"Catch up and overtake America in milk, cheese and meat production*"

(On the tin bucket): Whole milk

(On the cart): Forward! Hoorah!

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Drawing by Nikhukrymukryniksy**

*"Catch and overtake America" was part of Nikita Khrushchev's slogan during his speech on May 22 1957, when he promised he will surpass America in economic growth and arise as a communist utopia by the 1980s. This included tripling agricultural food production within the first three years to improve the poor-quality social living conditions of the Stalinist era.

In the first year of his three-year plan, food shortages remained problematic for Soviet Russia in spite of Krushchev's previous economic reforms during the Virgin Lands Campaign. This included lowering the taxes on kolkhoz farmers, raising prices for produce deliveries from collective farms and allowing some form of privatized land ownership for individual farmers.

Thus near the end of 1958, Krushchev held a meeting with the Central Committee to discuss on a new radical plan to jump-start further meat production for the next two years, though his plan came at a very expensive cost. During the remainder of Krushchev's plan, several state and privately owned cows were slaughtered to raise meat exports, and government funds were reallocated from other projects to purchase other beef products from neighboring regions.

By the end of 1959, Soviet propaganda had claimed that the small Western provincial region of Ryazan had produced 150 000 tons of meat, which was at the promised goal of tripled production compared to the previous year. However, that figure fell to 30 000 tons by 1960, since 65% of all the breeding cattle in Russia from 1958 had been slaughtered. To make matters worse, several kolkhoz farmers refused to work on the collectivized farms after having their cattle relocated "temporarily" to privatized farmland, and thus the annual grain production had been halved by the end of that year. This major disastrous scandal became widely and mockingly known as "The Ryazan Miracle" and became the major reason why Khrushchev stepped down from power in 1964.

**A pun combination of the Russian phrase ne khukhry-mukhry ('not to be sniffed at') and Kukryniksy---the pen name of three Russian political satire cartoonists: Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiri Krylov and Nikolai Sokolov.

Their drawn cartoon series Krokodil was widely popular in the 1930s after the rise of fascism and was highly praised for the mocking of several Nazi figures, including Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Fransisco Franco. After the end of WW2, they continued on with their work after publishing their new cartoon series Cold War until their retirement in the 1980s.

Reference: "Soviets" by Danzig Baldaev & Sergei Vasiliev, pg 68