Rural postcommunist societies are still undergoing a transformation – one that varies widely even within single countries, partly as a result of the varied routes taken to reform agriculture. This book introduces the readers to the deeper dimensions of changes occurring in rural postcommunist societies. The contributions describe the difficulties experienced following the privatization of land and farming enterprises; the changing employment and dwindling living standards; and as well as the effects of a near absence of services on rural life. Though the book’s twelve chapters chronicle the dimensions of change experienced in eastern European states, the framework of analysis can serve to draw comparisons with the Central Asian and other former Soviet states.
Zemphira Kalugina, in “Rural Transformation in Russia: Inconsistencies and Results” touches upon the issue of food provision in the late twentieth century. During the course of the ongoing agrarian transformation and the partial disintegration of collective farming, the protracted and complicated character of the establishment of new economic forms in the agro-industrial complex and the role of part-time farming as the most flexible, steady, and self-regulatory entity has increased. However, citing factors like the public psyche, the level of industrial potential, the status of legislation, socio-political conditions in the country, and the time required for coping with the transition, Kalugina concludes that in the foreseeable future, autonomous farms will not become the dominant form of agricultural production in the Russian countryside.
Kalugina’s comprehensive analysis attributes the reduction in agricultural production and the emergent trend of a decline in household output to several factors. The first is the dismantling of agriculture subsidies, under which collective farms had access to fodder, seed, agriculture equipment, fuel, and parts for mechanised farming and transport vehicles under privileged conditions. Secondly, the financial possibilities of an average rural family have substantially diminished, resulting in lowered living standards and depreciation of savings. Thirdly, the labor potential of a typical rural family has been practically exhausted and they are unable to work beyond a limited extent. There are apprehensions that if part-time farms are reclassified from the informal to formal sector of economy, it will bring further hardship to the rural population. Though the numbers of collective and state farms have been reduced, and forms of mixed ownership have emerged, there is a need to keep in mind the merit and the social price of such transformations.
Following the reforms, the standard of living of both the urban and rural population has declined along with staple food consumption. A general increase has taken place in the consumption of potatoes and baked products. Malnutrition, among other factors, was negatively reflected in the state of public health, and in mortality rate and life expectancy figures. The wages of agricultural workers have remained lower than the national average, below the subsistence level and, even then, paid with several months’ delay. Additionally, the remunerations do not correspond to a worker’s contribution or qualifications. Privatized farms do not have the capacity to address the problems of their employees. Such circumstances have caused a loss of motivation toward professional quality, productivity, and efficiency, especially among rural youth who believe that the public sector lacks prestige. Though local governments are obliged to manage the social and cultural services of their localities, they continue to lack sufficient financial means and technological capabilities to deliver. This in turn contributes to the substantial worsening of social services provision in the rural areas.
In their article, “Household Capital and Structural Change in Employment and Income in Rural Russia from 1991 – 1999,” David O’Brien and Valerii Patsiorkovski note that in the 1990s the rural sector in Russia (as elsewhere) underwent substantial changes in institutions and social organization. They attempt to identify long-term aggregate trends in economic behavior and emerging incremental institutional changes at the local level. Their contribution also examines differences between households and villages with respect to their abilities to take advantage of new opportunities in entrepreneurial activities. Both point out that the lack of material infrastructure, poor physical capital, and reduced plot size has increased the importance of household manual labour as a form of human capital. Drawing attention to structural changes in rural areas, the book lists factors such as a substantial shift in the nature of employment and earning level in the villages, which in turn has brought profound effect on rural household income.
In Rihito Yamamura’s opinion, when discussing the postcommunist transition economies, agriculture should be treated as a distinctive sphere in which the usual approaches and criteria for the transition to a market economy do not apply. As a consequence of the dissolution of communist regimes, new farming structures have emerged that are quite different from those working under other market economies. Yamamura’s chapter, “A New Phase of Post-Socialist Structural Changes in Russian Agriculture,” focuses on the changes in individual private farms and notes that a majority of existing cooperative farms are member-oriented than market-oriented and have yet to reach the efficiency under the new economic conditions. Citing recent Russian agricultural statistics, Yamamura notes that the “bulk of vegetables and potatoes are now produced in various types of small plots owned by village and city dwellers. More than a half of animal production comes from subsistence level farming by villagers” (p. 120). Yamamura fears that while the individual private sector overall seems to have entered a stagnant stage, the structure within the sector has been changing more dynamically.
Referring to the changes in the peasant farm sector, Yamamura notes that the declining trend in this stratum is actually stronger than the statistical figures indicate. Most of the peasant farms have suffered from disequilibrium among three main resources, namely labor, land, and capital. Peasant farms that mainly rely on the labor resources from their immediate relatives still have to arrange the necessary land and capital resources. Even when farmers succeed in acquiring the necessary machines, they cannot use them to maximum efficiency because the land initially given to them was limited and farmers could not freely expand their farm size by land purchase or leasing. On the other hand, peasant farms or individual group of families equipped with machines have been faced with a “deficit of land.”
Gejza Blaas’s “Is the Completion of Agricultural Reforms in Central and Eastern European Countries Conditional on a Move to Family Farming?” draws attention to eight factors affecting farm transformation. These include: 1) the termination or significant reduction of state intervention in the agricultural sector; 2) price and trade liberalization; 3) the decline in demand for domestic food and the loss of foreign markets; 4) income deficiency in the farm sector caused by a price-cost squeeze; 5) the lack of adequate infrastructure on the input side, and insufficient marketing channels; 6) the lack of a financial infrastructure adapted to the needs of small and middle-sized entrepreneurs; 7) the fragmentation of land ownership; 8) a deficit in the skills necessary in individual farming among those who might start a farm business as well as a lack of start-up capital.
Osamu Ieda hopes that the restructuring process will provide opportunities for the integration of rural economies and societies. In Hungary’s case, Ieda notes that the general business conditions have became progressively worse since agricultural privatization. The market for Hungarian agricultural produce disappeared along with its buyers in the former Soviet economy. The price of agricultural products went into decline and increasing competition with Western European producers had a serious impact.
In “Agricultural Restructuring in Hungary and Its Social Impacts,” Katalin Kovбcs thinks that as in other post-socialist countries, Hungarian policies on land restitution and property de-collectivization have resulted in a fragmented property structure, where property and land is often used inefficiently and inappropriately. She notes that among various rural sectors, livestock production struggled most in making a recovery. The end of the subsidized feed supplies and of the transport and marketing services that had been under the collective farms had a significant impact on poultry production.
Kovacs’s description of how those who wished to pursue a change of course from collective practices portrays well the plight of farmers elsewhere in postcommunist countries:

“Those who left the cooperatives in a hope to operate a privatised enterprise subsequently observed some hard facts: their holding was too small and the assets that they had taken from cooperative were insufficient for the task, the old machinery was depreciating and options to acquire machinery from the cooperative were fewer, nor they could afford any machinery on their own. The banks won’t extend loans to such farmers as they had nothing to offer as security. State resources could not compensate for the absence of personal resources, since the change in structure was not supported by any injection of capital (P. 263).”

Furthermore, the situation of those starting from scratch was further hindered by a lack of cooperation between private farmers. The collapse of large-scale farms contributed to a sharp rise in rural unemployment. The large number of jobs that disappeared could not be replaced by new opportunities in rural areas, either in the farming sector or elsewhere. As a result, plot farming has become essential for the sheer survival of the majority of rural households. What gives serious cause for concern, however, is the problem of rural poverty, which, although connected with agricultural restructuring, cannot be solved within the agricultural sector. The privatization of land, among other things, allowed many families to survive, relying on a style of agricultural activity that is subsistence-oriented and does not allow them to sell more than what is a surplus. All this means that agriculture is no longer the backbone of the rural economy.
Tomas Doucha’s contribution, “Agriculture and Rural Development in the Czech Republic,” observes that the “passivity of the rural population is another serious barrier to rural development and to the development of smaller individual (family) farming or other small businesses” (P. 301). He draws attention to aspects of rural development that need consideration. A decent rural living depends on services available to the rural people. Doucha notes a substantial decline in the transport services and an increase in prices for services at the same time. This has proved a very negative measure for the rural areas, where people need to commute long distances to farms and markets. Local heating that was once provided by collective or state farms is unavailable or unaffordable. The rise in energy costs has made electrical heating very expensive and unsuitable for rural households.
In their individual chapters tracing earlier attempts at agricultural reform in Russian history, Ilya Gerasimov and Yoshida Hiroshi both underline that a fresh round of modernization requires a reorientation of the people, while warning that the outcome may not be the same at different places.
Summing up, this volume documents the academic cooperation between Japanese and eastern European scholars to study postcommunist rural developments from a multi-disciplinary approach. Most of the material has previously been published in Japanese (besides a review article in German). Therefore, this book may serve as a vantage point for an English-speaking audience to become familiar with the issues, experts, and recent scholarship on this topic.