Who Grows Food in Russia and Eastern Europe?

Drawing upon an innovative program of surveys in Russia and Eastern Europe, a prominent Western public policy specialist and Russian geographer present an important empirical study demonstrating a wide diffusion of subsistence food production by both urban and rural households in Eastern Europe and by urban households in Russia. With access to land, rather than occupational specialization, determining who grows food in the stressful 1990s, the paper, based on an extensive survey in 1991 and 1992 with 3,550 Bulgarian, Czechoslovak, and Polish respondents and 2,100 Russian, reveals that most people in the post-Soviet realm consume the food that they produce. 1 diagram, 7 tables, 25 references.     

Self-Sustainability of Subsidiary Household Plots: Lessons for Privatization of Agriculture in Former Socialist Countries

A paper devoted to subsidiary household (private) plots in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union explores issues surrounding their economic viability during the current period of economic transition and agrarian reform, using Russian farms as the main example. Considerable emphasis is placed on the continuing strong linkages between subsidiary household plots and the system of collectivized agriculture, one of several factors that serves to differentiate this type of agriculture from the private (peasant) farms receiving so much attention recently as an indicator of agrarian reform. A key argument of the paper is that the performance of subsidiary household farms is not a good indicator of prospects for success of private farming in Russia, because subsidiary farms are closely linked to collectivized agriculture in terms of sources of inputs and channels for outputs, and therefore are not inherently “private.” 8 tables, 24 references.