244 



VanAtta 10 



issued a decree relieving Rutskoi of most of his responsibilities in the Russian 

 government, giving him the agricultural portfolio may have been intended to get 

 rid of the increasingly fractious Vice President by assigning him a post which 

 had doomed many careers in the USSR.s Yeltsin's later decision placing 

 Rutskoi in charge of the fight againstcrime as well as the agrarian reform also 

 suggests that the President wanted to rid himself of a political embarrassment, 

 not really have him do anything/ 



Although he admittedly knew little about agrarian policy when he 

 received his new task. Rutskoi refused to be shunted aside, moving quickly to 

 fulfill his new responsibilities. He learned quickly, managing to produce a four 

 hundred-page book on the agrarian reform in Russia by the middle of 1992.8 



In mid-April, as the Congress of People's Deputies was refusing to 

 amend the Constitution to permit the free purchase and sale of land, the vice 

 president published a long article in Sei'skaia zh/'zn'— the old official 

 agricultural newspaper known for its conservatism— proposing general coupon 

 based privatization of agricultural land.' Rutskoi proposed free trade in the 



6 Alexander Rahr. 'Rutskoi in Opposition. RFE/RLDailv Report f January 

 2. 1992). 



' "Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii: O merakh po zashchite prav 

 grazhdan. okhrane pravoporiadka i usileniiu bor'by s prestupnost'iu." No. 1189 

 (Octobers. 19921 VedomostiS"ezda narodnvkh deputatov Rossiiskoi 

 Federatsii i VerichovnoQoSoveta Rossiiskoi Federatsii No. 42 (October 22. 

 1992). article 2373, pp. 3156-3158. The fact that one of Rutskoi's bitterest 

 enemies. State Counselor Gennadi! Burbulis. was also named to the crime 

 commission increases the impression that it was not really expected to function. 



8 A. v.. Rutskoi Agcamaia reforma v Rossii (Moscow : 1992). After 1CXD 

 copies of formatted proofs were circulated and the book's publication was 

 announced at a press conference in mid-summer, it was withdrawn for revision. 

 The type was reportedly broken up. The so-called Russian-American 

 University, actually a military-industrial complex think tank, issued a 10. COO 

 copy edition of a shortened version of the book in February 1993. 



