This article investigates the regionally varied changes in social support and responsibilities of large-scale farms vis-à-vis household plot holders and their rural communities in post-Soviet Russia. Ongoing marketisation puts pressure on the Sovietinherited symbiosis between large farms and household plots. We observe that large farms' shift to Anglophone-style, explicit Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) hides declining support for villagers and sometimes even dispossession. In the second of our two case studies, a less well-endowed region, the inherited symbiosis continues with modifications ("implicit CSR") and helps sustain comparatively higher household plot production. RÉSUMÉCet article examine les variations régionales associées au soutien social et à la responsabilité des grandes exploitations agricoles envers les détenteurs de parcelles domestiques et leurs communautés rurales en Russie post-soviétique. L'expansion actuelle du marché induit une pression sur la symbiose entre grandes exploitations et parcelles familiales héritée de l'URSS. Nous observons que les grandes exploitations optent pour une Responsabilité sociale des entreprises (RSE) de type anglophone qui occulte une diminution du soutien aux villageois, et parfois même leur dépossession. Dans la seconde de nos deux études de cas, menée dans une région moins productive, la symbiose héritée de l'ère soviétique se perpétue avec quelques modifications (ce que nous qualifions de « RSE implicite ») et contribue à maintenir un niveau comparativement plus élevé de production dans les parcelles familiales. ARTICLE HISTORY

Through a study of agricultural service cooperatives in Russia's Belgorod region, this article addresses two gaps in the literature: first, the dearth of empirical studies on cooperatives in post-socialist Russia; second, the lack of attention to top-down cooperatives in the global literature, and the overly negative approach to the topic in the few extant studies. Whereas state attempts to establish agricultural cooperatives in Russia in a top-down fashion have largely failed, such cooperatives have sprung up widely in Belgorod. The article investigates: (1) what influence the (regional) state exerts on the cooperatives, and how that affects their daily functioning and viability; and (2) to what extent such top-down cooperatives might evolve into less state-led forms, such as classic member-driven or businesslike cooperatives. Introduction: the issue of top-down cooperatives The global literature on agricultural producers' organisations-also referred to as agricultural cooperatives-has a rich tradition of studies in the Global South, as well as in the West. 1 To date, the countries of post-socialist Eurasia, including the former Soviet Union, China and Central Eastern Europe (CEE), have attracted much less attention. In particular, the post-Soviet region-with Russia as its biggest country-has largely been ignored. This is especially remarkable when one considers Russia's rich early history of cooperatives, and the extended literature on Russian cooperatives and family farms, which is generally associated with the work of Chayanov ([1927] 1991) and gained importance in agrarian studies in the 1970s through authors such as Shanin (1971). Agricultural cooperatives flourished in Russia in the pre-Soviet period of the early twentieth century (Bilimovich, [1955] 2005; Kotsonis, 1999; Pallot, 1998). By 1914, the agricultural cooperative movement had become the largest in Europe, with over nine million members (Kotsonis, 1999). However, with the onset of communism and forced collectivisation, voluntary cooperatives were replaced by obligatory membership of collective and state farms. Very few comprehensive studies have been carried out on the fate of cooperatives after the demise of the communist system in 1991, and the subsequent decollectivisation. A

No abstract

The ‘food regime’ approach was introduced as a historical method of “incorporated comparison” (P. McMichael). This comparison of the role of agriculture in the world-system made some scholars overemphasize an excessively unitary and coherent global food regime. The authors recognize this approach as a historical-comparative analytical tool to understand global trends, but argue that the Russian and Brazilian agrarian development question some ideas of the food regime approach. The contemporary positions of two countries in the global markets also prove the divergences in their positioning in the food regime genealogy. The paper focuses on the production and export of soy and wheat which do not represent the entire agrarian economy of Brazil and Russia but allow to compare two countries’ strategies of the international trade and in domestic markets. First, the authors briefly discuss the historical routes Russia and Brazil have taken in the agricultural development and global food markets; then they analyze the radical changes that followed the Russian perestroika and the Brazilian re-democratization in the late 1980s and led to the consolidation of neoliberal policies in the 1990s. After that the paper describes the turn of both countries to the ‘neo-developmental state’ that supported the export-oriented policies for the agribusiness but combined them with domestic food security and sovereignty policies. Finally, the authors conclude that despite differing trajectories both Russia and Brazil cannot be considered parts of the neoliberal food regime due to the fact that the contemporary period should be rather defined as a paradigmatic crisis and a co-existence of two or more food regimes.

No abstract