"In 1987, Medvedev wrote: 'In fact, private agriculture occupies only 1.6% of the arable land. Nonetheless, in the 1980s, it produces more meat, milk, and eggs annually than the total amount of these products produced by all sectors (1933-1939). Moreover it does this without any mechanization and virtually without horses.' Overall, he demonstrated that '1.6 percent of the arable land in the Soviet Union produces around 30% of the national agricultural product in the Soviet Union' (1987:363-364). Contemporary studies reach a similar broad conclusion for the post-Soviet world. See Gambold Miller and Head (2004) and Pastiorkovskii (2002)." (pg. 58)
"The question of descent regarding agricultural land ownership has been (and continues to be) an extremely complex matter in rural Russian society. In Soviet Russia, land was not legally 'owned,' but private plots were granted to the families of kolkhoz and sovkhoz workers–plots that were, for all intent and purposes, passed on the subsequent generations. In the 1990s, the legalities of land ownership were in chaos due to the process of privatization and residues of the Soviet kolkhoz system. What appears to be clear is that the relative power of the male or female lines is secondary to the overall sense of belonging to the line of a given residential group. A house is a place. That place has its own line of history, its own line of ancestors who have been invoked within its walls, year after year. It is rooted in a location, and property appears to descend along that line of rootedness. Because residence has tended to be patrilocal, the land has tended to pass through the male line. But the subordination (or at least, confrontation) of the human line to the territorial space is of marked importance." (pg. 60)
"In terms of social organization, the obshchina was a fascinating institution. Given the fact that the suprafamilial obshchina was charged with the redistribution of land, the concept of land ownership in the village resonated with both a sense of transience, in relation to the rod, and permanence, in relation to the village. The village layout echoes this: houses are clustered together, and outside the residential part of the village, individual plots are clustered together." (pg. 64)
Margaret Paxson in Solovyovo: The Story of Memory In A Russian Village, published 2005 by Woodrow Wilson Center Press
"The question of descent regarding agricultural land ownership has been (and continues to be) an extremely complex matter in rural Russian society. In Soviet Russia, land was not legally 'owned,' but private plots were granted to the families of kolkhoz and sovkhoz workers–plots that were, for all intent and purposes, passed on the subsequent generations. In the 1990s, the legalities of land ownership were in chaos due to the process of privatization and residues of the Soviet kolkhoz system. What appears to be clear is that the relative power of the male or female lines is secondary to the overall sense of belonging to the line of a given residential group. A house is a place. That place has its own line of history, its own line of ancestors who have been invoked within its walls, year after year. It is rooted in a location, and property appears to descend along that line of rootedness. Because residence has tended to be patrilocal, the land has tended to pass through the male line. But the subordination (or at least, confrontation) of the human line to the territorial space is of marked importance." (pg. 60)
"In terms of social organization, the obshchina was a fascinating institution. Given the fact that the suprafamilial obshchina was charged with the redistribution of land, the concept of land ownership in the village resonated with both a sense of transience, in relation to the rod, and permanence, in relation to the village. The village layout echoes this: houses are clustered together, and outside the residential part of the village, individual plots are clustered together." (pg. 64)
Margaret Paxson in Solovyovo: The Story of Memory In A Russian Village, published 2005 by Woodrow Wilson Center Press
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