Land law
Land law (Земельне законодавство; Zemelne zakonodavstvo). Legal norms that regulate land ownership, tenure, and use. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics land law was a wide legal area embracing all land relations and various socialist forms of land use. In non-Soviet countries land ownership and use is regulated mostly by private law (property, contracts, and so on). Only some land legislation belongs to public law, particularly the legislative or administrative acts that limit the freedom of transfer, division, consolidation, and expropriation. (For earlier land acts under the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary, see Land tenure system and Land reforms.)
During the period of Ukrainian struggle for independence (1917–20), land ownership and distribution was one of the most pressing problems. It was the subject of a series of proclamations and legislative acts. The First Universal of the Central Rada announced the expropriation of the estates of the landowners, the state, the tsar, and the church, and reserved the right of the Ukrainian parliament to make land legislation. The Third Universal of the Central Rada abolished the gentry’s right to own estates and other lands not worked directly by them, and transferred, without compensation, this ‘property of all the toiling people’ to the people. The Constituent Assembly of Ukraine was to enact the law that would bring order to land tenure system; until then, local land committees would administer expropriated lands. The Fourth Universal of the Central Rada proclaimed the abolition of private land ownership and the socialization of land in the Ukrainian National Republic.
On 31 January 1918 the Central Rada passed a special land law which restated the main points of the Third Universal of the Central Rada and preserved the principle of socialization. Inspired by the land program of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, it allowed former owners to retain the use of tracts, whose size was to be determined, according to local conditions, by the land administration consisting of land committees (village, district, and gubernia) and a central government land agency. The law provided for land use by individuals, co-operatives, the state, and other public corporations. It was implemented after the Bolsheviks had been pushed out of Ukraine in March 1918.
By his decree of 29 April 1918, Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky abolished the Central Rada’s land law and dissolved the land committees. This decree and the Hetman government’s provisional law proclaimed that the right of ownership was inalienable, and that private property could be expropriated only with compensation. A special commission drafted a land reform bill (known as Minister Volodymyr Leontovych’s bill), which was enacted in November 1918. It required estates over 200 desiatins (218 ha) to be sold to the State Land Bank and to be distributed among peasant farmers in parcels of up to 25 desiatins.
Instead of reinstating the Central Rada’s land law, the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic on 9 January 1919 enacted Mykyta Shapoval’s modified version of the law of 31 January 1918. It granted in perpetuity a maximum of 15 desiatins to individual farmers and socialized all other land without compensation. Thus, private farms worked by their owners were retained, while voluntary co-operative farming was encouraged. Shifting battlefronts, however, prevented this law from being implemented.
The Ukrainian National Rada of the Western Province of the Ukrainian National Republic on 14 April 1919 adopted a land law which preserved the principle of private ownership. At the same time it expropriated, for the purpose of redistributing land among landless peasants and small farmers, the following categories of land: (1) manorial tracts which had been excluded from village community jurisdiction by the law of 1866; (2) church and monastic lands; (3) estates that were not worked by the owners themselves; (4) lands acquired through speculation; and (5) all other lands in excess of a limit to be defined by a separate law, which would also determine compensation for expropriated land. The Polish occupation of Western Ukraine prevented the Ukrainian National Rada from implementing these reforms. (For Polish land legislation in the interwar period see Land reforms.)
Soviet Ukraine. The land law of the Ukrainian SSR was inspired by the Russian government’s decree of 21 November 1917 and nationalization law of 27 January 1918, and was adopted by the Second All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in March 1918. The new land law abolished private ownership of land and proclaimed all land to be the property of ‘the entire toiling people.’ Subsequently, the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine declared, on 28 January 1919, that all cultivated landowners’ estates belonged to the state and would be converted by the People's Commissariat of Land Affairs into state farms and communes. On 22 January 1920 the Ukrainian Soviet government published the Basic Principles of Organizing Land Affairs in Ukraine, which took into account some of the peasantry’s demands. The land law of 5 February 1920, which was based on these principles, echoed the first law on land nationalization. All land not worked directly was to be distributed without compensation to the peasants and controlled by land communities. The owners of the confiscated lands were to be expelled immediately from their farms. This law was approved by the Fourth All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in May 1920.
On 27 May 1922 the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (VUTsVK) issued the Fundamental Law on the Toilers’ Land Use and on 16 October 1922 approved the Land Code of the Ukrainian SSR. Modeled on the land law of the RSFSR, the new law permitted the limited use of hired labor and land leasing.
In the Union constitution of 1924 the USSR legislature received the power to define the general principles of the land law, while republican governments could determine, in harmony with the Union law, only the rules of land use. The last more or less autonomous land acts of the Ukrainian SSR were the government decrees of 1927, which introduced several changes in the Land Code of the Ukrainian SSR. By 15 December 1928 the Central Executive Committee of the USSR published the General Foundations of Land Use and Land Tenure, which applied to Soviet Ukraine as well as to other republics.
Radical changes in Ukraine’s land law occurred when the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) approved (5 January 1930) the resolution on speeding up the collectivization of agriculture, and the Union law depriving the kulaks of the right to use or lease land or to hire labor. The Presidium of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee repeated this new law in its resolution of 23 August 1930, thus negating a large portion of Ukraine’s Land Code of 1922. Land use by collective farms was regulated almost entirely by the Union law, primarily by the Model Statute for the Agricultural Artel of 1 September 1930 (modified on 17 February 1935). A 1930 Union law granted the collective farms ‘perpetual use’ of their land. Other important acts regulating land use in Ukraine included the decrees of the USSR government in 1939 on the size of private plots held by collective farmers, manual workers, and office workers, and on the abolition of the khutir homesteads. In the postwar period the USSR government proclaimed (7 June and 17 July 1950) the voluntary consolidation of collective farms. In practice, however, the process was not voluntary, but imposed by the Communist Party and by the state machine.
The powers of the Union republics in land affairs was a contentious issue between the advocates of Moscow centralism and of republican autonomy in the 1920s. It was settled at the time in Moscow’s favor by faits accomplis. Thus, the theoretical question of land ownership was settled in 1929–30 in favor of the USSR by the almost complete replacement of Ukraine’s land law by the Union law. In 1956–8 the issue of codifying the land laws of the Union republics was raised, and proposals were made to expand the rights of the republics in this area and to let the USSR government decide only basic questions of land use, land tenure system, and cadastre. The issue was resolved in a manner similar to that of the 1924 arrangements. The Foundations of the Land Law of the USSR and the Union Republics (approved by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 13 December 1968) remained within the competency of the Union government, while the specific codes and other acts based on these foundations were determined by the republics. Thus, the Land Code of the Ukrainian SSR (1970) repeated and was built on the Foundations, as were the codes of the other republics. In practice the Union agencies retained the right to take the initiative even in matters that belonged to the jurisdiction of the republics.
Other sources of land law were the Model Statute of the Collective Farm (in effect from 27 November 1969); resolutions of the Union and republican councils of ministers; orders and instructions of ministries and departments; and decisions of local soviets. In principle, the norms of civil law did not apply to land affairs.
The general changes which came about with perestroika under Mikhail Gorbachev also affected land use. On 6 March 1990 a new set of Fundamental Principles of Land Legislation was announced. Also being considered was a law establishing the right to private property.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Vytanovych. I. Agrarna polityka ukraïns'kykh uriadiv 1917–1920 (Munich–Chicago 1968)
Indychenko, P. Radians'ke zemel'ne pravo (Kyiv 1971)
Zakonodavchi akty pro zemliu (Kyiv 1972)
Vsevolod Holubnychy, Vasyl Markus, Matvii Stakhiv
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]