“Are you shovel-ready, Comrade?”

1.) The size of plots can be expanded later.

2.) It avoids disturbing whoever still profits from the great “communes” set up during the 1930s. Those hectares still produce much of Russia’s food, even though they may not be run by a party apparatchik.

3.) If this works well in the Far East, it may prove itself worthy of being integrated into the already existing structure of major Russian grain and meat production. At that point the political price for disturbing those of Putin’s cronies that control distribution there could drop steeply.

So, about 100 years *after* “the communes” kicked into high gear under Stalin, they *may* finally have seen heir last effects extinguished.

Still, as the old saying about dancing bears (weirdly appropriate) has it, “The wonder of the thing is not that the bear dances badly, but that it dances at all.”

I should know this stuff cold…George Washington was a Land Surveyor.
(640 acres is a square-mile, “more-or-less,” that I do know!)
tangential– technology has been an absolute boom to Land Surveying & Civil Engineering. Not as glamorous as Space but accurately measuring & locating square-lots, on a round Planet, presents its own difficulties.

The first homestead law awarded 160 acres. They later amended that to 640 for the west, where a larger plot was required to make the farm profitable.

I am uninformed as to what sort of property-rights, Land Title laws, & Judicial enforcement of such, in Russia, but on the face, it sounds like a step in the right direction. (I come from a family of Land Surveyors & Civil Engineers, anything that encourages people to own their own, surveyed & Titled-land, is ok with me.)

2.5 acres isn’t a whole lot as far as to farming, I wonder if people are allowed to aggregate bigger tracts?
Correct me if I’m wrong–weren’t our Homestead Grants on the order of 120 acres?
(Railroads were given 100 miles on both side of the track, but that’s a different topic entirely.)