The limits of land reform in Russia

Problems of Post-Communism

Volumn 55, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 14-24

  Wegren, Stephen K ^a  

^a SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 42549164240     PISSN: 10758216     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2753/PPC1075-8216550202     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. See Zvi Lerman, Csaba Csaki, and Gershon Feder, Agriculture in Transition: Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Post-Soviet Countries (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004).
2. See Stephen K. Wegren, Agriculture and the State in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), chap. 3.
3. See Karen Brooks et al., "Agricultural Reform in Russia: A View from the Farm Level," World Bank Discussion Paper no. 327 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1996), pp. 23, 33.
4. Gosudarstvennyi (natsionalnyi) doklad o sostoianii i ispolzovanii zemel Rossiiskoi Federatsii v 2005 godu (State [National] Report on the Status and Use of Land in the Russian Federation in 2005) (Moscow: Federalnoe agentstvo obektov nedvizhimosti, 2006), p. 32.
5. See, for example, Zvi Lerman, "Successful Land Privatization in Trans-Caucasia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia," in Building Institutions in Post-Communist Agriculture: Land, Credit and Assistance, ed. David A.J. Macey, William Pyle, and Stephen K. Wegren (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), pp. 53-75.
6. In the late 1980s, official statistics indicated that 98 percent of kolkhoz (collective farm) families had a private plot. Subsequently, rural dwellers were allowed to privatize their private plot parcels for a small administrative fee, and obtained certificates of land deeds guaranteeing ownership.
7. The 20 million hectares includes private plots, collective and individual fruit and vegetable gardens, and private farms {Selskokhoziaistvennaia deiatelnost khoziaistv naseleniia v Rossii [Agricultural Activities of the Population in Russia] [Moscow: Goskomstat, 2003], p. 12;
8. Selskokhoziaistvennaia deiatelnost krestianskikh [fermerskikh] khoziaistv v Rossii [Agricultural Activities of Private Farmers in Russia] [Moscow: Goskomstat, 2000], p. 14).
9. The number of privately owned plots has increased, but as in the Soviet period, contemporary household land plots are mostly used to grow food for household consumption, and the average size of the plots is small. Nationally, the average size for a private plot was 0.44 hectares (ha) in 2004, 0.09 ha for a plot in a collective fruit orchard, and 0.10 ha for a plot in a collective vegetable garden (Rossiia v tsifrakh [Russia in Figures] [Moscow: Rosstat, 2006], p. 225).
10. For early analyses, see Stephen K. Wegren, "The Development of Market Relations in Agricultural Land: The Case of Kostroma Oblast," Post-Soviet Geography 36, no. 8 (October 1995): 496-512;
11. idem, "Land Reform and the Land Market in Russia: Operation, Constraints, and Prospects," Europe-Asia Studies 49, no.6 (1997): 959-87.
12. Stephen K. Wegren and Vladimir R. Belenkiy, "The Political Economy of the Russian Land Market," Problems of Post-Communism 45, no. 4 (July/August 1998): 59-61;
13. Natalya Shagaida and Eugenia Serova, "Formirovanie rynka zemli v selskom khoziaistve Rossii" (Land Market Formation in Russian Agriculture), in Obzor ekonomicheskoi politiki Rossii za 2003 god (Survey of Russian Economic Policy in 2003) (Moscow: TEIS, 2004), p. 274;
14. Zvi Lerman and Natalya Shagaida, "Land Reform and Development of Agricultural Land Markets in Russia," Discussion Paper 2.05, Center for Agricultural Research, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, February 2005, p. 12.
15. Author's calculations based on data in Gosudarsvennyi (natsionalnyi) doklad o sostoianii i ispolzovanii zemel, p. 143.
16. Interviews were conducted in person by a research team from the Institute on Socio-Economic Studies of the Population (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), with a refusal rate of less than 5 percent. Households to be surveyed were selected from the household list of permanent residents in each village, This list is kept by the village administration for all households within its jurisdiction. It is updated annually and records demographic and social characteristics of the households in the village.
17. Natalya Shagaida, "Agricultural Land Market in Russia: Living with Constraints," Comparative Economic Studies 47, no. 1 (March 2005): 127-40.
18. Selskokhoziaistvennaia deiatelnost khoziaistv naseleniia, p. 12.
19. In the 2006 survey there was considerable variance among the regions. A land share was 4.3 hectares in Krasnodar krai, 4.9 ha in Voronezh oblast, 3.7 ha in Moscow oblast, 3.8 ha in Leningrad oblast, 9.2 ha in Kurgan oblast, 7.5 ha in Altai krai, 13.1 ha in Krasnoyarsk krai, 13.7 ha in Amur oblast, and 4.8 ha in the Republic of Tatarstan.
20. S.N. Volkov, "Zemelnye otnosheniia kak bazovyi factor ustoichivogo razvitiia selskogo khoziaistiva" (Land Relations as the Basic Factor for the Steady Development of Agriculture), Ekonomika selskokhoziaistvennykh i pererabatyvaiushchikh predpriiatii, no. 4 (April 2007): 5.
21. The variable included the size of the household private plot, the amount of rental land, the size of the paper land-share entitlement, and any other land obtained through arrangements.
22. The percentage of households that continued to own their land shares varies from survey to survey. In 2001, 59 percent still had their land shares; in 2006, 52 percent, with both surveys reflecting the fact that land shares had been sold, rented out, or bequeathed. The leasing of land shares-the rental of use rights-has been the most common option, and this means that the right to use the land was rented to a third party by the original land-share owners. Owners can rent the rights to all or part of the land to which they are entitled. The land can be leased to the large farm or to private individuals, with private farmers comprising the bulk of private demand. The most common response by households was that they had invested or leased their shares to a corporate farm.
23. Rachel Sabates-Wheeler, Cooperation in the Romanian Countryside: An Insight into Post-Soviet Agriculture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), p. 25.
24. Richard Rose, "Uses of Social Capital in Russia: Modem, Pre-Modern, and Anti-Modem," Post-Soviet Affairs 16, no. 1 (January/March 2000): 33-57.
25. Leo Granberg, "Rural Paths in Russia," in Reflecting Transformation in Post-Socialist Rural Areas, ed. Maarit Heinonen et al. (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), p. 57.
26. Ibid., p. 59.
27. Significant at p < .01, and total household monetary income is the only variable to have a statistically significant relationship. Other variables tested are respondent's age, respondent's educational level, number of pensioners in the household, size of family, and total number of non-redundant ties.
28. Rossiia v tsifrakh, p. 226.
29. The first of the three independent variables is household structural factors, defined as household characteristics that are not easily changed, including the size of the household (how many members), age of the respondent, gender of the respondent, education of the respondent, and the number of pensioners in the household. The second independent variable is livestock holdings, defined as how many cows, pigs, horses, and sheep the household had in 2006. The third independent variable is type of household income. The 2006 survey collected data on many different types of income for all members of the household-salaries from first and second jobs, pensions and transfer payments, alimony, food sales, dividends, business income, and other sources. Except for private farmers, business income is defined as non-agricultural income derived from non-agricultural activities. For private farmers, income from food sales was coded as business income because that is their livelihood.
30. For a discussion of corporate farms, see Dmitri Rylko and Robert W. Jolly, "Russia's New Agricultural Operators: Their Emergence, Growth and Impact," Comparative Economic Studies 47, no. 1 (March 2005): 115-26.
31. See Stephen K. Wegren, Valeri V. Patsiorkovski, and David J. O'Brien, "Beyond Stratification: The Emerging Class Structure in Rural Russia," Journal of Agrarian Change 6, no. 3 (July 2006): 371-98.
32. See Gerrit Huizer, "Peasant Mobilization for Land Reform: Historical Case Studies and Theoretical Considerations," Discussion Paper no. 103, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva, 1999.
33. For a description of the "war" over land, which pits rich entrepreneurs against common land share owners, see Krestianskie vedomosti, no. 24 (June 2007): 4.