ABSTRACT
Public discussion of the denationalization of agricultural land in the Russian Federation began in 1989. A land market of the type that emerged in much of Western Europe by the end of the nineteenth century did not appear in Russia before collectivization in the 1930s because of the relatively late abolition of serfdom and because of the legal procedures adopted for its abolition. Russian peasant households usually clustered together in a village rather than situating themselves on individual farmsteads. The agrarian issue became entangled in the breakup of the Soviet Union, as the Russian Federation emerged as an increasingly autonomous unit within the USSR and then an independent state. In June 1990, the First Russian Congress of People’s Deputies resolved that the issue of revitalizing the countryside and improving agricultural productivity should be examined at a special session of the Congress.
