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With extraordinarily heavy-handed lobbying, the government succeeded
in winning the State Duma's approval Saturday for a new Land Code
that allows Russians and foreigners to buy and sell commercial
and residential land.
Duma deputies passed the controversial code after an exhausting,
11-hour second reading on the final day of their extended spring
session. The code will come up for a third reading, usually a
formality, in the fall.
The Communists, who fiercely opposed the legislation, said they
would file a complaint to the Constitutional Court asking it to
look into what they said were several violations of legal procedures
resulting from the speed at which the Land Code was pushed through.
In a last-ditch bid to stop the bill, Communist Party leader Gennady
Zyuganov warned: "We are creating a war for land that this
country hasn't seen for a long time. Please think twice — tomorrow
it will be too late. Let's create a conciliatory commission and
discuss the bill there."
Pro-government and liberal deputies, however, said the bill was
too important to delay. The vote was 253-152 with six abstentions.
It was a big victory for the government and especially for Economic
Development and Trade Minister German Gref, who lobbied hard for
the code. He said it allows for sales of only 2 percent of Russia's
land, but this land attracts 75 percent of all foreign investment.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told reporters after the vote
that the government expects foreign investment to double in the
next two years from the current $4 billion to $5 billion a year
and to increase to up to $30 billion in the next five or six years.
"Since the times of [tsarist Prime Minister Pyotr] Stolypin's
agrarian reforms, this is the most significant land reform,"
Kudrin said, referring to early 20th-century reforms giving land
to the peasants. "It opens a new epoch in the industrial
development of Russia by allowing commercial sales of industrial
lands."
The Land Code does not deal with agricultural land, an even more
sensitive issue for the Communists and for many others. The government
is expected to submit separate legislation on sales of agricultural
land by the end of the year.
The Land Code also excludes the sale of forests, rivers, streams,
lakes, national parks and land occupied by secret enterprises
and military units.
The deputies had been expected to discuss as many as 540 amendments
proposed after the first hearing June 15, but in the end they
took up 200. The remainder either were withdrawn or their authors
did not turn up to present them.
The deputies, who had worked until 11 p.m. the night before,
were apparently so tired and anxious to finish up that they largely
ignored a bomb threat announced by the building guards and continued
the debates.
The hardest debates concerned land sales to foreigners. Having
initially rejected amendments that allowed foreigners to buy commercial
land, deputies were pressured by pro-government colleagues to
return to the same vote as many as six times.
In the end, Article 15 says: "Foreign citizens, stateless
people and foreign organizations cannot own land plots in border
regions that are listed by the president in accordance with the
federal law 'On the State Border of the Russian Federation' and
in other special territories in accordance with federal laws."
It is not clear how those limitations will be implemented, Gref
said.
The hearings were often interrupted by demands by the Communist
and Agrarian factions to postpone the vote, yet it was clear from
the very beginning that the bill would get through. The Duma is
dominated by pro-government deputies, who rejected all amendments
that did not have government support.
Gref and his deputy Alexander Maslov were present in the Duma
and were asked by Speaker Gennady Seleznyov to comment on every
amendment after it was introduced. They were joined in the government
balcony in the afternoon by Kudrin and Deputy Prime Minister Ilya
Klebanov.
The bargaining that took place showed Gref's influence. Deputies
who wanted to get their amendment through came to Gref and, after
a discussion right in the chamber, insisted on another hearing
for their amendment, saying that it now had the government's support.
Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky was among those who made a deal.
He told journalists in the afternoon that his faction would not
support the bill if none of its 300 amendments was supported,
but in the end Yabloko withdrew most of its amendments in return
for government support of four. It was clear from gestures that
Gref exchanged with Yabloko Deputy Sergei Mitrokhin, who presented
the amendments, that everything had been agreed upon in advance.
Before crucial votes on foreigners' rights, Gref asked for a
10-minute break and invited the leaders of Unity, Fatherland,
Union of Right Forces and Yabloko to a "consultation."
Russia's Regions head Oleg Morozov, looking insulted, said: "If
you frame the invitation this way, you will get zero support from
Russia's Regions."
Gref immediately corrected himself: "I was mistaken. Of
course I am inviting the leaders of all the factions."
The biggest compromise involved Articles 15 and 22 on land sales
to foreigners. The government version did not include foreign
organizations, only individuals, which legally would have allowed
these organizations to buy commercial land virtually without limits.
In exchange for a positive vote, Gref agreed to include foreign
organizations.
Kudrin called it the best Duma session ever. "We are so
grateful to the Duma for all the bills it has passed," he
said. " We understand now that we are together with the Duma
with the exception of only two factions."
Zyuganov, however, called it the "most abominable session
in the history of the Duma."
Zhores Alfyorov, a Nobel Prize winner in physics and Communist
member of the Duma, said the Land Code will have "worse consequences
than [Anatoly] Chubais' privatization."
Outside the Duma on Saturday morning it was quiet, compared to
June 15 when hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Duma.
This time, police completely blocked off the street.
A thick crowd of protesters was crammed onto the sidewalk on
the other side of Okhotny Ryad from the Duma. They threw a stone
and a 500-gram weight at Liberal Democratic leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky
as he approached them, and he brought the objects into the Duma
to show the chamber.
He was asked to remove the objects by Communist Deputy Tatyana
Astrakhankina, who said she was afraid of what "a man with
an unstable nature" might do with them at such an emotionally
charged hearing.
However, there was none of the shouting, head-butting or kicking
of a month ago when Gref had to present the proposed Land Code
over the sound of Communists and Agrarians chanting "Shame,
shame."
Zyuganov said that next week Communists and Agrarians will file
a complaint to the Constitutional Court, which has been signed
by 105 deputies, 15 more than required.
The Duma's biggest violation, he said, was in neglecting the
opinion of the 35 regional legislatures who formally objected
to the Land Code. The Duma also allowed only 29 and not the required
30 days between the first and second readings and gave deputies
three and not four weeks to submit their amendments to the property
committee, he said. Many deputies received copies of the amendments
only on Saturday when they should have gotten them three days
before the hearing, he added.
"Putin used to say that we will have dictatorship of the
law in this country. What we have now is the dictatorship of arbitrariness,"
Zyuganov said.
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