Market Transformations in the 1990s in the Russian Village

Abstract

This article examines the agrarian reform of the 1990s in Russia. It is noted that its first version was developed by domestic agricultural scientists and was designed for the phased implementation of transformations for a period of at least 10 years. However, later, under pressure from Western experts, this project underwent significant adjustments, in accordance with which the market reform in the agrarian sector was carried out more radically and at a faster pace. It is shown that the main methods of market transformations in the countryside were price liberalization, denationalization and privatization of land, distribution of land shares to farmers, creation of a farmer’s way of life, disaggregation of former collective agricultural enterprises, their transfer to market forms of work, etc. The author believes that basically these transformations in the countryside were carried out formally and did not achieve their true goal. The reformers' hopes for the economic success of farms also turned out to be untenable, since their real number was extremely small, and their actual role in agricultural production was scanty. More than half of all products of the agricultural sector were produced by subsidiary farms, which were significantly replenished by the peasants who lost their jobs. At the end of the article, it was concluded that the agrarian reform, conceived with the aim of significantly increasing the efficiency of agriculture, did not justify the hopes: the tasks set were not fulfilled, and it only actually ruined agriculture. Over the 10 years of market transformations, the area under crops has significantly decreased, the number of livestock has decreased, production has fallen by more than 50%, and the level of labor mechanization has decreased by about 33%. As a result of the market transformations in the 1990s, the agricultural industry of Russia in terms of its main indicators was thrown back 30–40 years.