Yeltsin Decrees Farmers May Buy and Sell Land

President Boris N. Yeltsin has issued a decree allowing Russians to buy and sell agricultural land, setting up a conflict with the Communist-led parliament and making private-property rights a central issue of the presidential campaign.

Facing strong Communist opposition on the June 16 ballot, Yeltsin preempted parliament’s debate of a new land code and signed the decree late last week instructing local officials to give a land title to each worker employed at least five years on any of the country’s nearly 27,000 collective farms. Nearly all of Russia’s 12 million farmers still live on Soviet-style collectives.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander K. Zaveryukha, briefing reporters Monday, said each worker is now free to sell, mortgage, rent out or give away his title as long as the recipient is a Russian citizen and agrees to keep farming the land.

On paper, the decree sweeps away a prohibition on land sales that dates to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and remains the most stubborn obstacle to a free market in Russia. But a Yeltsin decree often means little by itself; in fact, Yeltsin issued a decree much like this one in October 1993.

It never took effect because the parliament elected two months later was more hostile than Yeltsin expected. Under a Yeltsin-drafted constitution adopted by voters at that time, Russians won the right to land ownership but could not exercise it without a legal code detailing how collective land would be divided.

That parliament drafted a land code and debated it fruitlessly, then handed it over to the current parliament. The latest draft would block creation of a free market in land by allowing farmers to dispose of their plots only with permission from the rest of the collective.

Yeltsin, in announcing his candidacy for reelection last month, indicated he would bypass parliament.

“An upsurge in agro-industrial output,” he said, “is possible only if private ownership of land is asserted.”

Zaveryukha said Yeltsin’s decree spells out exactly how collectives should be divided and needs no legislative follow-up. “This decree is fully constitutional,” he insisted.

But Mikhail I. Lapshin, leader of the Communist-aligned Agrarian Party, disagreed, saying parliament will press its legislative prerogative before Russia’s Constitutional Court.

Lapshin and other critics, including Communist presidential hopeful Gennady A. Zyuganov, favor keeping the collectives. They say Yeltsin’s decree would benefit Russia’s acquisitive new rich, not cash-poor collective farmers who want more land.

But the decree could become popular among retired farmers, who make up 65% of the collective-farm population and could stand to boost their pitiful pensions. If so, Yeltsin might break the Communists’ traditional stranglehold on the collective-farm vote.

In defending the decree, Zaveryukha surprised his own Agrarian Party by defecting and siding with Yeltsin.

“This marks an important step forward,” he said. As for the Communists’ vow to back land reforms, he said: “If they win, how will they go about taking land from people? This is impossible. This reform process can only go forward.”

Because of parliament’s opposition and close ties between local officials and collective-farm bosses in many regions, the decree is expected to have little immediate effect on land ownership.

“Its implementation depends on the outcome of the election,” Russian television commentator Nikolai K. Svanidze said Monday night. “If the current authorities remain in power, [the decree] is likely to be of revolutionary importance.”