Russian Agriculture, Forestry and the Agrofood Business

After the regular crop failures of the Soviet era, Russian agriculture has become a major competitor in the international cereal and oilseeds markets. This chapter demonstrates why the dismantling of the kolkhoz/sovkhoz system did not create a mass of private smallholders but rather ended up with large-scale commercial farms. Decades of collectivization, the trauma of the “Holodomor” against the “kulaks” and the reprivatization process sabotaged by officialdom in the 1990s systematically expunged any spirit of entrepreneurialism among Russian farmers who continue as underpaid farm hands if not leaving the countryside altogether. The legal uncertainties of the land market and the lack of access to finances favoured the emergence of politically well-connected agrobusiness privileged by import protection. The chapter also covers the agricultural policies of the Eurasian Economic Union, the forestry and wood processing sectors, and as a case study recounts the experiences of the Tiraspol Kvint distillery from the Czarist beginnings to the present.