During the 1950s and 1960s Soviet citizens were urged to settle in the Virgin Lands of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

The Kazakhstan party leader at the time of Khrushchev's announcement, Rakhmizhan Shayakhmetov, played down the potential yields of Virgin Lands in Kazakhstan.

As a short-term solution, the government began paying about 250,000 experienced farmers per year from southern regions of Kazakhstan to come to work in the Virgin Lands after they completed their own harvests.

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.

The individuals below were all recipients of the Medal "For the Development of Virgin Lands".

Medal "For the Development of Virgin Lands"

'Russia is the Virgin Land for messiahs,' Kirwill said.

Founded in 1824 as a Russian fort, Akmola, then called Akmolinsk, was called Tselinograd, or the "City of the Virgin Lands" during the Soviet era.

Smith, Henry Nash, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950).

Medal "For the Development of Virgin Lands" (5 November 1964)