Perestroika in the Countryside Agricultural Reform in the Gorbachev Era

This book is a collection of seven papers originally given at the 1989 meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. The authors come from the fields of economics, history, and political science and are all specialists in the field of Soviet and East European agriculture. The first essay, by David Macey, assesses Gorbachev's agricultural reform in light of the experience of the Stolypin reforms at the beginning of the century. The essays by Jim Butterfield and Ed Cook examine the impediments to successful reform from the perspective of a political scientist and an economist. Karen Brooks and Don Van Atta concentrate their attention on the efforts to introduce lease contracting into agriculture. D.Gale Johnson's essay examines the economic effects of trade liberalization in agriculture. The final paper, by Michael Marrese, suggests that there are lessons for the Soviet Union to be learned from the Hungarian experience, namely, that the changes in agriculture must be comprehensive and that the party can win over popular support if its agricultural policies succeed.

Introduction, Gorbachev and Stolypin Soviet Agrarian Reform in Historical Perspective, Devolution in Decision Making and Organizational Change in Soviet Agriculture, Reforming Soviet Agriculture Problems with Farm Finances and Equity Considerations, Lease Contracting in Soviet Agriculture in 1989, “Full-Scale, Like Collectivization, but without Collectivization’s Excesses” The Campaign to Introduce the Family and1 Lease Contract in Soviet Agriculture, Possible Impacts of Agricultural Trade Liberalization on the USSR, Hungarian Agriculture Lessons for the Soviet Union, Index, About the Editor

WILLIAM MOSKOFF, D. K. Pearsons Professor of Economics at Lake Forest College, is editor of the journal Comparative Economic Studies. Author of Labor and Leisure in the Soviet Union: Public and Private Decision-making in a Planned Economy and The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR during World War II, Moskoff is also the coeditor (with Susan J. Linz) of Reorganization and Reform in the Soviet Economy and (with Anthony Jones) of Perestroika and the Economy: New Thinking in Soviet Economics. He is currently at work on a study of the development of cooperatives in the USSR.