Soviet men into peasants: Property rights and economy in the Black Earth, 1991--2000 (Russia, Ukraine)

This is a study of post-Soviet land reform in an area of Russia and Ukraine known as the Black Earth. It focuses on redistributive policies in two administrative regions: Voronezhskaia oblast' in Russia and Kharkivs'ka oblast' in Ukraine. This study shows how land privatization policy impinged on the material and political interests of both producers and those charged with overseeing the reform process. State officials created a façade of compliance but did not intervene when local hierarchies asserted themselves in decisions regarding the redistribution of agricultural land. For most rural residents, land rights remained theoretical: by the end of the decade, most had no access to their fields and few choices about the disposition of their property.; Change need not have occurred this way. As this study shows, producers in these two regions had begun to break away from state control and state buyers by 1991. Rural people understood that the main obstacles to efficient production were weak distribution networks and poor working conditions. Reform policy addressed a different set of concerns, seeking instead to regulate ownership of production factors. The exclusion from policy formulation of those who knew the situation best resulted in the ossification of social hierarchies.; The features of political economy that impeded the march of reform in the Black Earth are common to rural communities all over the world. Critiques of neoliberal economic policy that focus on national exceptionalism therefore do not apply; the reason for the failure of rural reforms in Russia and Ukraine lies instead in the reforms themselves.