ABSTRACT
Since the 1930s, overlapping administrative hierarchies extending from the central party and state authorities in Moscow to the smallest farm production squad have controlled Russian agriculture. A Ministry of Procurements and Ministry of the Food Industry have usually been separate from the Agriculture Ministry. Soviet agriculture has been caught in a peculiarly vicious circle. Increasing capital investment led to higher-cost production as much as, or more than, it increased gross output. Although the old model applied uniformly throughout the former Soviet Union, the discussion of reforms applies primarily to the Russian republic. A major organizational force for change in the Russian countryside has been the Association of Peasant Farms and Agricultural Cooperatives of Russia (AKKOR), a voluntary interest group established with the help of considerable central pressure. The state support needed to establish AKKOR, and its privileged access to the Russian government, mean that AKKOR could become a new monopolist.
