Decree Gives Russians a Chance to Become Landowners : Reform: Yeltsin gives go-ahead for auction of state-held property. But critics say the average farmer won’t benefit.

A long-awaited decree Friday granted Russians the right to buy and sell private plots of land, but only as an experiment in one remote corner of Greater Moscow.

President Boris N. Yeltsin gave the go-ahead for the first public auctions of state-held land for use as construction sites southeast of the capital.

Touting the presidential decree as a major advance in Russia’s crawl toward a market economy, Yeltsin’s press service declared, “For the first time since the dismantling of the totalitarian regime in Russia, land--which the state has had a monopoly on until now--will become a market commodity.”

But some agricultural specialists criticized the program, saying it is a sham reform that will shut out peasants and put large tracts in the hands of cash-rich organized crime.

“The idea that this decree will help small farmers is a big illusion,” said economist Alexei Yemelianov, who advises Yeltsin on agrarian policy. He said the land should not be sold but be given away.

“It’s a very dangerous step because only the Mafia will have money to buy land, and they surely won’t work as farmers, so they won’t produce food,” he added.

A good-sized plot, enough to support a farming family, could cost 40 million rubles, or $120,000, Yemelianov said. One acre could sell for as much as 2.5 million rubles--a fortune in a country where many rural dwellers earn 5,000 rubles a month.

Plots auctioned off in Greater Moscow’s Ramensky district, where Yeltsin’s “experiment” will take place, may be more affordable because they are subdivided for single-family houses rather than farms. But in a preface to his decree, Yeltsin hinted that the auction program could be expanded to cover state-owned farmland.

For now, though, Yeltsin’s decree falls far short of the kind of comprehensive agrarian reform that the president has been promising for months.

Privatization of state-owned industry got under way in earnest Thursday, when the government began distributing investment vouchers that will allow Russian citizens to buy shares in factories and large firms. But land reform, hostage to a furious debate about whether the state should sell, rent or give plots to farmers, has lagged far behind.

In the absence of a national land policy, Russian cities have pieced together their own patchwork reforms, such as breaking up collective farms and giving long-term leases on individual plots. Outright buying and selling of land, however, has yet to be legalized by the Russian Parliament.

Yeltsin’s decree Friday was his second experiment in land reform. Earlier this year, he allowed small parcels of land to be sold in another area outside Moscow. As a result, 20% of the members of the Russian Assn. of Farmers and Agricultural Cooperatives, which represents two-thirds of the nation’s peasantry, own a portion of their plots. But even those who have title to a few acres usually rent the rest of what they need from the state or a collective farm, according to the group’s spokesman, Konstantin Mezentsev.

“There’s no way that attacking the land problem in small bites will work,” Mezentsev said. “We need to kick out foot-dragging legislators and draw up an overall plan for real reform.”

In an apparent attempt to cut through the bureaucracy, Yeltsin on Friday also created a high-level position responsible for coordinating food and farm policy and overseeing cooperation between the state committee on land reform and the Agriculture Ministry.

By establishing the new post, Yeltsin effectively undercut conservative Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi, who had been responsible for agricultural affairs. He also abolished the Ministry of Industry, dealing a blow to Minister Alexander A. Titkin, who has denounced Yeltsin’s plan to distribute the investment vouchers.

Although Yeltsin said the changes would create a more “rational” structure, some observers suggested it was largely aimed at showing a disillusioned public that, as the president has said, “steps are being taken” to put Russia on the right track.