Agrarian Reform in Russia

This book examines the history of reforms and major state interventions affecting Russian agriculture: the abolition of serfdom in 1861 the Stolypin reforms the NEP the Collectivization Khrushchev reforms and finally farm enterprise privatization in the early 1990s. It shows a pattern emerging from a political imperative in imperial Soviet and post-Soviet regimes and it describes how these reforms were justified in the name of the national interest during severe crises rapid inflation military defeat mass strikes rural unrest and/or political turmoil. It looks at the consequences of adversity in the economic environment for rural behavior after reform and at long-run trends. It has chapters on property rights rural organization and technological change. It provides a new database for measuring agricultural productivity from 1861 to 1913 and updates these estimates to the present. This book is a study of the policies aimed at reorganizing rural production and their effectiveness in transforming institutions.