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Fwd: NYTimes.com Article: Russia's Capitalists Seeking to Discard Collective Farms by Boris Stremlin 20 June 2002 07:07 UTC |
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The following article was apparently written as a quiz for
world-systems newbies: the answer to the question 'WHO are the
"capitalists" seeking to privatize the kolkhozy?' is strongly hinted
at, but not explicilty stated.
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Russia's Capitalists Seeking to Discard Collective Farms
June 20, 2002
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
KURSK, Russia, June 14 - A decade after it began its
spasmodic transition to capitalism, the Russian government
is moving to dismantle one of the lasting legacies of the
Stalinist era: the collectivization of the nation's
farmlands.
Urged by President Vladimir V. Putin, the lower house of
Parliament, the Duma, passed a preliminary bill last month
intended to create a legal system to buy and sell Russia's
vast agricultural lands for the first time since the
country's farms were nationalized in 1917.
The Duma's increasingly pliant deputies are expected to
adopt a slightly amended version by Friday, but land
remains a polarizing issue in Russia. The Communist and
Agrarian parties, regional leaders and others opposed to
the privatization of the motherland itself are threatening
to block Mr. Putin's effort as they have similar ones since
the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mr. Putin has described the reforms of Russia's byzantine
property laws as critical to the country's economic
development. But here in the rolling fields around Kursk,
as in much of Russia's black-earth heartland, the legacy of
decades of collectivization is deeply rooted.
The prospect of change has terrified farmers and others who
cling to the dream of the kokholzy, or collective farms,
that still operate more than 90 percent of the nation's
farms.
Above all, they fear a repeat of the corrupted
privatization of utilities and other state enterprises in
the 1990's, when ordinary Russians received stock in the
state businesses but most of the companies ended up in the
hands of the richest oligarchs.
Sergei I. Ivannikov, the administrator of the Kurchatovski
district near Kursk, said the proposed land reform would be
"quiet and slow, but it will again be the repression of the
people." He recalled how his own grandfather was stripped
of his farm in Voronezh during Stalin's brutal
collectivization campaigns in the 1930's, and he warned
that the consequences of Mr. Putin's legislation would be
no different.
Supporters of the privatization say it will create a true
market in agricultural property and guarantee landowners'
rights.
But many who are familiar with the situation in the
countryside complain that the legislation would in fact
disrupt those Western-style agricultural enterprises that,
with foreign investment, have slowly begun to revitalize
Russian agriculture despite the fact that they have no
clear legal rights to the land they plow.
"It will make it worse than when there was no law at all,"
said Aleksandr V. Chetverikov, a Duma deputy who owns a
company called Agroholding that operates nearly 300,000
acres, as well as processing plants and stores, in the
Kursk region.
For all of Russia's progress in forging a quasi-capitalist
economy, reform of agriculture has lagged since the
collapse of Communism in 1991, even as production of most
crops and livestock plummeted.
In a series of presidential decrees in the early 1990's,
Boris N. Yeltsin dissolved the state's control of its vast
collective farms, giving their workers shares of the
enterprises.
Today, 12.8 million Russians own these shares, and the 1993
Constitution gives them the right to buy and sell them.
But, in reality, they cannot do so since in most cases the
collective farms never divided up their properties into
actual plots of land.
One of the most contentious provisions of Mr. Putin's
proposed legislation would do away with the system that
allows shareholders to lease their properties to large, new
agricultural companies in return for annual rent, usually
paid in grain or wheat. These enterprises would have to
operate the properties in trust, turning over all profits
to the owners. Economists and the owners of these new
enterprises agree that such a provision would effectively
shut down the nascent industry.
Individuals own less than 10 percent of Russia's roughly 1
billion acres of farmland. The rest remains under the
control of the state or former collectives, said Yevgeniya
V. Serova, an agricultural economist at the Institute of
the Economy in Transition, in Moscow. There is virtually no
property trade.
The legislation backed by the government would seek to
stimulate sales - and so generate greater tax revenue - by
establishing national guidelines for the transfer of titles
for agricultural property and providing legal guarantees
for the property rights of "shareholders" that exist now
only in theory.
At the same time, the bill would extend considerable power
to local authorities to zone land exclusively for
agriculture, to limit the maximum amount a single owner can
purchase and to restrict sales to foreigners in border
areas.
In areas like the Kursk region, many fear the free sale of
land will strip peasants of what share they have in the
land as wealthy investors buy up plots. Few peasants would
be able to buy enough land to do more than subsistence
farming.
Moreover, since few of the former collectives' shares
represent actual plots, the prospect of fairly dividing the
sprawling collectives into a patchwork of smaller plots
seems nearly impossible. In Russia's vast farmlands, one of
the most striking features is the absence of fences, and
few believe they will soon appear.
Near Kurchatov, the Rodina collective still works the land
much as it did during the Soviet era, only with worse
results because of the lack of subsidies and the rapid
decay of its equipment. It has 570 stockholders today. But
they still rely on the collective's director, Garik M.
Khazaryan, for their food, their health care, even their
burials.
At the end of each harvest, the shareholders receive their
yearly salary, which last fall amounted to three liters of
sunflower-seed oil and 200 kilograms of grain, worth
roughly $200.
Even by Russian standards it is a pittance, though as Mr.
Khazaryan explained, they also buy their meat and bread at
a discount from the collective's warehouse. But the
prospect of selling their shares offers little hope and
even more risk since it would mean abandoning what social
protection the collective offers.
"It's stupid to sell," said Vasily P. Sarogin, 47, who
lives with his wife on Rodina but does no work there. "What
if something changes? The kokholz will become better off,
and they'll be able to give me more."
In Russia, the dream of owning a farm has yet to take root,
not only because of the collective history, but also
because of the economic difficulties of succeeding alone.
In Krasnaya Sloboda, a village west of Kursk, Yuri N.
Baimirov, is one of the rare Russians who holds clear title
to his land: just over 60 acres squeezed between the fields
of his former collective. In 1997, he persuaded the
collective to turn his shares into plots, and for a year
tried to make it on his own. He failed.
"The first year, when I worked the land, I had the feeling
that it really belonged to me," Mr. Baimirov, 40, said.
"But because I was no longer part of the collective, I had
no fertilizer. I had no equipment."
Prohibitions on mortgaging land meant he could raise no
capital. Now he leases his plot to another farmer. He also
works for him, receiving a monthly salary of $50 and 800
kilograms of grain in the fall. He would consider selling
his land, but there is no market for it.
Mr. Chetverikov, the Duma deputy, has built his enterprise
by controlling the entire cycle of production, leasing land
for crops and livestock and taking over food-processing
plants that deliver direct to the company's stores.
Agroholding has leased nearly 50,000 acres of land from two
dying collectives in the Kursk region, one called Demetra
and another called The Dream of the Collective Farmer.
The company has poured money into fertilizers and new
equipment, including German harvesters that have increased
yields significantly. Vitaly V. Toichkin, Demetra's
director, proudly noted that only three days ago,
representatives of a Belgian brewery visited and offered to
buy this year's crop of barley, declaring it beer worthy.
Mr. Chetverikov said he favored privatization but feared
that the prohibition on leasing would disrupt the system he
has built.
He also expressed fear that regional authorities, with whom
he has clashed in the past, would have the power to take
over lands that his company has improved. A basis of those
fears, he acknowledged, is the fact that nearly two-thirds
of the company's lands have no clear owner and would fall
to the state. "It's no man's land," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/20/international/europe/20RUSS.html?ex=
1025556215&ei=1&en=a6dadb10e933b820
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