During and prior to WW2 did the Russians border their cornfields with hedges as they do in England? If they didn't how do/did they border their fields. A strange question but I just don't Know.

I would think that they didn't ,i would have thought by the size of them they would just stop and have a dirt road between them,spec on the steppes area.

Going to Berlin on the train during the cold war i must admit i didn't see any form of feild hedging at all. Well apart from there old tank fields full of rust lol.

Thanks Andrew. damn damn damn

In all the detailed accounts I've read in memoirs and other books from that time period it seemed the trend was that Russian farms did not generally have any substantial border around their crops. However, a lot of pictures you see of Russian houses you will notice that they all have fences connected to the house/structure, most likely for their livestock. If you have any WW2 books around your house, I personally would flick through the pictures... can't get much more accurate than that, hope this helps.

cheers.

As Shain said I will concur. In all the books I have, Never seen a border in crop land. Around the house's I see fences, but nothings but dirt roads around the fields. It isn't written in stone I would venture.

A lot of german memoirs of the conquest in russia state the 'open fields' of the russian steppe, and how there was nothing for miles all around. (for discusional purposes only)

just a field with a panzer III? and panzergrenadiers moving with caution through the stalks. Russians were experts in the art of camoflage and suprise ambushes in these situations but fields werem only seperated by tracks made by farmers for their equipment, live stock and such.
cheers,
Mat

I'm going out on a limb here a bit but I would think the two countries' agricultural traditions are so different that it would account for a very different appearance in rural areas.

In England there's a practice of small private plots going back at least to the enclosure movement and probably much longer than that. Likewise (say) in Normandy with the many small individually-worked fields, we see small enclosed fields.

But in the USSR and before that for hundreds of years in Czarist Russia, most rural people owned no land. It was mostly held in vast chunks by nobles (under the Czars) and collective farms (under the communists). Either way the fields were collectively worked. So you wouldn't expect to see English-sized fields with neat, well-maintained hedges.

The other thing to consider is the part of the USSR you want to depict. It's a long way from the Caucausus or Kuban (where that Pzkw-III photo was taken) to the Baltic ! The 'steppes' occur to the south. The northern part of the eastern front was heavily forested.

So the photos I've seen mostly show large open fields with treelines or dirt roads separating fields, similar to what we have in the northeast US (for different reasons). But in the villages you will see lots of fencing to confine the pigs, chickens and small children...and to hide the veggie gardens from the local commisars

If you can get it, rent "Our Own", a fairly recent Russian war film that shows their farm areas extensively. Great movie anyway even if you aren't doing modeling research.