241 



Van Atta 7 



state subsidies made ti^em competitive on the market— but not at all interested 

 in land reform if that land reform meant that their farms would be broken up and 

 they would lose their own positions. 



As these changes were underway, the 1989-1990 debates over the 

 USSR laws on land and property served to formalize divisions among USSR 

 deputies, driving most of the rural deputies together into a quasi-party, generally 

 referred to as the 'agrarian deputies. "*» This organization carried over into the 

 Russian Congress of People's Deputies, where some 200 agrarian 

 representatives agreed to act as a bloc even before the first meeting of that 

 Congress in May 1991. Formally organized as the "Agrarian Union." this group 

 has continued to act together in each session of the Congress up to the present. 

 It is probably the most conservative voting bloc in the Congress, since the 

 agrarians oppose not only the end of state subsidies (a position shared by all 

 enterprise managers), but any and all privatization, especially of land. The 

 chairman of the Agrarian Deputies parliamentary fraction, f^ikhail Lapshin. is 

 also a member of the council of the National Salvation Front, the neo-fascist 

 "red-brown" political grouping opposed to any reform. 



The land reform to which the agrarian deputies are so bitteriy opposed 

 developed in two main stages. The Second RSFSR Congress of People's 

 Deputies in November and December 1990 approved the first legislation. 

 Collective and state famis were to be divided and reorganized by determining 

 land and property "shares" for all their woricers. Individuals could sell their 

 shares to the fami and leave the countryside or withdraw their shares to set up 



* I have traced this process in more detail in my article "Political 

 Mobilization in the Russian Countryside: Creating Social Movements From 

 Above." pp. 43-72 in Judith Sedaitis and Jim Butterfield. eds. Perestroikafrom 

 Below : Social M ovementsin the Soviet Union (Boulder. Colorado: Westview. 

 1991). 



