The pre-reform period was characterized by state monopoly of land and by land use that did not require any payment. The legal principles of land reform in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union were set in 1989 by the Basic Law on Land Legislation in the USSR and the Soviet Republics....

Russia has experienced dramatic changes in land ownership and tenure since 1991: agricultural land has been largely privatized, individual landowners now have legal rights to most agricultural land in the country, and prohibitions on buying and selling of land have been recently removed. The...

In general, land in Russia is in private ownership of millions of private owners. Nevertheless, agricultural land market is not developed, the costs associated with transactions in land are extremely high and the demand for land exists only in some regions. The market is distorted because in...