245 



VanAtta 11 



coupons— and. therefore, in agricultural land— for anyone with the money to 

 buy. 



Although his ideas seem to be in the spirit of the radical privatization 

 proposed by the Gaidar government. Rutskoi generally sounds "conservative." 

 He has called for returning to a "regulated" (slow) transition to a market 

 economy and says the program to set up individual farms has failed. His 

 proposal would apparently undo all the land redistribution and privatization so 

 far accomplished. The individual farmers' interest group AKKOR— Association 

 of Peasant Farms and Agricultural Cooperatives of Russia— has publicly 

 wom'ed that all the new peasant farms set up so far could lose their land under 

 Rutskoi's plan. 



The Russian vice president understands agrarian reform as a technical 

 matter of raising productivity, not as a socio-economic transformation of the 

 country's basic rural institutions. In a probably-unconscious imitation oStalin's 

 "Dizzy with Success" speech, which ordered a halt to collectivization so that 

 spring planting could proceed. Rutskoiordered local officials to suspend farm 

 reorganization because production came first in a March 16. 1992telegram.9 

 He has argued that the small farms being established as a result of the division 

 of the collective and state farms on theshare system are uneconomical and a 

 waste of resources (which, so long as fanners cannot lease or purchase 

 additional land and equipment, many of them certainly are). Rutskoi accordingly 

 took responsibility for establishing a Russian corporation.ROKAP. which would 

 sell amis abroad and use the proceeds to build "turnkey" fami^.o These ready- 



9 The telegram is reproduced without a title ir Zemlia i liudi. No. 13 

 (March 27. 1992). p. 1. 



10 "Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii: O programme Rossiiskoi 

 korporatsii agropererabotki 'Pole-Magazin." mimeo (March 20. 1992). 



