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D.N.Durmanov OPENING WORD
Dear conferees,
The INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC CONFERENCE ON
PRIVATIZATION AND AGRARIAN REFORM IN RUSSIA
opens now. Foundation for Agrarian Development Research
(FADR), a Russian NGO, was one of the pioneers of the use of
electronic communications in Russia. The brief information about
FADR you can find in our WWW homepage:
http://www.fadr.msu.ru, which is installed in our own WWW-server.
We work closely with the Rodale Institute (PA, USA) and
INFORUM.
Our feeling this day is the mixture of satisfaction and worry. We are
glad that the conference has more than 100 subscribers now from
different regions in Russia. Conference will provide an inter-
disciplinary and multi-sector forum for free exchange of ideas and
opinions, concerning agrarian reforms.
Our worries have both technical and conceptual reasons. It is difficult
to organize immediate translation from Russian into English. I kindly
ask you to excuse the quality, including this message. More important
is the choice of the framework. Trying to cover too much led to
failure to deal with everything on the agenda. From the other side we
want to discuss the privatization just as a complex problem in the
context of sustainable agricultural and rural development (and even
now we have Room 4 on the big SARD Conference).
Privatization and particularly privatization in the agrarian sector is
now is a on of the Óhot pointsÔ of the country public life. This factor
will be actual is during presidential election June. But the debates
focuses mostly on land ownership and decollectivisation (ÓnarrowÔ
understanding of privatization), many other aspects of this process
attract less attention.
The agriculture can not be insulated apart from macro-economical
problems. Economic assumptions are the roots of different social
conflicts. Central planning economy in the USSR provided better
access to education and health case, considerable degree of income
security of employment guarantee and social assistance in rural areas.
President of the USA (and professor!) T.W.Wilson said that Óno one
can workshop God or love his neighbor on an empty stomachÔ.
Because Democracy in Russia remains fragile itÒs very important to
restore at least the conference in future.
After his visit to former Soviet republics in 1954 Patrick Madden,
President of the World sustainable agriculture association, purposes
that Ó perhaps the seeds of the next Bolshevik Revolution have been
sownÔ. My forecast is more optimistic if economic policy will be more
social-oriented.
Rural unemployment (usually hidden) become for the first time a
serious problem in some regions. It would be more severe due to loss
of jobs during the reforming process. Informal (shadow) economy
gives according to official estimations about 20 % of the Russian
GNR (some expert believe that more). ThatÒs peoples spontaneous
response to the states incapacity to satisfy the basic needs. Informal
economy is always substrate for the corruption. Such situation is
typical for many development countries.
Shock liberalization of the agricultural trade increases in 1995 the
volume of the food import up to 13.5 billion $.
One of the most pressing issues is how to stimulate adoption of
farming systems to the market economy and principles of sustainable
agriculture. The chain is not stronger than its weakest link. In Russian
agriculture itÒs absence of effective extension service, and practice of
other countries in this field will be very useful for us.
According to the tentative agenda during the first week we shall
discuss with you the conference framework. All comments and
suggestions will be welcomed. The topic for the March 11-31 is
Reform and Privatization, their socioeconomic and biographical
recourses (land, labor, capital etc.). April 1-28: Reform and
Privatization, extension, processing and so on. May 3-29: Integrated
Reform and Privatization strategies and last week (May 20-26)
Summary and final comments.
Besides, we plan to store all the conference material in our computer
and make it accessible via HyperNews system for the Internet users.
We will give you additional information later.
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Dear conference participants,
We plan to translate the articles from the Russian part of our
conference. Today we have sent there the following articles:
S.A.Nikolsky
ÓAgrarian ReformÔ 1991-1995 and the problems of
modernization of Russian Village
I.E.Koznova
Social memory of the peasants as the factor of agrarian
reorganizations
V.P.Poznyakov
Agrarian reform and the contradictions of the peasants
economical thinking
G.Rodionova
Private property on the land and motivation of activity in
agriculture
We will be very glad if anybody will help us with translation.
In the English part of the conference we are sending the article:
Marina Garadzha
Farm Management Survey: Preliminary Results
If you want to present your paper in English or Russian, please,
contact me (<durmanov@dmitri.msk.ru> or <con-
mgt@fadr.msu.ru>)
We would like to congratulate all the women with the fine spring
holiday of 8th of March.
Yours,
Dmitri Durmanov