Tselina or virgin lands (;) is an umbrella term for underdeveloped, scarcely populated, high-fertility lands often covered with the chernozem soil.[1] The lands were mostly located in the steppes of the Volga region, Northern Kazakhstan and Southern Siberia.[2]
The term became widely used in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the Soviet Union during the Virgin Lands campaign (Russian: Освое́ние целины́|lit=reclamation of tselina|translit=Osvoyeniye tseliny) - a state development and resettlement campaign to turn the lands into a major agriculture producing region.