Lerman Z., Nikulin A. M. “What surprises me the most is the conviction of so many scientists and politicians in the special importance of large farms” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №2. P. 158-173.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-2-158-173

Annotation

In the interview, the famous agricultural economist Zvi Lerman tells about his family roots and trajectories of his biographical path connected with the Far and Middle East. Despite the relatively late start of agrarian research, Zvi Lerman quickly conducted a great number of both empirical and theoretical rural studies of the development and transformation of production cooperatives — from Israeli kibbutzim to Soviet collective farms. For several decades since the 1990s, Zvi Lerman has participated as an expert-economist in the international research projects on post-socialist and post-Soviet agrarian reforms. He considered the features of the study and implementation of agrarian reforms in most post-Soviet republics — Russia, Ukraine and Moldova, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan. Zvi Lerman also considered the peculiarities of agrarian reforms in such countries of Eastern Europe as Hungary, Slovenia and Albania. He believes that the conviction of many scientists and politicians in the exceptional importance and progressiveness of large agricultural enterprises leads to an imbalance in the rural development policy and damages the sustainable rural development by underestimating the potential of small family farms. Zvi Lerman also mentions the paradoxes of limitations in the development of small family units.

Keywords

Russia, China, Israel, post-socialist countries, agrarian reforms, cooperatives, family households, agroholdings.

About the authors

Lerman Zvi, DSc (Economics), Professor Emeretus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 76100, Israel, Rehovot, 12.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy ans Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Makarov N.P. At the great crossroads. The comparative analysis of the evolution of agriculture in China, the United States of North America, the USSR, and Western Europe (Article of N.P. Makarov) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №1. P. 6-21.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-1-6-21

Abstract

This article published in the mid-1920s in the Peasant International was written by an outstanding Russian agrarian scientist and a prominent representative of the organization-production school Nikolai Pavlovich Makarov (1887–1980). It is quite strange that this article was not listed in the bibliographies of Makarov’s works although it is absolutely important for the understanding of the evolution of world agriculture in the 20th century. Moreover, the reader will see that in the second half of the 1920s the ideas of this article were developed in the works of other representatives of the organization-production school — A.V. Chayanov, G.S. Studensky, A.A. Rybnikov. As the title and the foreword of the article show, the author seeks to provide an analytical description of the main directions of the world agrarian evolution of the 1920s and its possible alternatives on the example of four main macro-regions of world agriculture: the USA, China, Western Europe and Russia. First the author focuses on the two so-called “poles” of agrarian development — the United States and China — and argues that “old” labor-intensive agrarian China and the “young” capital-intensive agrarian United States are the exact opposites of each other. It is between these poles that the paths of the agricultural evolution of most countries of the world, including Europe and Russia, are located. Makarov concludes with a preliminary diagnosis of the approaching “great agrarian crossroads” of world agriculture. The publication with comments was prepared by A.M. Nikulin.

Keywords

agriculture, USA, China, Western Europe, Russia, agrarian evolution, peasants, farmers

About the authors

Makarov Nikolai Pavlovich

Editor: Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82. 
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Russia, Poland, and China: Models of post-socialist rural development. Round table // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №3. P. 120-151.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-3-120-151

Annotation

This article is a transcript of the round table at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on March 27, which focused on the comparative analysis of the strategic directions of post-socialist rural development in the People’s Republic of China, the Polish People’s Republic and the Russian Federation. Professor Roman Kisiel made a presentation on the problems of Polish rural economy; professor Yan Hairong highlighted the dialectics of contradictions between collective and private farming in China. To a certain extent the Russian scientists L.D. Boni, V.V. Babashkin, and A.V. Gordon became the co-presenters of the Polish and Chinese colleagues when discussing such problems of rural development as the interaction of large and small-scale agrarian production, capitalist, family and collective forms of agriculture, economy and ecology, the city and village, and especially the national agrarian policies regulating all the above. In many ways, China and Poland turned out to be the poles of political and social-cultural agrarian transformations, which determine possible variations of regional models of rural-urban development in Russia. The round table discussion can be useful not only for academic scientists, but also for practitioners involved in developing state and municipal agrarian policies that are to take into account international agrarian experience.

Keywords

peasantry, land ownership, agrarian reforms, rural development, comparative studies, China, Poland, Russia

About the authors

Babashkin Vladimir V., Professor, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prospect Vernadskogo, 82.
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Boni Ludmila D., DSc (Economics), Chief Researcher, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117997, Nakhimovsky Av., 32.
Gordon Alexander V., DSc (History), Head of the East and South-East Asia Branch, INION of the Russian Academy of Sciences
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Kisiel Roman, Professor of Economic Science, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland. 10-719 Olsztyn, ul. Oczapowskiego 4.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 82, Prosp. Vernadskogo, Moscow, 119571, Russia
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Pugacheva Marina G., Senior Researcher, Centre for Fundamental Sociology Higher School of Economics, Deputy Editor Russian Sociological Review, Staraya Basmannaya str., 21/4, Room A205, Moscow, Russian Federation 105066.
Trotsuk Irina V., DSc (Sociology), Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
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Hairong Yan, Professor, Hong Kong, Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon,
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