Natalia Vasilenok

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2020 - 2021 Academic Year

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Peasant Responses to the Land Reform in the Late Russian Empire

While collective landownership and communal institutions have been shown to hinder economic productivity, they can also provide insurance against risks. The design of the reforms requires the understanding of individuals’ costs and benefits from losing access to insurance. This project examines the factors of the participation in the 1906 land reform in the Russian Empire. For centuries, a peasant commune governed life in the Russian countryside. The 1906 reform allowed peasants to exit a commune and privatize their land plots. Vasilenok attempts to uncover peasants’ incentives from the relationship between reform participation rates, climatic uncertainty, and land inequality.

Natalia Vasilenok, Department of Political Science

Natalia Vasilenok is a graduate student with an interest in political methodology and comparative politics. She received a BA in political science from the Higher School of Economics in 2017.

Return to past recipients of graduate student research funding