Agrarian Reform in Russia

by Carol S. Leonard

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521858496
• ISBN13: 9780521858496
• Release Date: December 2010
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.2" x 9.0"