1. Sviatoslav Rybas, “Petr Stolypin kak zerkalo dlia Vladimir Putina,” Nezavisimaia gazeta February 22, 2001. http://www.ng.ru/style/2001-02-22/16_stolypin.html

2. Macey, David, “Is Agrarian Privatization the Right Path? A Discussion of Historical Models,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 21:2–3 (1994): 164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. More than fifteen years into post-Soviet land reforms, Russian social and political commentary continued to resurrect Stolypin in the service of a variety of arguments. For example, in March 2006 the Voronezh regional newspaper Kommuna urged the government to provide credit assistance to rural owners, noting, “How relevant Petr Arkadeevich [Stolypin]'s words are today!” Vladimir Shevchenko and Mikhail Lopyrev, “Spasti pashniu,” Kommuna, March 17, 2006.

4. Macey, , “Contemporary Agrarian Reforms in a Russian Historical Context,” in O'Brien, David J. and Wegren, Stephen K., eds. Rural Reform in Post Soviet Russia (Baltimore, 2002), 191.Google Scholar For this reason, Macey's comparison of post-Soviet rural reform and Stolypin era reforms emphasizes the goals and process of reforms, rather than context or outcomes.

5. I use the term “privatization” here to emphasize the ways in which contemporary Russian rural reforms, which specified the destatification and reorganization of farms, and the individuation and partition of land and non-land asset shares, echo other contemporary efforts at privatization of the commons. Macey (2002) has argued that most of these elements were not privatization as such. I argue that while privatization was not the result, it was the manifest intent of reform.

6. See, for example, Maria Amelina, “Why Russian Peasants Remain in Collective Farms: A Household Perspective on Restructuring,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 41:7 (October-November 2000) and Max Spoor and Oane Visser, “The State of Agrarian Reform in the Former Soviet Union,” Europe-Asia Studies 53:6 (2001).

7. Macey, “Contemporary Agrarian Reforms,” 191.

8. Wegren, Stephen K., The Moral Economy Reconsidered: Russia's Search for Agrarian Capitalism (New York, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Allina-Pisano, Jessica, The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village: Politics and Property Rights in the Black Earth (Cambridge, forthcoming, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Interview, farmer.

11. A similar dynamic may be observed in Ukraine. Allina-Pisano, “Sub Rosa Resistance and the Politics of Economic Reform: Land Redistribution in Post-Soviet Ukraine,” World Politics 56: 4 (July 2004).

12. Wegren, The Moral Economy Reconsidered.

13. Ibid., 88.

14. See, for example, Wegren, Stephen K., Agriculture and the State in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (Pittsburgh, 1998)Google Scholar and Wegren, Stephen K., O'Brien, David J., and Patsiorkovski, Valery, “Why Russia's Rural Poor are Poor,” Post-Soviet Affairs 19:3 (2003).Google Scholar

15. O'Brien et al. have observed an increase in durable consumer goods among villagers between 1995 and 1997. O'Brien, David, Patsiorkovski, Valery, and Dershem, Larry, Household Capital and the Agrarian Problem (Burlington, 2000), 183–90.Google Scholar Such an increase was the explicit goal of proponents of the rapid economic reform known as “shock therapy,” for example, Sachs, Jeffrey, Poland's Jump to the Market Economy (Cambridge, MA, 1993)Google Scholar. However, greater access to one-time purchases such as televisions and VCRs is not necessarily evidence of ongoing access to mechanisms of capital accumulation. In the context of hyperinflation and currency fluctuation that accompanied post-Soviet land reform, people often acquired such goods because they had no way of holding the value of their savings otherwise.

16. Hahamovitch, Cindy and Halpern, Rick, “Not a ‘Sack of Potatoes’: Why Labor Historians Need to Take Agriculture Seriously,” International Journal of Labor and Working Class History 65 (Spring 2004), 3–10.Google Scholar

17. See, for example, Mieke Meurs and Rasika Ranasinghe, “De-Development in Post-Socialism: Conceptual and Measurement Issues,” Politics and Society 31:1 (March 2003) and Nazpary, Joma, Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan (Ann Arbor, 2001)Google Scholar.

18. Dunn, Elizabeth C. discusses this dynamic in Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Ithaca, 2004), 37Google Scholar. Also see Verdery, Katherine, “Fuzzy Property: Rights, Power, and Identity in Transylvania's Decollectivization” in Burawoy, Michael and Verdery, Katherine, eds. Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World (Lanham, MD, 1999), 53–82Google Scholar.

19. Allina-Pisano, “Agrarnye reformy v Rossii i na Ukraine: sravnitel'nyi analiz,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 4:1 (March 2004).

20. Simonova, M.S., “Mobilizatsiia krestianskoi nadelnoi zemli v period stolypinskoi agrarnoi reformy,” in volume 5 of Materialy po istorii sel'skogo khoziaistva i krest'ianstva SSSR (Moscow, 1962), 458Google Scholar, reproduced in McCauley, Martin, ed. Octobrists to Bolsheviks: Imperial Russia 1905–1917 (London, 1984), 169Google Scholar.

21. Kerans, David, Mind and Labor on the Farm in Black-Earth Russia, 1861–1914 (Budapest, 2001), 309Google Scholar, citing Oldenburg, The Last Tsar vol. 2, 19.

22. Calculated from Sel'skoe khoziaistvo Rossii 1995 (Moscow, 1995).

23. Wilbur, Elvira M., “Peasant Poverty in Theory and Practice: A View from Russia's ‘Impoverished Center’ at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” in Kingston-Mann, Esther and Mixter, Timothy, eds., Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800–1921 (Princeton, 1991), 106.Google Scholar

24. Goroda i raiony Voronezhskoi oblasti (Voronezh, 1996).

25. Interview, head economist of “Fatherland.”

26. Ibid.

27. Calculated from Goroda i raiony Voronezhskoi oblasti, 1996.

28. Interview, farmer, Liskinskii raion, July 1998. Interview conducted by Mikhail Savin.

29. Interview, director of kolkhoz im. Voroshilova.

30. For example, Leonid Vybornov, “Zybkoe ravnovesie,” Liskinskie izvestiia, January 13, 1998, 2.

31. N.Ia. Averin, at conference “Problemy sovremennogo upravlenija v APK,” Voronezh Agricultural Institute, May 26–27, 1998.

32. Mikhail Nikonov. “V partiiakh i dvizheniiakh. SPS—na pul'se krest'ianskogo interesa,” Kommuna, August 21, 2003. Kommuna.ru.

33. See, for example, Macey, , “The Peasant Commune and the Stolypin Reforms: Peasant Attitudes, 1906–14” in Bartlett, Roger, ed. Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia (New York, 1990)Google Scholar.

34. Kerans, 322.

35. Kerans, 307.

36. Pallot, Judith, Land Reform in Russia 1906–1917: Peasant Responses to Stolypin's Project of Rural Transformation (Oxford, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. Gaudin, Corinne, “‘No Place to Lay My Head’: Marginalization and the Right to Land during the Stolypin Reforms,” Slavic Review 57:4 (Winter 1998), 749.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. Allina-Pisano, “Land Reform and the Social Origins of Private Farmers in Russia and Ukraine,” Journal of Peasant Studies 32:4 (July 2004).

39. Andrew Barnes, “What's the difference? Industrial Privatization and Agricultural Land Reform in Russia, 1990–1996,” Europe-Asia Studies 50:5 (1998).

40. Kerans, 351; Gaudin, 748.

41. Pleshkov, V., “Pokoi nam tol'ko snitsia,” Liskinskie izvestiia, February 13, 1992, 6Google Scholar.

42. Macey, “Contemporary Agrarian Reforms.”

43. Ibid., 191.

44. Ibid, 183. See also Shanin, Teodor, Russia, 1905–07: Revolution as a Moment of Truth (New Haven, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Yaney, George, The Urge to Mobilize: Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1861–1930 (Urbana, 1982)Google Scholar.

46. See Viola, Lynne, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization (Oxford, 1987).Google Scholar

47. By the time of the Stolypin reforms, land captains were drawn from the peasant population as well as the gentry. However, in contrast to their late-twentieth-century counterparts, they were subject to strict supervision from higher levels of authority. See Yaney, The Urge to Mobilize, Ch. 4.

48. This is not the same, however, as peasant participation, which Macey (“Contemporary Agrarian Reforms,” 192–3) views as having been central to the Stolypin reforms. Also see Burbank, Jane, Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905–1917 (Bloomington, IN, 2004)Google Scholar. This stands in stark contrast to the post-Soviet situation, in which land reforms were characterized by a lack of peasant interest or participation. Allina-Pisano, “Reorganization and its Discontents: A Case Study in Voronezh oblast'” in O'Brien and Wegren, eds., Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia.

49. Kerans points to the difficulty of using tools on thin strips, 328.

50. Kerans, 357.

51. Interview, farmer.

52. Interview, farmer, Liskinskii raion, July 1998.

53. See “Legislation on Bankruptcy in the Russian Federation: A Special Issue,” Review of Central and East European Law 25:1–2 (1999).

54. http://www.liski.infobus.ru/sme.html

55. Interview, farmer.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Allina-Pisano, “Land Reform and the Social Origins of Private Farmers.” This echoes Kerans' observation that households without livestock were one of two groups likely to favor dissolution of common grazing regimes.

59. Atkinson, Dorothy, The End of the Russian Land Commune 1905–1920 (Stanford, CA, 1983) 251.Google Scholar Wegren et al. take the opposite tack. Finding that psychological factors (e.g. “feeling happy”) are correlated with acquisition of land, they infer that those factors determine, rather than reflect, plot expansion. Wegren et al., “Why Russia's Poor are Poor.”

60. Kerans provides a useful explanation of this fundamental problem for smallholder agriculture, 333.

61. Interview, head economist of “Fatherland.”

62. Ivanov, V., “Segodnja desjatok let…igraet vsemi kraskami ‘Rassvet’” Liskinskie izvestiia, April 30, 1992, 4.Google Scholar

63. Wegren, The Moral Economy Reconsidered, 159.

64. Katherine Verdery finds this dynamic at work in Romania. Verdery, , The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (Ithaca, 2003)Google Scholar.

65. See Humphrey, CarolineMarx Went Away—But Karl Stayed Behind (Ann Arbor, 1998), 445Google Scholar, and Allina-Pisano, “Reorganization and its Discontents.”

66. Interview, head of kolkhoz im. Voroshilova.

67. For example, Bondarev, S., “Kak dela, zhivotnovod. Ne khvataet dnia,” Raionnyi vestnik, July 23, 1991, 3Google Scholar.

68. Liskin, M., “V novykh usloviiakh khoziaistvovaniia. Dokhodnyi promysel,” Liskinskoe znamia, April 30, 1991, 3Google Scholar.

69. Interview, director of agricultural artel “Chapaev.”

70. Ibid.

71. Interview, head economist of “Fatherland.”

72. Ibid.

73. Nikonov, “V partiiakh i dvizheniiakh.”

74. Peter Lindner, Das Kolchoz-Archipel im Privatisierungsprozess: Wege und Umwege der russischen Landwirtschaft in die globale Marktgesellschaft (Bielefeld, forthcoming).

75. Nikonov, “V partiiakh i dvizheniiakh.”

76. Zenina, Tat'iana, “‘Kollektivizatsiia’ po-ermolovski: ne idesh' v kolkhoz—otrezhem vody,” Liskinskie izvestiia August 27, 1996, 1Google Scholar. The villagers also were given the choice of paying 700,000 rubles per month for water. With salaries in the 100,000 ruble range, such an “option” was clearly impossible to exercise.

77. Interview, head economist of “Fatherland.”

78. Interview, farmer.

79. Interview with farmer Kur'ianova, Maria Nikolaevna, “Est' u nas takie fermery. Dat' uma zemle neprosto, esli netu sredstv dlia rosta,” Verkhnekhavskie rybezhi, December 24, 1998, 3.Google Scholar

80. Interview, head economist of “Fatherland.”

81. Nikonov, “V partiiakh i dvizheniiakh.”

82. Ibid.

83. Aleksandr Marochin, “Pochemu v Voronezhe podorozhal khleb?” Komsomol'skaia Pravda v chernozem'e February 5, 2004.

84. Kardashov, “Raionnye budni. ‘Glavnoe dlia nas—eto stabil'nost’ ’ ” Kommuna, June 22, 2004. Kommuna.ru.

85. Kerans, 352.

86. Tatiana Kovaleva, “Skol'ko poluchaet vladelets zemel'noi doli? Na Kubani proveli analiz …” Krest'ianskie vedomosti, April 12, 2004.

87. Interview, head of “Pavlovskoe.”

88. Interview, machinist of “Utra.”

89. Allina-Pisano “Reorganization and its Discontents;” Macey, “Is Agrarian Privatization the Right Path?”

90. Interview, machinist of “Utra.”

91. Inteview, district deputy head of agricultural management.

92. Interview, machinist of “Utra.”

93. Interview, director of RTP.

94. Ibid.

95. Interview, director of agricultural artel “Chapaev.”

96. Interview, head economist of “Fatherland.”

97. Gaudin, 752.

98. This pooled risk across a relatively small group of people, increasing the burden on individuals within enterprises. If, in liberal capitalist economies, such arrangements may result in “islands of security within the economy with high waters all around,” such islands were often quickly inundated in post-Soviet Russia. See Klein, Jennifer, For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State (Princeton, NJ, 2003) 257Google Scholar.

99. Atkinson, 26.

100. Interview, deputy head of district land committee.

101. Eduard Efremov, “Zemel'nyi vopros. Bezzakonie … v zakone?” Kommuna, March 17, 2006.

102. Ibid.

103. See, for example, Gavin Kitching, “The Revenge of the Peasant? The Collapse of Large-Scale Russian Agriculture and the Role of the Peasant ‘Private Plot’ in That Collapse, 1991–97,” Journal of Peasant Studies 26:1 (1998).

104. Kolodezhanskii, V., “Khoteli kak luchshe. Poluchilos' … kak nikogda!” Liskinskie izvestiia, April 4, 1996, 2.Google Scholar

105. Interview, director of agricultural artel “Chapaev.”

106. Aleksandrov, G., “S chego zakrugliaetsia ‘Rodina’. O kakom moloke govorit', esli doiarki s sentiabria bez zarplaty,” Liskinskie izvestiia, June 10, 1997, 2Google Scholar.

107. Salchikov, Aleksei, “Kar'era pervoi v raione zhenshchiny-predsedatelia rukhnula. Kto ostanovit razval v ‘Petropavlovskom’?” Liskinskie izvestiia, January 23, 1997, 1Google Scholar.

108. Vybornov, Leonid, “Zybkoe ravnovesie,” Liskinskie izvestiia, January 13, 1998, 2Google Scholar.

109. “Est' u nas takie fermery.”

110. Pokozateli ekonomicheskogo i sotsial'nogo razvitiia gorodov i raionov Voronezhskoi oblasti (Voronezh, 2003), 35.

111. Interview, head of “Pavlovskoe.”

112. Interview, head economist of “Fatherland” and interview, farmer.

113. Interview, head economist of “Fatherland.”

114. Aleksandr Iagodkin, “Vzgliad na doklad ministra iz Voronezha. U kogo chto vyroslo i komu pora obrezat'” Novaia gazeta, February 9, 2004. Novayagazeta.ru

115. Ibid. Agricultural workers in the district made, on average, 1563 rubles a month that year. The official Liski administration website reports that the district was home to 8,319 agricultural workers in 2000: http://www.liski.infobus.ru/agriculture.html; This number has declined each year (in 1999–2000 for example, the agricultural labor force decreased by four percent). Changes in statistical reporting practices after 2002 led to a different picture, but the underlying reality did not appear to have changed. By 2004, the situation would seem to have improved, with wages for agricultural workers in Liski rising to 2440 rubles—430 rubles more than the regional average. However, inflation outpaced wages during the same period.

116. Interview, head of “Pavlovskoe.”

117. Field notes in nearby district, August 1998.

118. Ibid.

119. Interview, machinist of “Utra.”

120. Ascher, Abraham, P.A. Stolypin: The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia (Stanford, CA, 2001)Google Scholar.