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the con side, if you think it through, it really aggravates the Rus- 

 sian financial situation even more, and that is that unless we just 

 give it to them, they have to pay for it somehow. How do they pay 

 for it? Through loans and credits, which means that they're adding 

 to their net debt, which is a problem they have to deal with at 

 some point. So whereas our intention may be good, over the longer 

 term we could be doing them more harm than we realize. 



There's a second aspect I would point out, and that is that it all 

 depends what our goal is. If our goal is to help them become inde- 

 pendent, then it seems to me that continued exports could actually 

 continue their dependence on us. I mean, that's good for our farm- 

 ers, it's good for us, but it's not necessarily good for them. 



Mr. Penny. Given the fact that Moscow is becoming less of a fac- 

 tor in the former Soviet Union, which Republics and, within Rus- 

 sia, which oblasts or regions seem to be embracing agricultural re- 

 form more enthusiastically? 



Mr. Van Atta. There are, I think, two ways to answer that ques- 

 tion. One is to look at places where reports of creation of peasant 

 farms and production and farm reorganization is most advanced. 

 The other is to look at the places where the local leadership is most 

 favorable. We think those coincide. 



I'm ashamed to say that one result of the very long restrictions 

 on American activity studying Russia and studying the Soviet 

 Union is that there is no one in the Sovietological community, or 

 whatever we are now, who can answer that question as well as we 

 would like or should indeed be able to. However, one could name 

 the Central Black Earth oblasts, Saratov, Tambov. One could name 

 Krasnodar until recently, when the oblast administrator was tossed 

 out because he was indeed supporting land reform too much. One 

 could name Rostov, and, of course, one could name Nizhnii 

 Novgorod — province on the Volga, formerly GorTcii — where a very 

 radical experiment with local economic reform is being undertaken, 

 and the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank are 

 involved in privatizing individual farms to serve as models for fur- 

 ther agrarian reform. 



Mr. Wegren. May I add as well? 



Mr. Penny. Please. 



Mr. Wegren. I agree, it seems clear that early on in the reform, 

 when the reform was defined in such a way that the farms basi- 

 cally made available the land they didn't want, then you had a 

 smaller percentage of peasant farms found in the rich black earth 

 regions. In December 1991 Yeltsin said that you can leave the 

 farm, you can take land from the farm, and the farm manager can- 

 not stop you from leaving. At that point, you had an absolute explo- 

 sion in the number of peasant farms in the black earth regions. So 

 it seems to me that this is a positive development in the exact 

 oblasts that Don has mentioned to you, the areas that have the 

 best potential for becoming more efficient and more productive. 



So what I'm saying is, first of all, yes, you can look at the num- 

 ber of peasant farms and say these areas are more conducive to re- 

 form, but there's a second aspect, and this goes back to Don's com- 

 ment about political struggle as an indicator that reform is going 

 forward, and that is that one measurement is simply to look at the 

 number of fines for land violations. For whatever it's worth, how- 



