HSE Sociologists Discuss Russian Agriculture in France

On February 4 – 5, 2016, a conference ‘Market economy and rural worlds in Eastern Europe’ organized by the University of Bordeaux’s Department of Sociology and the Emile Durkheim Centre took place in France.

The participants discussed the problems of contemporary agricultural policy and land reforms in Russia, Romania, Moldova, Belarus, and Ukraine. The HSE School of Sociology was represented by Olessia Kirtchik, Leading Research Fellow at the Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economic Sociology, and Svetlana Barsukova, Professor at the Department of Economic Sociology and Deputy Head of the Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology. Olessia Kirtchik spoke on ‘the Parliamentary history of private ownership of agricultural land in Russia’ and described the main stages of land reform in post-Soviet Russia. Svetlana Barsukova, together with her French colleague Caroline Dufy (IEP de Bordeaux, CED) presented a paper on the ‘Evolution of the concept of ‘food security’ in post-Soviet Russia: genesis and use of the polysemic term’. Their paper examined the difference in what is understood by food security in global and Russian practice and the degree to which the ‘Food security doctrine’ influences real agricultural policy in Russia. The papers provoked a lively discussion, a clear sign of the international interest in what is happening in Russian agriculture.