Land policy in Russia: New challenges

Abstract

The chapter examines the outcomes of 20 years of land reform in the Russian Federation’s agriculture. The landownership structure is assessed, the risks voiced at the beginning of the reform are re-evaluated and new risks related to the development of landownership are highlighted. Russia’s land policy has gone through several stages since the beginning of reform: from clearly formulated policies and procedures in the early 1990s to a set of administrative activities entrusted to disjointed land authorities at the present time. Despite institutional difficulties, the land market appears to be emerging in Russia; land has become transferable, it is actively redistributed between peasant farms and corporate farms and it is reallocated to new users. In the absence of an institution that controls and manages the country’s land resources, the land policy is unable to respond to new challenges that arise in the course of the ongoing land reform.