East meets West: Utilising Western literature to conceptualise post-Soviet agrarian change

Abstract

That family farming has not become the dominant agrarian form in post-Soviet countries is now both an accepted fact and puzzle of the post-Soviet period. Drawing on Friedmann's [1980; 1978a; 1978b] work as an example, it is argued that foundational sociology of agriculture literature can provide useful insights into the post-Soviet agricultural transition, raising important issues surrounding the nature of agrarian change processes. These include: the interdependence of collectivised farming and home gardens as a joint form of production, the implications of the technical level of world agricultural production, and the role of informal ties in resisting commoditisation, particularly during periods of economic and political instability.

Notes

1 In general, state farms operated on land owned by the state, and paid wages to employees. Collective farms were run on land owned by the employees, who received both wages and dividends. In reality, distribution of dividends was rare, and employees on both had similar organisational experiences. The distinction between state and collective farms resulted in somewhat different privatisation processes, but these are not directly relevant to this paper.

2 In Krasnodar Territory, collectives and state farms were resized using a calculation based on number of workers or pensioners and the county allowance for individual allocation. For example, in Pavlovsky Region, workers were allowed 5 hectares. A collective farm of 500 workers would therefore be downsized to 2,500 hectares. The remaining would be added to the government pool.

3 New farms could therefore be several hundred hectares in size, depending on allocations.

4 Less conservative estimates by the OECD in 1999, reported that over 50% of agricultural production was being produced by personal plots.

5 In Russia, the rapid privatisation of industry in the early 1990s was the explicit condition of millions of dollars in IMF loans [IFC, 1997].

6 Although the considerable informal acquisition of enterprise resources detracts from this. The high level of transactions made outside the banking system also allows for considerable corruption among managers [Csaki et al., 2002].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lee-Ann Small

The author would like to thank Rob Burton, Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Aberdeen, for his comments on an earlier draft of this article.