ABSTRACT
Boris Yeltsin’s attacks on collective and state farms alienated the countryside at a time when Moscow needed allies to transform agriculture. The government was concerned in the spring of 1992 about the impact of price liberalisation on agriculture. A document leaked in March 1994 revealed the advice that Yeltsin was being given to reform agriculture. It described a countryside dominated by private farms. The state was to use financial levers to undermine farms working on the basis of collective labour organisation. These farms were to vote for dissolution and the land handed to associations of up to thirty private farmers. Rural political organisation began with the Association of Peasant Farms and Agricultural Cooperatives of Russia which convened its founding Congress in January 1990. Its primary aim was to represent the interests of newly private farmers and leaseholders.
