ABSTRACT
As Russians’ renewed interest in pre-Revolutionaiy agrarian reforms such as those Stolypin attempted shows, agricultural change is the key to overall economic reform in post-Soviet Russia. Agrarian reform has the explicit purpose of improving the productivity and efficiency of the agricultural sector while at the same time cutting the cost of production and permitting the elimination of subsidies. A new set of political and legal institutions are being created in the Russian countryside. During 1990 and 1991 the Russian republic adopted a series of laws providing a basis for true private farming and codifying a number of important rights and protections for private farmers. A Russian Federation resolution on March 6, 1992 confirmed this slow backing away from required reorganization of all kolkhozy and sovkhozy. There are three forms of land tenure for peasant farms: full private ownership, inheritable lifetime tenure and lease.
