Russia OKs Private Farms--With Limits

In a historic break with decades of Communist ideology, the Russian Federation Parliament on Monday approved private ownership of land in hopes of unleashing an army of enterprising family farmers to help feed the country.

However, in concessions to party hard-liners, the new law puts severe limitations on private landholding in practice: It allows owners to sell land only to the government, and that only after tilling it for 10 years.

Boris N. Yeltsin, the radical leader of the vast Russian republic that spreads across three-quarters of Soviet territory, said the law had to be watered down to allay widespread fears among peasants that speculators would grab all the land and a new landlord class would be created.

Since Josef Stalin ruthlessly liquidated the kulaks, or rich peasants, and forced private farms to merge into sprawling collectives six decades ago, Soviet citizens have been limited to tiny plots for “personal” gardening.

A grain exporter before the 1917 Revolution, Russia has seen its capacity to meet its domestic needs shrink to the point that it now imports tens of millions of tons of grain each year from the West. Faltering agriculture combined with a disintegrating economy has triggered a major food crisis this year, with dire predictions that famine is around the corner.

Although limitations on land-owning raise doubts that many collective farmers will risk striking out on their own, Yeltsin said he believes that if private farmers are given their way, they could turn Soviet agriculture around within two years.

He quoted would-be farmers as saying, “Just give us land, give us freedom, don’t impose taxes on us that would suffocate us, don’t bother us--and in one or two years we’ll give you our produce.”

A small lobby of such farmers, sitting in the balcony of the Russian Parliament chamber through the rough debate that Yeltsin said kept the hall as tense “as a taut string,” declared that they are indeed confident that they have the prescription for Russia’s well-being.

“Private farmers can furnish well-laden tables for Russia, covered with everything, even pineapples,” Alexei Pozharenko, a goat farmer from the fertile Krasnodar region, said.

Many Communist leaders of the Russian Federation, however, assert that the kolkhoz system of collective farms already guarantees maximum efficiency with its factory-style farming, and breaking them up into small plots can only cut yields.