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In this issue, OZ is addressing the land reform issues. What is the reform about? How should today’s national agricultural policy be shaped? Who will take title to the land? How are the future title-holders going to use the land? Does Russia need to invest in domestic farming, or must it switch to importing all of its food? How is the federal policy towards the rural land distribution and cultivation being developed? What does the latest agronomical research offer to agricultural producers? What are the ways to balance the disproportion between urban boom and rural deterioration? These and other issues are examined by specialists on the “agrarian question.”

The modernization process and moving from a traditional to “rational” form of society demand new forms of legitimization of land ownership. In an overview of eight projects of solving the socalled agrarian question in Russia from the 18th century to the modern legislation, Andrey Medushevsky points to the necessity of creating in Russian society a new common-law consensus on land use and property reform, a conscious effort undertaken by society in order to legitimize the reform. This effort could eventually lead to solving the agrarian question as a whole, and would at least minimize its damaging impact on the life of the nation.

There are two historically known ways of dividing feudal land property: the Athenian and the Macedonian one. It is not the question of being “radical” or “conservative” but rather just or unjust that defines the subsequent course of historical development. Speaking on agricultural reform, Qin Hui aims to discern real political and economic processes behind both leftist and liberal rhetoric.

The social class of Russian peasants is becoming extinct. Ilya Shteinberg illustrates the process resulting from the developing Russian capitalism by poll figures gathered in the last decade. According to Shteinberg, the class as a bearer of certain moral characteristics is going to finally disappear in the nearest future. It will be replaced by new-type agricultural businessmen of different caliber, individual farmers, and independent agricultural producers united in cooperatives and associations.

Characteristics of farming in the Russian Federation vary to a great extent across its vast territory according to the changing geographical conditions. One of the most important factors that influence performance of individual and collective agricultural enterprises is their location near OR far from large cities. Tatiana Nefedova in an overview of the current state of the Russian agriculture raises an issue of the lack of urban centers and population on the Russian territory necessary for the progress of the farming business.

By the end of the Yeltsin era, moderate readings of both liberal and conservative approaches to the “agrarian question” had drawn together and comprised a broad centrist outlook. Olesya Kirchik notes that the evolving political accord should not prevent politicians from continuing the debate, especially in the absence of a real consensus in society.

The project of bringing public kolkhoz land into private ownership developed by researchers of the All-Russia Institute of Agrarian Problems and Information that became a cornerstone of the agrarian reform of the 1990s was aimed at boosting the rural economy. Galina Rodionova gives an account of the motives and agendas of reform participants, and describes actual reform outcomes. Adoption by an agricultural enterprise one of the either the development or surviving reform strategies depended on the availability of required resources at the enterprise.

Based on a comparative study performed in Kharkiv and Voronezh regions, Jessica AllinaPisano analyzes current agricultural reform outcomes. Different paces of reform and strategies have lead to similar results, the author states. Grave material hurdles engendered by the macroeconomic reforming impacted land distribution. They put local administrators that appeared to be less democratic than their late-Soviet institutional predecessors in control of the situation. However useful this power concentration was in a sense of ensuring national food security, social stability, and continuity of a limited set of services, it failed to accomplish initial reform goals which supposed moving means of production into workers’ ownership. The actual reform created a basis for evolving either into latifundia or vertically integrated structures typical for the United States that are subsidized by government and labored by a politically weak immigrant workforce.

Viktor Danilov interprets the attempts to reform the agricultural sector of the Russian economy made by the Gorbachev and Yeltsin administrations from the shestidesiatniki, or people of the 1960s, viewpoint. The attempts, by Danilov, were undecided and vain, and the main reasons for failure were the halfhearted disavowal of Stalinist methods of agricultural management and neglect of the Lenin’s concept of “civilized agricultural cooperatives” as a cornerstone of socialism.

Alexandra Veselova gives an account of the Imperial Free Economic Society (Volnoe Ekonomicheskoe Obshchestvo) that was created in 1765 and gradually acquired political influence. The Society played an eminent role in the development of agricultural science and theoretical economics in Russia. However, it ultimately failed to accomplish its mission – “to find and determine a practical way of farming and rural household management in the Russian landlord agricultural estates, by which both the landlord and each of his peasants would yearly improve their economy and increase their income, according to the varying local advantages and conditions mostly typical for Russia.”

Natalya Proskuryakova scrutinizes legislation, the course of land use reorganization, and activities of the Peasant Land Bank in 1906–1914. She concludes that, despite considerable costs unavoidable in a transformation of similar scale, the Stolypin reform initiated radical change in the life of the Russian country. It created a basis for overcoming an extensive crisis that thwarted the country’s rural economy.

How successful was Stolypin’s land use transformation project? To make an assessment, one would need to answer, among others, the question, how did Russian peasantry react to the reform. Based on archival research, Judith Pallot argues that by modifying the reform policies the peasants manifested their opposition to the official agrarian policy. Pallot argues against simplistic interpretations of the peasants’ resistance.

Orthodox Marxism generated by the first generation of Marx’s followers and adopted in the Erfurt program of the German Social Democratic Party did not contain special theses on peasantry or free farmers, who were viewed an obsolete social class to be replaced by the evolving classes of the capitalist society. Teodore Shanin exposes a set of fundamentally different proposals of solving the agrarian and peasant question originated by Vladimir Lenin. His projects assumed measures ranging from the quest for totalitarian collectivization to professing agricultural cooperatives a cornerstone of socialism. His views were largely influenced by such great social, economic, and political events of the time as the revolution of 1905, Stolypin’s reform, Russian Civil war, and the New Economic Policy.

Alexander Nikulin overviews work of Russian rural sociologist, Deputy Minister of Agriculture in the Kerensky government Alexander Chayanov killed in a 1937 purge. According to Chayanov, the social economic world around us is a perpetually transforming variety of economic models. Chayanov who had thoroughly studied pros and cons of agricultural models all around the world, formulated ways of optimal agricultural output combined with balancing interests of farmers, capitalist market forces, and the state. His ideas nourished foreign agricultural policies and were used as a basis of what is known as “agroecology.” However, these ideas have ever been thoroughly neglected by Russian policy-makers.

How is Russia’s joining the World Trade Organization going to affect Russian farming? Elmira Krylatykh overviews the history and basic principles of WTO, including rules of managing international agricultural production, and analyzes the talks on Russia’s joining the organization which started in 1993. Krylatykh argues that persons responsible for carrying on the negotiations must assert Russian national interests more boldly and consistently.

The Agrarian Party of Russia is one of the country’s most long-living political parties. Viewed in the beginning as an assembly of rural Soviet-type functionaries who would do everything to prolong the existing rural status quo, APR in no more than a decade proved to be quite a viable structure. Alexey Makarkin lists APR’s political trump cards.

Natalya Shagaida examines developments in the agricultural land market in Russia. She views the pre-reform and current situation on the market, principles of bringing public land into the private ownership, repartition of public property during the reform, agricultural land turnover, and restrictions imposed on it.

During the last decade, government officials have been comforting themselves and the society by statistical figures asserting that national agricultural production is well and profitable. Pointing to inconsistencies of official statistics, Georgii Khanin and Dmitrii Fomin assess the real situation in the food production sector which is on the brink of an imminent collapse. The great bulk of the Russian agricultural income is being used by food manufacturers and dealers whose profits are steeple high. The authors point to a possible macroeconomic solution of the problem.

The paper by Vasily Uzun and the following discussion are about the tendencies of development of large agricultural enterprises in Russia. Uzun examines, how effective the enterprises are, how their evolution is influenced by the federal and regional agricultural policies, and how the large businesses interact with family farms. Uzun researches the expediency and perspectives of the concentration of capital, production facilities, and material resources in the hands of agricultural mega-producers and creating agricultural holdings.

Bringing public land into private property in the country differs radically from that in the urban area. Valery and Olga Vinogradsky consider interactions between new (private) and traditional (communal) structures. Strangely, the new land use legislation usually does not take these circumstances into account, which hinders the growth of the small agricultural enterprises and impacts adversely on the national economy. The article is illustrated with extensive interviews with farmers of Saratov region conducted in the fall 2003.

Liubov’ Ovchintseva studies the reasons and traits of Russian rural poverty. She notes that it is not merely poverty from the point of view of income but also from the point of view of access to the basic elements of social security, which prevents the people from using opportunities. One of the phenomena analyzed is illegal employment. Ovchintseva explains why the “black market” of hired agricultural labor is so sustainable in the Russian conditions, and how it pays both to employers and agricultural laborers. She concludes with the list of measures that will alleviate the situation of country dwellers.

Olga Fadeeva describes the situation in the West Siberian rural labor market as a vicious circle: economic hardships have eroded the structure and quality of local labor, which in its turn results in a deeper crisis. Only a state sponsored special policy aimed at supporting country youth and stimulating its self-organization could help to overcome the crisis.

Land where the gradually curtailed militaryindustrial institutions were previously allocated is currently being brought into private ownership. Vladimir Kagansky and Boris Rodoman point to the fact that the land constitutes a well-preserved natural environment with an ecology-friendly transport and industrial infrastructure. Besides, it also has a system of border patrol set up by the military. All this makes the land the only natural resource of global importance still preserved in Russia. The state has to oppose private ownership of the land by “ecologizing” and converting it into natural reserves.

It is urban rather than rural land that is of interest for businessmen, and the issue of the price that business owners will have to pay for purchasing or leasing the land on which their respective enterprises are located has been a major controversy in today’s Russian economy. If prices are as extortionist as regional and Moscow municipal authorities claim they have to be, the majority of businesses will be devastated and the country will have to say goodbye to the prospective economic growth, let alone the hope of doubling the GNP, Alexander Gudkov warns.

During the time of socialism, Russian urban house building used to be sponsored by the state. Now agents of private economy freely choose location for their homes and businesses. Land and real estate, including urban housing, are being denationalized. Now when the urban housing stock is degrading, engineering municipal infrastructure is nearly destroyed, and urban construction cannot cover the needs of the nation, preservation of socialist town planning could lead the country to the catastrophe. Today we have a unique opportunity to alter our approach to the urban development. Alexander Krivov proposes a national strategy of solving the housing problem.

Andrey Moroz tracks traditional ceremonies, beliefs and mythical notions of land still preserved by the modern peasantry. The main conclusion is that the folk conception of the land is being altered. Moroz’s research is based on the case studies conducted in one of the regions of the Russian North.

On the verge of the 19th and 20th centuries, Russian researchers asserted the existence of the cult of personified Mother-land among the Russian peasantry. Alexander Panchenko is skeptical about the theory: according to him, it was merely an influence of the Romanticist folklore studies. According to Panchenko, the popular belief has neither Russian nor especially Slavic roots.

Characteristics of farming in the Russian Federation vary to a great extent across its vast territory according to the changing geographical conditions. One of the most important factors that influence performance of individual and collective agricultural enterprises is their location near or far from large cities. Tatiana Nefedova in an overview of the current state of the Russian agriculture raises an issue of the lack of urban centers and population on the Russian territory necessary for the progress of the farming business.

Continuing the earlier discussion of Islamrelated issues, we publish an excerpt from Ismail Bey Gasprinskii’s work first published in 1906, and an article by David Hovhannesian on the emerging of the Islamic value system.

Konstantin Poleshchuk’s essay depicting everyday life of a rural area in the Omsk region is prefaced by a historical reference. The scenes of ruin and degradation of the Russian country are quite distressing. Speaking of an episode of a scotched local mutiny of 1998, Poleshchuk argues that to follow the adventurer who attempted to stir up the rebellion, was only possible to people driven to blank despair.

An image of the Russian country estate could be the most romantic and attractive popular image of the old days. It has incarnated in works of literature, painting, theatre, and cinematography. Sadly, the harmony of the image did not conform much to the reality, Alena Solntseva argues. Many Russian landowners who viewed country living as a harmonious escape from the vanity of city life did not have sufficient education and experience to successfully manage their property. Solntseva confronts the dream world of Russian landed gentry with the their actual battles with estate management while telling a story of estates of Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Alexander Ostrovsky.

St Petersburg’s 300th anniversary, both as a historical date and an important event in current Russian life, gave rise to numerous reflections on the city’s history: on the St Pete’s-related mythology, on the special “St Petersburg discourse” in literature and in everyday life, on the role of the city in Russian history, and on the political, social, and cultural aspects of the anniversary celebration. OZ introduces two viewpoints on these issues.

Adrian Selin regards another side of the ratio between the social myth and historical reality in St Petersburg-related discourse. Primary sources from history give us a chance to correct the usual image of the “Window into Europe” that supposedly had been opened by Peter the Great in the deserted Finnish swamps. Actually, churches, villages, and even cities had existed in the Neva delta before Peter founded the city.

In a fashion defying official ideology, Konstantin Bogdanov tracks formation of a folklore myth of conformity of St Pete’s pathogenic geographical location and climate to spiritual and physical frailty of the city dwellers. The myth goes back to one of the first medical descriptions of the metropolis made by a traveling Swiss physician that prompted the tradition of literary “physiological sketches” of the city.