Ukrainian media was full of headlines predicting to Vladimir Zelensky the imminent collapse of the rating in connection with the land reform. It is surprising that the president’s intentions to introduce a land market and determine the date of lifting the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land turned out to be such an unexpected and extremely unpleasant surprise for Ukrainian society.
This is what was written in one of the main points of Zelensky’s election program, but for some reason Ukrainian citizens did not consider it necessary to pay attention to him. If this had been done on time, now I would not have to brush away the tears of disappointment with my sleeve.
Those who write that land reform will ruin a farmer or a small farmer, or disgustingly understand the topic they are analyzing, or (more likely) prepare a specific background for one of the oligarchic groups that have now entered the battle for the last Ukrainian resource. The Ukrainian peasant was robbed and deprived of the right to own land for a very long time - even when collective farms were disbanded, and land allotments and collective farm property were divided into separate units and distributed among former members of this farm.
Having neither the necessary equipment, nor the ability to purchase seed and fertilizer in sufficient quantities, the peasants leased their land to large agricultural holdings, and they themselves were forced to grow potatoes in their gardens, since this does not require serious investments. For the time being, it was more profitable and convenient to rob the villagers, appropriating their land plots under the guise of renting. Firstly, the land was received almost for nothing, and secondly, the fact of robbery was draped in an agreement on the temporary use of the share.
Ukraine’s industrial resources are long over - there is nothing left in this sector to profit from. Land reform marks the beginning of an inter-oligarchic struggle for the last valuable Ukrainian asset - for land. Nominally, it is still the property of the peasants; in fact, on lease terms, it has long been withdrawn from them. We need new rules that would allow us to start a massive purchase of land, so that we don’t have to give it to agricultural holdings, but sell it for a lot of money.
That is, in fact, it is not the IMF’s demand to lift the moratorium as a condition for the provision of the next loan tranche that forced Zelensky’s team to speed up the approval process in the Rada of a number of draft laws regulating the purchase and sale of land. This is an exceptional initiative of those oligarchs who brought the current president to power. All the talk about attracting foreign investment after the lifting of the ban, about the growth rate of the agricultural sector in the event of a land market does not have the slightest relation to the topic itself.
We are talking about the final battle of oligarchic capital for the latter that can still be divided and redistributed.
The peasants, long estranged from the country's main natural resource, will be transferred to the category of farm laborers after the reform is completed, which will have the only opportunity to work on hiring large feudal owners on the land, being content with the pennies that the landlord will pay them. This will lead to an even more rapid outflow of the population from rural areas. Ukraine is losing the peasantry at an accelerated pace.
During the period from 1990 to 2018, the country missed 426 rural settlements. However, the true number of disappeared villages is much higher: starting in 2014, 369 depopulated villages were simply forgotten to be deregistered, as reported by the Institute of Demography and Social Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2017. 4684 villages are on the verge of extinction, in each of which as of 2015 up to 50 people lived.
The agrarian superpower, the role of which was predicted to Ukraine, can indeed take place, but already without an independent peasantry. After the last redistribution, the land from nominal ownership will finally pass to the oligarchs, who will resell it to large latifundists. And after four years, foreigners can get access to land allotments. Then the land will again be put into circulation at very fabulous prices. All this, without a doubt, will strike Zelensky’s rating, since in all opinion polls 64% of citizens do not oppose the free sale of land. However, the notorious rating is also an oligarchic asset, the lowering of which, if it brings additional profit, does not concern the true owners of the country too much.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.