A decade of land reform and farm restructuring: What Russia can learn from the world experience

The transition from plan to market initiated in Russia in the last months of 1991 had a clear overall objective: Replace the attributes of the Soviet command economy with the attributes of a market economy. Of course there were deeper and finer nuances to this sweepingly general goal, but they can be relegated to the level of political reality and practical implementation. In very general, almost schematic terms, the transition was expected to cure chronic inefficiency and improve productivity by abandoning the traditional Soviet model and emulating the market model in agriculture (and, of course, also in other sectors of the economy). Given this formulation of the transition objective, it is useful to evaluate the achievements of Russia's land reform and farm restructuring efforts during the last decade against the benchmarks of agriculture in market economies.