Russia's Unknown Agriculture

Russia's Unknown Agriculture PDF Author: Judith Pallot
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191527785
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Basing their findings on four years of research during which they studied rural districts drawn from a variety of contrasting regions of European Russia, the authors discuss the place of rural households in Russia's agri-food production system. They show that far from being solely concerned with 'survival' household plots in contemporary Russia are increasingly used to produce crops and livestock products for the market. In the book they describe the rich variety of forms that small and independent farming takes today from highly localised clusters of cucumber or tomato producers to specialization in crop or animal husbandry at a higher spatial scale or associated with particular ethnic groups. The authors systematically examine the influence on past and present practices of distance and the environment, the state of the large farm sector, local customs, and ethnicity on what households produce and how they produce it often using case studies of people they have met (plot holders, farmers, local officials) to illustrate their point. They criticise the tendency of the household production to be treated as the agricultural 'Other' in post-Soviet Russia and argue with the right incentives it has the potential for further development.

Russia's Unknown Agriculture

Russia's Unknown Agriculture PDF Author: Judith Pallot
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191527785
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Basing their findings on four years of research during which they studied rural districts drawn from a variety of contrasting regions of European Russia, the authors discuss the place of rural households in Russia's agri-food production system. They show that far from being solely concerned with 'survival' household plots in contemporary Russia are increasingly used to produce crops and livestock products for the market. In the book they describe the rich variety of forms that small and independent farming takes today from highly localised clusters of cucumber or tomato producers to specialization in crop or animal husbandry at a higher spatial scale or associated with particular ethnic groups. The authors systematically examine the influence on past and present practices of distance and the environment, the state of the large farm sector, local customs, and ethnicity on what households produce and how they produce it often using case studies of people they have met (plot holders, farmers, local officials) to illustrate their point. They criticise the tendency of the household production to be treated as the agricultural 'Other' in post-Soviet Russia and argue with the right incentives it has the potential for further development.

Russia's Unknown Agriculture

Russia's Unknown Agriculture PDF Author: Judith Pallot
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199227411
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
In this book the authors draw on extensive field work that took them over a five year period to a variety of Russian regions. By describing the forms of small farming they found in these regions, the authors uncover for the reader Russia's 'unknown agriculture', speculating about the role it will have in Russia's future.

Return to Putin's Russia

Return to Putin's Russia PDF Author: Stephen K. Wegren
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442213469
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Now in a thoroughly revised, expanded, and updated edition, this classic text provides the most authoritative and current analysis available of the challenges facing Putin as he resumes the presidency. Leading scholars explore the daunting domestic and international problems confronting Russia today. Evaluating the regime s continued efforts to rebuild a country once on the verge of collapse, the contributors consider a comprehensive array of economic, political, foreign policy, and social issues. Clearly written and organized, this text is an indispensable guide for anyone wanting to understand Russia today."

Rural Inequality in Divided Russia

Rural Inequality in Divided Russia PDF Author: Stephen Wegren
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135018308
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This book examines economic and political polarisation in post-Soviet Russia, and in particular analyses the development of rural inequality. It discusses how rural inequality has developed in post-Soviet Russia, and how it differs from the Soviet period, and goes on to look at the factors that affect rural stratification and inequality, using human and social capital, profession, gender, and village location as independent variables. The book uses survey data from rural households and fieldwork in Russia in order to highlight the multiplicity of divisions that act as fault lines in contemporary rural Russia.

Land Reform in Russia

Land Reform in Russia PDF Author: Stephen K. Wegren
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300156405
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
This ambitious work is the definitive account of Russia's land reform initiatives from the late 1980s to today. In Russia, a country controlling more land than any other nation, land ownership is central to structures of power, class division, and agricultural production. The aim of Russian land reform for the past thirty years--to undo the collectivization of the Soviet era and encourage public ownership--has been largely unsuccessful. To understand this failure, Stephen Wegren examines contemporary land reform policies in terms of legislation, institutional structure, and human behavior. Using extensive survey data, he analyzes household behaviors in regard to land ownership and usage based on socioeconomic status, family size, demographic distribution, and regional differences. Wegren's study is important and timely, as Russian land reform will have a profound effect on Russia's ability to compete in an era of globalization.

Soviet Agriculture

Soviet Agriculture PDF Author: Zhores A. Medvedev
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393335231
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
The first comprehensive analysis of Soviet agriculture from its historic origins to the present, explaining why collectivization failed and why contemporary methods are inefficient. Medvedev, a noted biochemist, shows why agriculture holds the Soviet future. Illustrated with maps.

Russia's Food Revolution

Russia's Food Revolution PDF Author: Stephen K. Wegren
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000178870
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This book analyzes the food revolution that has occurred in Russia since the late 1980s, documenting the transformation in systems of production, supply, distribution, and consumption. It examines the dominant actors in the food system; explores how the state regulates food; considers changes in patterns of food trade interactions with other states; and discusses how all this and changing habits of consumption have impacted consumers. It contrasts the grim food situation of 1980s and 1990s with the much better food situation that prevails at present and sets the food revolution in the context of the wider consumer revolution, which has affected fashion, consumer electronics, and other sectors of the economy.

Agriculture and the State in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

Agriculture and the State in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia PDF Author: Stephen Wegren
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822977265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Winner, 1999 Edward A. Hewett Book Prize from AAASS A comprehensive, original, and innovative analysis of the social, economic, and political factors affecting contemporary Russian reform, the book is organized around the central question of the role of the state and its effect on the course of Russian agrarian reform. In the wake of the collapse of the USSR, contemporary conventional wisdom holds the the Russian state is "weak." Stephen Wegren feels that the traditional approach to the weak/strong state suffers from measurement and circular logic problems, believing that the Russian state, thought weaker than in its Soviet past, is still relatively stronger than other actors. The state's strength allows it to intervene in the rural sector in ways that other power contender cannot.Specifically, as a measure of state intervention, Wegren analyzes how the state has influenced urban-rural relations, rural-rural relations, and the nonstate (private) agricultural sector. Several dilemmas arose that have complicated successful agrarian reform as a result of the nature of state interventions, how reform policies were defined, and the incentives rhar arose from state-sponsored policies. During contemporary Russian agrarian reform, urban-rural differences have widened, marked by a deterioration in rural standards of living and increased alienation of rural political groups from urban alliances. At the same time, within the rural sector, reform failed to reverse rural egalitarianism. In addition, the nature of state interventions has undermined attempts to create a vibrant, productive private rural sector based on private farming.Wegren's research is based upon extensive field work, interviews, archival documents, and published and unpublished source material conducted over a six-year period, and he demonstrates the link between agrarian reform and the success of overall reform in Russia. This learned and often controversial volume will interest political scientists, policy makers, and scholars and students of contemporary Russia.

Black Earth, White Bread

Black Earth, White Bread PDF Author: Susanne A. Wengle
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299335402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Introduction: setting the table -- Governance, or, How to solve the grain problem? -- Production -- Consumption, or, The Perestroika of the quotidian -- Nature -- Conclusion: vulnerabilities.

Bread and Autocracy

Bread and Autocracy PDF Author: Janetta Azarieva
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019768436X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Food has been crucial to the functioning and survival of governments and regimes since the emergence of early states. Yet, only in a few countries is the connection between food and politics as pronounced as in Russia. Since the 1917 Revolution, virtually every significant development in Russian and Soviet history has been either directly driven by or closely associated with the question of food and access to it. In fact, food shortages played a critical role in the collapse of both the Russian Empire and the USSR. Under Putin's watch, Russia moved from heavily relying on grain imports to feed the population to being one of the world's leading food exporters. In Bread and Autocracy, Janetta Azarieva, Yitzhak M. Brudny, and Eugene Finkel focus on this crucial yet widely overlooked transformation, as well as its causes and consequences for Russia's domestic and foreign politics. The authors argue that Russia's food independence agenda is an outcome of a deliberate, decades-long policy to better prepare the country for a confrontation with the West. Moreover, they show that for the Kremlin, nutritional self-sufficiency and domestic food production is a crucial pillar of state security and regime survival. Azarieva, Brudny, and Finkel also make the case that Russia's focus on food independence also sets the country apart from almost all modern autocracies. While many authoritarian regimes have adopted industrial import-substitution policies, in Putin's Russia it is the substitution of food imports with domestically produced crops that is crucial for regime survival. As food reemerges as a key global issue and nations increasingly turn inwards, Bread and Autocracy provides a timely and comprehensive look into Russia's experience in building a nutritionally autarkic dictatorship.