In the early 1990s, Russia undertook agrarian privatization in order to reorient its rural economy along market lines. The reform programme was very broad, encompassing farm restructuring and operational change on large collective and state farms, the creation of new rural producers (private family farms), the privatization of farm land and property, the privatization of wholesale markets and suppliers, an opening of agricultural trade policy, the reformation of state purchase price and procurement policies, and the privatization of retail food networks. There is disagreement about the results from the first decade of reform; some analysts see significant change, others emphasize continuities with the Soviet period and feel that reform has failed (for perspectives on both views, see O'Brien and Wegren, 2002).
Perhaps no issue is more important, nor controversial, than the nature of rural households' responses to land privatization. Without rural support, the agricultural transition and agrarian privatization can not proceed. A conventional wisdom has arisen, emphasizing 'rural resistance', to the privatization of land (Leonard, 2000). The contemporary conventional wisdom about land privatization in Russia owes its intellectual debt to the moral economy theory. The moral economy approach was originally published by Eric Wolf in the 1960s and explores the link between economic structures and peasant behaviors. This argument was later expanded upon by James Scott in the 1970s who argued that markets and commercialization of agriculture threaten the 'moral economy' of rural villagers (Scott, 1976). The moral economy sees peasant values and behaviors as 'embedded' in peasant societies, and these values are therefore reflected in the nature of rural institutions. Commercialization of agriculture attempts to disembed peasant values and behaviours, that is, to displace existing rural institutions with market based institutions. As existing values are disembedded, peasants become restless and rebellious.
For a variety of reasons, the moral economy approach and peasant resistance arguments as applied to land privatization in Russia are based on a misunderstanding of rural reality, not the least of which is that Russia's agrarian transition during the 1990s was a 'giving' reform. A giving reform is one in which land and property are distributed from state ownership to individuals. A giving reform stands in stark contrast to a taking reform, such as Stalin's collectivization during the 1930s. It is not clear, and has never been adequately