INSECURE LAND RIGHTS, OBSTACLES TO FAMILY FARMING, AND THE WEAKNESS OF PROTEST IN RURAL RUSSIA
INSECURE LAND RIGHTS, OBSTACLES TO FAMILY FARMING, AND THE WEAKNESS OF PROTEST IN RURAL RUSSIA

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses property reforms in the post-communist countryside (focusing on Russian policies, which have been the most “progressive” among the dominant economies of the former Soviet Union) and analyzes why they have hardly stimulated capital formation and empowerment among the rural population so far, compared with rural developments in Argentina that are discussed by Bidaseca in her paper in this issue. A comparison between the post-communist countries and Latin America is interesting for an understanding of land reforms. On the one hand, the agrarian history of these areas is very different, with 70 years of collective agriculture in the communist system of the former Soviet Union, and much shorter and more limited state intervention in Latin American agriculture. During the heyday of state intervention in the Latin American countryside in the 1970s, widespread collective and public arrangements in credits and marketing existed, but production mostly remained in private hands (with the exception of some socialist states like Nicaragua). On the other hand, the postsocialist privatization in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Eastern Europe can be seen as a chapter in a much bigger book of neoliberal reforms which have been taking place notably in Latin America, but also in Asia and Africa, since the 1980s and 90s.

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