Understanding rural reform in Russia: A response to reisinger

Abstract

HOW ARE WE TO UNDERSTAND PATTERNS OF LAND REFORM in post-communist Russia? What explains patterns of behaviour exhibited by Russian rural dwellers, and how do we explain continuities in behaviour from the Soviet period? Despite enormous institutional and policy changes since 1991 the Russian countryside has remained essentially collectivist and egalitarian. Why? In 1994 I published an article in this journal that attempted to shed light on these questions.1 In that article, which was based on several years of field work, I used a political culture approach to help us understand ongoing rural behavioural patterns that were evident during the land reform process in Russia. In addressing a series of 'why' questions I posed a triad of factors that were important in reinforcing and continuing basic political cultural attributes. This triad included the way in which reform institutions were defined, rural attitudes, and various social agents in the countryside. In that article I presented a two-staged analysis to explain rural behaviours. First, I argued that it was necessary to look at the nature of reform institutions in order to understand patterns of land reform in Russia. In particular, I was impressed by the degree to which cultural continuities were reflected in the definition of reform institutions. The definition of rural reform institutions was instrumental in framing the behavioural options that were available to rural dwellers. I argued that cultural continuities were influencing elite definitions of reform institutions. The second stage of the analysis asserted that, owing to cultural influences on reform options, individual behavioural choices were affected. Those individual choices were reflected in patterns of land reform. The policy prescription was that institutional change was not sufficient for successful rural reform. Instead, culture and rural attitudes would need to change and I suggested that this would be a long-term process. Recently, my article and the political culture approach were attacked by William