Abstract
Although the Russian cooperative movement today is represented by a substantial number of cooperatives of various types, it is difficult to determine their precise number, since they are not embraced by the state system of statistical survey. The Federal Statistic Agency (Rosstat) neither conducts surveys on the dynamics of cooperative development, nor distinguishes them from the total number of enterprises of a relevant sector. However, the International Labor Organization reckons that: a) About 12,000 agricultural cooperatives are spread over 60 regions of the Russian Federation; in addition, there are over 1,000 credit cooperatives; over 15,000 producer cooperatives; consumer cooperatives are over 7,000 hair dressing salons, about 11,000 clothes and footwear repair shops, about 2,000 enterprises engaged in housing construction and renovation, about 4,000 household appliances repair shops, and over 1,000 of pharmacies; b) The number of members of various types of cooperatives is about 60 million; with the assumption that the population of Russia is about 150 million, the degree of involvement can be determined to be about 40% or almost one third of the country. Such an extraordinary involvement of citizens is most probably a direct consequence of both the dissolution of the soviet economic system, not encouraging medium and large-scale private business initiatives, and of the dependency from the cultural heritage of the tsarist times. Not surprisingly, memories of the ancient tsarist and soviet models still influence modern cooperative law in Russia: on the one hand, the commune (obščina); on the other, the “kolkhoz”. Both were intended to be organizational models for agriculture, where indeed cooperatives first emerged. Considering the above, the paper gives an insight of the history of cooperatives in Russia, particularly focusing on the transitions from tsarist towards the soviet era, and from the soviet times toward the perestrojka. A second part of the paper provides the reader with information on modern Russian cooperative law.
This paper independently develops a former working paper written in cooperation with Natalia Zakirova of MESI University of Moscow.
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Notes
- 1.
The International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) shows 3,163 cooperatives registered in Russia, having 4,407,930 members and 285,155 employees: International Co-operative Alliance (2010), p. 12.
- 2.
International Labor Organization (2009), at p. 54.
- 3.
Id., p. 8.
- 4.
Id., p. 50.
- 5.
Historical data collected in the following sections and subsection are taken from various sources. For further information, in Russian, see Krašennikov (2010), Tikhomirov (2009), and Vakhitov (1998); see also, Sukhanov (2005), at pp. 308ff. In English, see Butler (1983), in particular at pp. 9ff., 223ff., 238ff. (see also Butler 2003); Gsovski (1948), in particular at pp. 411ff., 555ff., 659ff. In Italian, see Crespi Reghizzi (1969), at pp. 209ff.; Ajani (1989); Ajani (1996); see also de Luca (2007).
- 6.
The obščina is an institution with a self-government, in which all the fundamental issues of the village’s common life are solved by the assembly of farmers, on the basis of democratic and egalitarian principles.
- 7.
Arable land was divided in sections based on soil quality and distance from the village, and then allotted. Title to allotted land was given not to the individual peasants, but to peasant communes, as they already existed on the eve of emancipation: for the land, communes could pay a ground rent or a redemption fee. In 1881 the Russian Imperial State paid for all of the lands assigned to the communes and the communes were charged with a burden to pay redemption fees for 49 years (or 44 in case they previously paid a ground rent). As a consequence, the regime of ownership and tenure over the land changed: “the owner of the land is the commune as a legal entity, while the individual families have only the right of temporary tenure, from one redistribution to another, of the strip of communal land assigned to them” (Decisions n. 2064 and 2740 of 1889, Ruling Senate, Second Department).
- 8.
Strips were periodically re-allocated on the basis of a census, to ensure equitable share of the land. Redistributions were decided by the communal meeting of the heads of the households. Indeed, each household had the right to claim one or more strips from each section depending on the number of adults in the household. All men of the village being heads of their households (domokozjain) took part to the assembly of the obščina, with equal voting rights (also widows could be head of their family, and vote). A two-third majority vote was required for a redistribution and the decision of the meeting was then verified by a special magistrate (zemskij načalnik).
- 9.
Decision n. 27 of 1900, Ruling Senate, Plenary Assembly.
- 10.
The overall amount of calculated taxes took the productivity of the land, not the number of the employed workers into account. The commune was made collectively (jointly and severally) responsible for payment of taxes and of redemption fees. If some members of the obščina were in arrears (or eventually fled the community), the remaining members would bear an increased burden for taxes. Therefore, the community was given the power to restrict the freedom of peasants in arrears, by refusing to issue a passport to a peasant, without which he could not move to reside elsewhere under the passport system. This system led the village leaders to grant the tsarist power a strict control over the members of the community, so consolidating the peasants’ population.
- 11.
As a result of 1905 revolution, the regime of fiscal solidarity among the members of the obščina was abolished and the peasants were relieved from the payment of the balance of the redemption for the allotted land (so-called Stolypin reform). Now, every peasant was entitled to exchange his communal interest for individual ownership and to receive a title of deed for the acreage he actually held in the communal land. As a consequence, the obščina was mostly dismantled, and peasants becoming owners of land in a stance of personal ownership were called kulaks. Independence of the kulaks, however, lasted only one decade. On the eve of the revolution, the kulaks were the largest private owners of agricultural land in the European Russia, being owners of approximately 80 % of the privately owned land (either as tenure of allotted land under the Stolypin reform, or in stance of proper ownership).
- 12.
Originally, nowhere was a stated principle governing the differences in status of these categories of ownership: differences emerged later, as was clarified that cooperative ownership should suffer no risk of dispossession without adequate compensation in money and land. However, some “objects” such as land, subsoil, forests, waters, railways in public use, and their rolling stocks, could be owned only by the government (this being already stated in the Socialization of Land Act, 1918). Other “objects” could be owned by privates, such as, inter alia, commercial enterprises, industrial enterprises employing a number of hired workers not higher than that fixed by the law (20 workers), instrument and means of production, money, securities and other valuables.
- 13.
- 14.
Indeed, in the first period of the New Economic Policy, private businessmen made numerous attempts to conduct their enterprises under the disguise of cooperatives. However, soon after the times of the NEP were over, these attempts were barred by a new passed criminal code (art. 129 Ugolovnji Kodeks RSFSR 1929) and all the existing cooperatives were brought under governmental supervision by making it mandatory that cooperatives join the unions.
- 15.
Each cooperative had to be admitted to membership in a local union of cooperatives, which union, in turn, formed regional, republican and nationwide organizations.
- 16.
With the passage of time, unions were replaced by state agencies. Thus, in the case of collective farms—which were officially classed with cooperatives and which were by-in-large the most widely spread form of cooperative—control was exercised by the governmental Machine-Tractor Stations and the Ministry of Agriculture, while the once existing union—Kolkhozcentr—had been abolished. The same happened some years later (1946) for the producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives, which were put under the direct control of the Supreme Soviet. In 1945, the whole system of remuneration of executive, technical and clerical personnel of the cooperatives was subject to regulation after the pattern of governmental enterprises, and application of governmental rate became mandatory. Governmental enterprises and productive cooperatives were completely integrated and to practically all aspects overlapped.
- 17.
Mikolenko and Orlovskii (1938), at p. 101.
- 18.
In fact, until 1921, the arable land was simply taken over by peasants and used by them in a traditional manner as established by the imperial laws for allotted land, regardless of the soviet theory and of the laws regulating ownership over land. Kulaks were dispossessed of their lands and these were redistributed as during the era of the obščina. The government could not gain control over the peasants, but reaffirming the state monopoly on the trade in all crops. This resulted in the confiscation of all products of agriculture considered in surplus.
- 19.
As a matter of fact, such Land Code—not completely rid of the prerevolutionary land law—was adopted during the same 1922. Under this code, factual holding of land was recognized as title, so that each local peasant unit, township, or village commune, continued to use the land in its actual possession on the date of the decree (art. 141, Land Code 1922).
- 20.
Artel’ is an ancient Russian term (also used in the Svod Zakonov), designating an association of craftsmen, such as shoemakers, masons, and carpenters. One of those acted as a contractor under the joint and several responsibility of all. Share of profits depended on the amount of work provided for by each member.
- 21.
The kolkhozian models of agricultural cooperative gradually and spontaneously spread before and during the NEP: while in 1918 communes constituted over 60 % of all collective farms, their number dramatically dropped in 1922 to barely 10 %, and in 1930 they completely disappeared. Indeed, the achievement of the technical task of mechanizing agriculture required radical social changes. The Soviet government needed to gain full control over farming production. This task implied use of new tools in agriculture: huge collective farms, named sovkhozy (sovetskie khozjaistva), for large production of grain and meat; and smaller collective farms (kolkhozy).
- 22.
Art. 1, Standard Chapter 1935.
- 23.
Art. 2, USSR Law of 7 August 1932.
- 24.
Art. 10, Standard Chapter 1935.
- 25.
Art. 20, Standard Chapter 1935.
- 26.
See Dellenbrant (1988), p. 43.
- 27.
Sources in Ajani (1989), p. 160.
- 28.
Model Act on Cooperatives and their Unions, taken in St. Petersburg on December 6, 1997, decree n. 10–18 of the General Assembly, available at: http://www.lawrussia.ru/texts/legal_339/doc339a672x913.htm.
- 29.
Also the Kodeks ob administrativnykh pravonarušenijakh [administrative infringements code], of December, 31st 2001 N 256-RG, regulates inter alia some aspects of agricultural consumers cooperatives (see art. 14–34).
- 30.
These include:
-
Resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of November 2, 1990 N 1132 On the relationship between state-owned enterprises and privately setup cooperatives;
-
Presidential Decree of July 27 1993 N 1139 On some measures to support private (peasant) farms and agricultural cooperatives;
-
Order of the Federal Financial Markets Service of the Russian Federation of December 29, 2005 N 05-95 On the approval of additional requirements to order disclosure of housing cooperatives;
-
Government Resolution of January 28th, 2006 N 46 On regulations assess the financial sustainability of the housing savings cooperatives (with Method of determining standards for assessing the financial stability of house savings cooperatives);
-
Government Resolution of February 20th, 2007 N 109 On the federal organ for the implementation of state regulation of self-regulatory organizations of Unions of Agricultural Cooperatives and maintain the state register of self-regulatory organizations of Unions of Agricultural Cooperatives;
-
Order of the Ministry of Finance of July 22th, 2010 N 78 On the approval of the allocation of the reserve funds of credit cooperatives.
-
- 31.
For further details, see Krasheninnikov (2010), p. 39ss.
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Further Reading
Крашенинников ВП (2010) Производственные и потребительские кооперативы. Постатейный комментарий статей 107–112 и 116 Гражданского кодекса Российской Федерации [Krasheninnikov V.P., Production and consumer cooperatives]. Statut, Moscow
Тихомиров МЮ (2009) Жилищные кооперативы [Tikhomirov MY, Housing cooperatives] Moscow
Вахитов КИ (1998) История потребительской кооперации России [Vakhitov KI, History of consumer cooperatives in Russia]. Moscow
Суханов ЕА (2005) Гражданское право (Sukhanov EA, Private Law), vol I. Wolters Kluver, Moscow, p 308ff.
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de Luca, N. (2013). Russia. In: Cracogna, D., Fici, A., Henrÿ, H. (eds) International Handbook of Cooperative Law. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30129-2_31
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