, corn crib, two hog houses, and a garage. The non-contributing building is a second garage built in the late 20th century, and the non-contributing object is an incomplete wind mill. The buildings were all built in the late 19th- or early 20th century, but exact dates are uncertain. The fully integrated farmstead from the early to mid 20th century features buildings that utilize simple architecture that was typical of many Iowa farms. It was removed from the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.
The Gary J. and Matilda Vermeer Farmstead is a historic building located east of Pella, Iowa, United States, in Mahaska County. Gerrit "Gary" Vermeer was born on a farm outside of Pella on September 29, 1918, and was educated in the local schools. He married Matilda Van Gorp at her parents’ farm on February 14, 1941. They farmed a 120-acre (49 ha) farm that had been given to them by his parents. They built this modest house on that farm in 1953 and lived here the rest of their married life. Gary invented a wagon hoist that made it easier to unload corn. It became so popular that he and his cousin, Ralph Vermeer, started the Vermeer Company to manufacture the device as well as other agricultural implements. In 1971 Gary developed the Vermeer round hay baler, "an invention that revolutionized agriculture." In addition to his business and farming, Gary was involved in the Pella community and the Reformed Church in America. He died in Pella on February 2, 2009. Matilda, who was born near Pella on February 14, 1920, died on July 19, 2014. They are buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Pella. The farmstead was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
The state visit of Nikita Khrushchev to the United States was a 13-day visit from 15–27 September 1959. It marked the first state visit of a Soviet leader to the US. Nikita Khrushchev, then First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, was also the first ethnic Ukrainian leader of the Soviet Union to set foot in the Western Hemisphere. Being the first visit by a leader of his kind, the coverage of it resulted in an extended media circus.
The Richard L. and Verda M. Alleman Farm Historic District is a nationally recognized historic district located southeast of Slater in rural Polk County, Iowa, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. At the time of its nomination the district consisted of 18 resources, including nine contributing buildings, one contributing site, one contributing structure, one contributing object, three non-contributing buildings, and three non-contributing structures.
The Meyers Farmstead Historic District, also known as the Jacob E. and Amanda Meyers Farm and the John B. and Ella Meyers Farm, is an agricultural historic district located in Lisbon, Iowa, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021. At the time of its nomination it consisted of six resources, which included two contributing buildings, two contributing structures, and two contributing objects. The historic buildings include a heavy timber frame Pennsylvania banked barn (1870s) and a feeder/hay barn. The historic structures include a combination corn crib/hog house (1880s) and a concrete silo. The contributing objects include a concrete watering trough and water pump and a metal gateway. The farmhouse is also extant but was separated from the rest of the farm buildings when South Jefferson Street was extended in 2002. That separation and the modifications made to it over the years has led to its loss of historical integrity
