Rural Property and Economy in Post-Communist Albania by Harold s> Lemel (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 587 stretching a point, when he suggests the presence of personification in the phrase 'cold schools' (p. 62). This is followed by 'The collapse of the USSR and the discourse of emptiness' after which comes 'The filling in of the emptiness',illustratedby a particularlysavagequotationfromthepoet Aleksei Parshchikov:'Whetheryou are territoryor a girl does not matter, in [a world where] the word has gone wild' (p. 80). Fourexamplesaregiven of the trapsto which discourseisprone when using visiotypes: V. Tsymburskii's Russia as an island; D. Galkovskii's broken compass; A. Dugin's mysteries of Eurasia; and A. T. Fomenko's new chronology (breathtakingly,deriving Batyj from bat'ko[father] and Mamai from mama[p. 97]). The last two sections are devoted to the visiotype of dispersal, where Guseinov leaves behind his review of caricature and 'philosophical occultism' in favour of 'pragmatic cartographic publicistics' (p. 99), adducinga flood of conspiracytheoriesto explain Russia'sisolationas a giant iceberg, with, moreover, asiatic characteristics.The last section is, indeed, entitled 'Russia or Northern Asia', in which the author incorporates in its entiretyan annotatedballadby EvgeniiRepin (pp. II8- I9). This fascinatingstudy of national paranoia is slightlymarred by technical glitches, such as occasional missing words, lines and references (pp. 8, i o6, I 22), transposed letters (pp. 76, I90) and misplaced punctuation (pp. 5I, 52). All these may be forgiven, however, in view of two more slips: 'N[inel?] Lenin' (P. 29) and 'I. V. Sralin' (p. 38). In view of Guseinov's subject they are hardly likely to be taken as accidental by many of those quoted in this study. Original and richly documented, this monograph presents a vivid and depressing picture of a country trying to come to terms with a major change of status. Gasan Guseinov manages far better with his analysis than did John Foster Dulles in the case of Britain, insofar as that he is entertaining as well as enlightening. This thoroughly researched and richly illustrated book deserves a wide readership amongst modern historians and, indeed, all who have been watching with a mixture of pity and horror the ongoing travails of post-Soviet Russia. SchoolofSlavonicandEast EuropeanStudies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University College London Lemel, Harold (ed.). RuralProperty and Economy in Post-Communist Albania. Berghahn, New Yorkand Oxford, 2000. xxiii + I6o pp. Notes. Tables. Figures.Index. ?3o.OO. NATIONWIDE rioting in 199I-92 and in 1997 contributed to the worst postCommunist production decline in eastern Europe, outside war-torn former Yugoslavia.The disorderof I99l-92 was mainlyrural,comprisingthe seizure of land and the ravaging of state assets: the stripping of public buildings, schools and health centres was an insensateprotest againstforty-fiveyears of bondage to the state, but the theft of fencing and the ripping up of railway sleepers and signal wire were motivated by the need quickly to demarcate villagers' land as Albania's particularly repressive collective farming was abandoned.The insurgencyof 1997 wasurban,sparkedby investorsfrustrated 588 SEER, 79, 3, 200 I at lack of redress against the politically well-connected fraudsters of the pyramid schemes. It was furtherfired by protest against the rigged general election of the previous year which had upheld an increasinglyauthoritarian president.Army arsenalswere looted and by mid-2ooo halfa millionweapons were stillprivatelysecretedwithin the countryor in Kosova. It was in the years I 993-96, between these two 'times of troubles',that Dr Harold Lemel, a land tenure consultantwho had advisedgovernmentsin the Middle East, Africa, East Asia and the Caribbean, headed village surveys underthe auspicesof the MinistryofAgricultureand the LandTenure Center of the University of Wisconsin at Madison with fundingfrom the WorldBank and USAID. The Wisconsin Center was administeringin Tirana a national Immovable Property Registration System (IPRS) and provided three of the contributorsto this book, Peter Bloch and Susana Lastarria-Cornhielon its staffand Rachel Wheeler, then a doctoral student. The fourth contributoris the Albanian Registrar of Lands, Albert Dubali. Lemel writes four of the chapters(methodology;involvement in farming;tenure security;and land use and investment)and one eachjointly with Wheeler (creditaccess)and Dubali (landfragmentation);Blochwritesone (ruralpropertymarkets);andLastarriaCornhiel and Wheeler together explore implications for gender roles (family and propertyrights). The need for a LandRegistryand an IPRS arosefromthe obliterationof possessionalboundariesand the invalidationof the familytapi(landcertificate) by the collectivization campaign of 1957-60. Lamel's surveyposed...