Soviets Approve Private Holding of Farmland

Soviet legislators, in a decision that effectively reverses Josef Stalin’s years of bloody collectivization, today approved in principle a bill that would permit the private ownership of farmland--something once viewed as a fundamental betrayal of Communist ideals.

The legislation is among the most important to be discussed by this session of the Supreme Soviet because it is the basis of government hopes to increase farm production and thus correct severe economic shortfalls that have led to chronic and widespread food shortages.

“If our debates and meetings are destined to go down in history, it will be due to the adoption of this land law,” Russian writer Vasily Belov told the legislature from the podium in a Kremlin hall, drawing applause.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has said the country’s current consumer crisis presents the most serious challenge to his rule.

Coupled with a draft property law already approved in principle, the two bills for the first time offer the possibility of a mixed Soviet economy that would include some private enterprise. The property bill provides for individual ownership of means of production.

Gorbachev initially proposed last year changing the land law to permit private leasing or ownership of land and to give farmers the right to pass land on to their children. Private garden plots, permitted since the time of Stalin, have long disproportionately contributed to the country’s food supply, with goods from those plots sold in so-called “free markets.”

But conservatives and even some moderates opposed the Gorbachev proposal, saying it compromised the principles of communism, could lead to land speculation and might actually further damage the economy by encouraging an abrupt discarding of collective farms and undue reliance on unprepared individual farmers.