Privatizatziya and Prikhvatizatziya: The Struggle for Land in Post-Soviet Russia Open Access

Abstract

Mikhail Gorbachev began reforming agricultural production in 1985, but his reforms were too little, too late. For nearly seventy years, collective farms in the Soviet Union created social and economic safety nets for the rural populations who worked on them. Yeltsin’s decision to privatize the entire agricultural system and the collapse of the USSR brought about a breakdown of the rule of law and legitimized the massive secondary/underground economy that had previously aided Soviet citizens in securing scarce goods. This privatization scheme was rapid and left former collective and state farm workers unemployed and often dispossessed. Few farmers were able to establish their own private enterprises in the face of resistance by rural elites. Those that did enter into private farming were preyed upon by the increasingly influential rural mafiyas (mafias). The widespread violence and rural dispossession of the post-Soviet period gave the petty rural oligarchy an opportunity to grab land, opening the door for wealthy oligarchs to buy up huge swaths of land in the twenty-first century. How did these oligarchs come to control so much land in Russia? What happened to all the agricultural producers who worked on former state and collective farms? This thesis will explore the effects of privatization and dispossession and sheds light on just how the oligarchy capitalized on the chaos created by organized crime networks operating throughout Russia in the post-Soviet period.

Table of Contents

Introduction…………………………………..                                                                        1

Chapter 1: Gorbachev’s Reforms: The Soviet Agrarian Landscape in 1985-1991...               10

Chapter 2: The Smoke and Mirrors of Yeltsin’s Agrarian Reform in 1991-2000…              25

Chapter 3: The Rise of Rural Precarity: Dispossession and Lack of Legality in 1991-2000… 41

Chapter 4: New Classes: Dispossessed and Oligarchs in 1991-2002…                                  56

Conclusion…………………………………….                                                                        68

Bibliography…………………………………..                                                                      74

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	History
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Slavic Studies History, Russian and Soviet History, Modern
Keyword	Russia Privatization Transition economies Organized crime Crime Oligarchs
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Matthew Payne, Emory University
Committee Members	Elena Glazov-Corrigan, Emory University Tom Rogers, Emory University

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