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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. \----------------------------------------------------------/ 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 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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