Soviet Power and the Countryside: Policy Innovation and Institutional Decay by Neil J. Melvin, and: Agriculture in Transition: Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Post-Soviet Countries by Zvi Lerman, Csaba Csaki, and Gershon Feder, and: The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania by Katherine Verdery (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 783 expressedabout the abilityof the integrativeprocess to overcome some of the most damaging legacies of the Yugoslavwars but the analysisabout the EU's capabilitiesand staying-powermight have been more hard-headed.Chapters on 'Ethnic Albanian-Cross-Border Operations' and 'Airpower in Limited Wars'show the difficultyin findinga centralcommon theme froma book that emerged from a 200I conference at FloridaAtlantic University. But some of chapters in this collection that focus on international responses to the politicization of ethnic antagonism and state collapse are likely to be of enduringvalue. Department ofPeace Studies TOMGALLAGHER University ofBradford Melvin, Neil J. Soviet PowerandtheCountgyside. PolicyInnovation andInstitutional Decay.St Antony's Series. Palgrave, Basingstoke and New York, 2003. xvi + 279 pp. Glossary.Tables. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?5O.OO. Lerman, Zvi, Csaki, Csaba and Feder, Gershon. Agriculture in Transition. Land Policies andEvolving FarmStructures inPost-Soviet Countries. Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO and Oxford, 2004. vii + 254 pp. Figures. Tables. Bibliography.Index. ?s 5.00 (paperback). Verdery, Katherine. The Vanishing Hectare:Property and Valuein Postsocialist Transylvania. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2004. xx + 426 pp. Tables. Figures. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography.Index. $26.oo: I5.95. MARX'S disparagementof the 'idiocy of village life' has unintentionallybeen reflected in the relative paucity of books on the Soviet and transition economies devoted specifically to rural development, in comparison with those on industry,trade and the economy generally.The appearancein 2004 of the monumentalTherearsof Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, I93I-I933 (Basingstoke and New York)by R. W. Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft, to be followed by their 7he Tragedy oftheSovietCountgyside (New Haven, CT, 2005), and of the three books under review is hence a notable benchmark. The authors of these three works deploy a relevant range of social sciences to analyse the epilogue of collectivization and the prologue of reprivatizationin the five decades since Khrushchev attempted to mollify the Soviet peasantry and released some of the forces which contributed to the eventual dismantlement of collectivization in the USSR and throughout Central and South-East Europe. Melvin, a political scientist at Leeds University, begins with Khrushchev'sfarm amalgamation campaign of I950 and its apotheosis in 'agro-towns'and ends with their abandonment in the early i 980s, drawing upon architecture, urbanism, geography and sociology. Lerman, Csaki and Federare economists, respectivelyat the Hebrew UniversityofJerusalem, the Budapest University of Economic Sciences and the World Bank's Development Research Group, who initially came together as members of the first WorldBankagriculturalmissionto the then USSR in i99i, and who compare and contrastsubsequent agrarianpolicies in twenty-two transitioncountries. 784 SEER, 83, 4, 2005 Verdery is an anthropologist at the University of Michigan who plots the ethnography of interacting labour, lineage, land ownership, incentives and communality in a Romanian village, with due regard to the changing economic, legal, political and historical influences of Communist and postCommunist national and local governments. The books are products of comprehensive research, each underwritten in different ways. Melvin's examination of ruralinstitutionsand their governmental controllersis based upon detailed scrutinyof three sets of Russian Government archives, and on field work in nine Russian regions and seven other CIS republics. Lerman, Csaki and Feder use national officialand World Bank documentation in the countries concerned, including World BankFarmSurveys arisingfrom missions to nine countries in which they have severally participated. Verdery made systematicvisitsto a Romanian village,AurelVlaicu, between I 973 and 200 I, culminating in a set of oral history interviews recorded in 2000 and 2001. Although collective and statefarmingor problemsarisingfrom its dissolution are centralto the three books, they fundamentallydifferin institutionalfocus. Taking the modification of Stalin's simplistickolkhoz/sovkhoz model for rural settlementsas his case study, Melvin analyseswhat might be termed 'institutional ecology' the effect of public opinion and specialistparticipationon the activityand competition of public and Partyagencies. Lerman,Csakiand Feder 'is primarilyabout land policies and farmingstructuresas components of institutionalchange in the ruralsectorin transitioncountries'(p. 2). In both books the launch of agrarian institutionalchange is by a political leader Nikita Khrushchevin I950 for the firstphase and MikhailGorbachevin I985 forthe second -but only thelattertackled'thetraditionalpolicyin allsocialist countries [. . .] to maintain low and stable retailfood prices for the benefit of [urban]consumers'(p. 4 ), which 'allowedfarmsto functionindefinitelyunder softbudget constraintswithout proper profitaccountability'(p. 44). A necessary condition for the hardening of...