#11 Moscow Times January 26, 2001 Duma Says Yes to Buying and Selling Land With left-wing deputies staging a walkout in protest, the State Duma on Thursday gave narrow tentative approval to a bill enabling the private buying and selling of nonagricultural land. The Duma voted 229-168 on first reading to add a chapter to the Civil Code regulating business deals involving land. The proposal had been blocked by Communists who strongly opposed trading in land, most of which remains in the hands of the government and collective farms left over from the Soviet era. The bill must go through two more readings, pass the Federation Council and receive President Vladimir Putin's signature to become law. Second hearings are usually held within a month. Communists and their allies argued unsuccessfully Thursday that the rich or politically connected would gobble up the best land, pushing most of the population deeper into poverty. "Those who work and live on land don't have money and won't have any tomorrow," said Nikolai Kharitonov, the leader of the Communist-allied Agrarian faction. "If we pass this bill, we will become slaves tomorrow." He said it was "premature" to allow sales even of urban land. "Those who vote for this bill hate farmers," echoed Communist Yury Nikiforov. After the vote, Kharitonov led left-wing deputies out of the Duma hall in protest. Liberal and centrist supporters of the bill dismissed such protests as pointless since the bill only refers to nonagricultural land. The ban on deals in farmland will remain in place until a special Land Code is approved. Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of Duma's legal affairs committee and a member of the liberal Union of Right Forces faction, said the new bill would provide long-needed legal guidelines. The State Land Committee estimates the value of the nation's land at $5 trillion. Supporters of the Land Code point out that if the government were to levy a tax on privately owned land - as is done in the West - the state coffers would bulge. Land deals are currently regulated by myriad laws approved by local legislatures, and the legal confusion has created a rich ground for corruption and fraud. The absence of coherent legislation has spooked foreign investors and helped stall economic development. The approval on first reading Thursday will no doubt cheer those foreign investors who have for years been urging the government to cobble together a law that would clearly guarantee ownership rights to land. They say the lack of legislation has drastically slowed down their investments into the country. But Vladimir Plotnikov, head of the Duma's agriculture committee, said Thursday night that the bill would probably face a drawn-out fight to get through a second reading because among the agricultural lands banned from private ownership are dachas and gardens. "What we are doing by passing this article now is actually forbidding people who have dachas and gardens from doing anything with them," Plotnikov, who is also a member of the Agrarian faction, said in a telephone interview. "They can't sell them, give them away or mortgage them." The Land Code bans the sale of seven different kinds of agriculture land, and liberal deputies failed to read the fine print in their rush to get the code passed in first reading, he said. President Vladimir Putin's representative to the Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, strongly backed the bill. "If we don't enact the civil code chapter, we will preserve the black market in land," he told lawmakers before the vote. The 1993 Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to privately own land. But legislation setting up procedures for buying and selling land has been stalled for years in parliament. ******* ------------------------------------------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green ---- Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ---- _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
