The political economy of the Russian land market

Problems of Post-Communism

Volumn 45, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 56-66

  Wegren, Stephen K ^b   Belen'kiy, Vladimir R ^a  

^a Res Inst Land Rel and Land Tenure   (Russian Federation)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0001796093     PISSN: 10758216     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10758216.1998.11655799     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. Stephen K. Wegren, ed., Land Reform in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (New York: Routledge, 1998).
2. The first act, a relatively short law titled "Law on Land Use," was originally adopted in May 1922. The May 1922 law was incorporated into the new land code, which was formally approved by the All-Union Central Executive Committee in October 1922 and came into force on December 1, 1922.
3. Edward Hallett Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 296.
4. V. P. Danilov, Rural Russia Under the New Regime (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 95-96.
5. George Yaney, The Urge to Mobilize: Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1861-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), pp. 533-36.
6. Izvestiia (March 7, 1990).
7. Points 9 and 12, respectively, of "O neotlozhnykh merakh po osushchestvleniia zemelnoi reformy v RSFSR" (On Urgent Measures for the Implementation of Land Reform in the RSFSR), Agrarnaia reforma v Rossii: dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Respublika, 1992), p. 25.
8. Krest'ianskie vedomosti, no. 38 (September 23-29, 1996): 10.
9. V. Ya. Uzun, ed., Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskie posledstviia privatizatsii zemli i reorganizatsii sel'skokhoziaistvennykh predpriiatii (1994-1996 gg.) (Social-Economic Consequences of Land Privatization and Reorganization of Agricultural Enterprises 1994-1996) (Moscow: Entsiklopediia rossiiskii dereven, 1997), section 4.5.
10. Krest'ianskaia rossiia, no. 28 (July 15-21, 1996): 1.
11. Sel'skaia zhizn' (December 15, 1996).
12. Rossiiskaia gazeta (September 20, 1997).
13. Krest'ianskie vedomosti, no. 39 (September 29-October 5, 1997): 2.
14. Krest'ianskie vedomosti, no. 40 (October 6-12, 1997): 4 (emphasis in original).
15. Sel'skaia zhizn' (February 21, 1998).
16. During the next three years, the state committee on property will retain a controlling interest in the shares, and all property of the company held abroad is to be transferred to the committee. See Sobranie zakonodatel'stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Collected Laws of the Russian Federation), no. 35 (September 1, 1997): 6984-85.
17. Throughout the article, "urban" land refers to land within the jurisdiction of urban (city) administrations, while "rural" land refers to land within the jurisdiction of rural administrations, including land used for agricultural purposes.
18. See Sobranie zakonodatel'stva Rossiiskoi Federatsii, no. 20 (May 19, 1997): 3905-6. A November 27, 1997, decree by Yeltsin allowed individuals to purchase the land located under their homes. See Izvestiia (November 28, 1997). The decree codified what had already become a reality in several Russian cities, namely St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Nizhnii Novgorod, and Tver.
19. "Arable" land is calledpashnia in Russian.
20. Rossiia v tsifrakh 1997 (Russia in Figures 1997) (Moscow: Goskomstat, 1997), p. 300.
21. The survey was conducted Altai krai, Voronezh oblast, Volgograd oblast, Vologda oblast, Ivanovo oblast, Smolensk oblast, Kaluga oblast, and Novgorod oblast. Three groups of the population were selected: experts, land owners and land users, and potential land owners and land users. The surveys were conducted in person, on site by interviewers from the university and the institute. The questionnaire (anketa) for experts consisted of 263 questions, the questionnaire for land owners and users consisted of 210 questions, and the questionnaire for potential land owners and users had 302 questions. Survey results are based on 579 questionnaires returned from experts, 2,932 from actual owners or users of land, and 2,330 from potential owners or users of land. See Institute of Land Relations and Land Tenure and Institute of Sociology (Kaluga oblast), Formirovaniie rynka zemli v Rossii: regional 'nye aspekty (Formation of the Land Market in Russia: Regional Aspects) (Kaluga: Institute of Sociology, 1997). This section is drawn from pp. 19-23.
22. Johnson's Russia List, July 26, 1997.
23. Johnson's Russia List, February 5, 1998.
24. Institute for East-West Studies, Russian Regional Report (October 23, 1997).
25. Johnson's Russia List, October 22, 1997.
26. Uzun, Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskie posledstviia, pp. 86-87.
27. Ibid., p. 88.
28. Using the U.S. Department of Agriculture mean exchange rate of 5,126 rubles per dollar for 1996. Source for land prices: Roskomzem, Gosudarstvennii (natsional'nii) doklad o sostoianii i ispol'zovanii zemel' Rossiiskoi Federatsii za 1996 god (State [National] Report on the Status and Use of Land of the Russian Federation During 1996) (Moscow: Committee on Land Resources and Land Tenure, 1997), p. 58. Calculations by authors. Data are for 1996, averaged for all of Russia. Regional variations existed, with land prices in Moscow much higher. Original data available from authors.
29. Institute of Land Relations and Land Tenure and Institute of Sociology (Kaluga oblast), Formirovanie rynka zemli, pp. 6-8.
30. The officially registered number of private farms declined from its peak of 285,817 private farms in July 1994 to 274, 300 on January 1, 1998. Many analysts believe that the official number of registered farms is overstated, as many private farms do not operate or exist on paper only. For an analysis of the difficulties facing private farming, see Stephen K. Wegren and Frank A. Durgin, "The Political Economy of Private Farming in Russia," Comparative Economic Studies 39, nos. 3-4 (winter 1997): 1-24.
31. Institute for East-West Studies, Russian Regional Report (December 9, 1997).
32. Institute for East-West Studies, Russian Regional Report (December 4, 1997).
33. One would expect a positive correlation between economic recovery, rising standards of living, and the robustness of the land market.