Fadeeva O. P. Evolution of municipal governance in post-soviet Russia: A rural perspective // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2026. V.11. №3. P. 219-243.
EDN: VQIYWF
Annotation
The new stage in the transformation of municipal governance — under the “public authority” system introduced by the latest amendments to the Russian Constitution — entails a significant shift in the interactions between various levels of government, business sector and population, which have evolved for decades. The transition to a single-tier municipal governance poses a major challenge for social-economic and everyday cultural practices in rural areas, where local self-government bodies have traditionally played a prominent role. Efforts to optimize the administrative-territorial structure by consolidating municipalities and standardizing interaction rules within the local self-government system are viewed with mixed reactions by regional and local officials and rural administration specialists. The author’s interviews during fieldwork in various Russian regions reveal a range of perspectives regarding the pros and cons of the latest stage of the municipal reform. According to some informants and the author, the potential costs and negative consequences of ongoing changes could be mitigated by flexible municipal governance models and new indicators for rural living standards, differentiated by demographic, economic, socio-cultural and geographical conditions. Monitoring public opinion and discussing findings at various stages of the reform could significantly facilitate administrative transformation and reduce potential risks.
Keywords
Local self-government, public authority, reform, two-tier, single-tier and mixed systems of municipal organization.
About the author
Olga P. Fadeeva, PhD (Sociology), Head of the Department, Institute of Economics and Organization of Industrial Engineering, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Ac. Lavrentyev Prosp., 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia.
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Additional Info
- Submitted Monday, 02 March 2026
- Reviewed Monday, 06 April 2026
- Copyright © Auhtors, 2026
- Distribution Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Shagaida N.I., Nikulin A.M. “All generations of my family... have been involved in global agrarian transformations” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2021. V.6. №2. P. 121-153.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-2-121-153
Annotation
In the biographical interview, N.I. Shagaida, DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy of the RANEPA, considers the historical roots of the development of the Soviet agrarian system on the examples of her life experience and her family generations involved in agricultural activities in different regions of the former USSR. The interview focuses on her reflections on the peculiarities of agrarian university and academic organizations and on the role of outstanding scientists as determining the results of research teams and the horizons of agrarian sciences. The article presents the milestones in N.I. Shagaida’s scientific research as coinciding with the key stages in restructuring and reforming the Soviet and post-Soviet agrarian system, especially with the social-economic experiments and transformations under the reform of the Soviet collective-farm and state-farm system in the Nizhny Novgorod Region and other regions of the Russian Federation in the 1990s, and with the creation of rural development institutions in Lodeynopolsky district of the Leningrad Region. N.I. Shagaida emphasizes that for the successful and sustainable agrarian transformations, science and government have to work systematically in pilot regional projects in order to take into account opinions, requests and estimates of the rural population and local rural leaders in the development and adaptation of the daily innovations under the necessary agrarian changes. Thus, the interview questions the strategic goals of the state in the regulation of land relations, food security, agricultural production and the Russian rural development in general.
Keywords
Family, school, science, USSR, perestroika, reform, agricultural enterprises, land, rural development.
About the authors
Natalia I. Shagaida, DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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