ABSTRACT
The dissolution of collective production in agriculture and the accompanying re-establishment of the peasant as master of the land have emerged as central issues in Russia’s economic-reform process. Although decollectivization provides the perceived answer to the question of what is to be done, the crucial issue of how to do it inspires more controversy than consensus. The distribution of the material and natural resources associated with the Russian agricultural sector has proven even more difficult than in the industrial sector. In this essay I seek to examine difficulties inherent in both the division of collective agricultural assets and the socioeconomic conditions in which the division will take place. The success of private farming and concurrent marketization will not only be judged by measures of agricultural productivity and gross output but also by the way in which the shift to private farming and marketization can provide replacements for the full range of activities collective farms have performed in rural society and the perceptions of the agricultural labor force toward the legitimacy of asset distribution.
