The first half of this book was concerned with the sources of the Brezhnev program; the second deals with its progress. In the next three chapters, we examine three aspects of the implementation of the southern strategy: the transfer of power over water use from previously dominant users to agriculture and the implementation of the new environmental and irrigation programs. All three are at the core of the “intensification” approach favored by official policy, which aims at covering the future growth of the southern half of the country, particularly the development of irrigated agriculture, through the existing water resources. But for the intensification approach to succeed, a major transfer of power, skills, and resources must take place, from established economic interests to new ones. Each of the chapters in this section is a separate facet of the same challenge: Unless power over water use can be successfully transferred, unless industrial and municipal pollution is curtailed, and unless the reclamation program can produce higher and more stable yields without overusing water, then the southern strategy will not be able to supply the desired buffer for Soviet agriculture at anything like an acceptable cost or in a reasonable time. The leadership would then face an unpleasant choice:to trim its hopes for the southern strategy or to venture the additional resources to bring in more water.

What is at issue is political power: If the Kremlin proves unable to bring about the necessary transfer of resources from old purposes to new, or succeeds only at the price of much more delay and expense than the leaders foresaw, then what shall we conclude about their power and that of the various institutions involved?