Land reform in post-communist Russia: the effects of household labour

Among post-communist states in Europe, Russia represents an important case study of land reform – if for no other reason than its sheer size. It is the largest nation on earth, stretching from Europe to the Asian Pacific. Russia’s land privatization in the 1990s represented the country’s third great land reform in the twentieth century. The first, the so-called Stolypin reforms of 1906-11, attempted to break up communal control over land usage and to create a stratum of individuals and households that would engage in private agriculture (Volin 1970: ch. 5; Yaney 1982: chs 5-9; Macey 2004).