Ladezhinsky, Wolf Isaakovich

Born in Yekaterinopol (Kalniboloto), Kiev province , into a wealthy Jewish family ^[1] . The likely correct Cyrillic spelling of his surname is Ladyzhinsky ^[2] . His father owned a mill and traded in grain and wood. Due to the limitations of the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the choice of professions for a Jewish youth was rather narrow and the most prestigious was considered to be getting a good education. Ladezhinsky graduated from a Russian-language gymnasium in Zvenigorodka ^[3] , and also attended the Heder Jewish school, where he studied Hebrew and theology ^[1] .

During the revolution, all the property of the family was confiscated, his brother died during the Civil War , there is little further reliable information about the fate of his family ^[1] . In 1921, Ladezhinsky crossed the border and ended up in Romania , where he worked for some time at a mill and a bakery, later working in the Romanian branch of the Society for the Promotion of Jewish Immigration in Bucharest ^[1] . In 1922, he was instructed to accompany a group of Jewish orphans in the United States, and so he ended up in the United States . There, he immediately began to study English to enter the university, worked as a handyman, a window washer, and sold newspapers in central New York ^[3] . In 1926, he sufficiently mastered the language and entered Columbia University with a degree in agricultural economics ^[1] . The university credited him with a Russian gymnasium education in two years of study ^[3] and Ladezhinsky managed to get a bachelor's degree in two years ^[1] and in the same 1928 received US citizenship ^{[4] [3]} .

After graduation, Ladezhinsky remained in the magistracy, studied the evolution of agricultural production in the Soviet Union , including the process of collectivization . In 1930-1931, he managed to work for about a year as a relatively high-paid translator in Amtorg , which allowed him to be less distracted from studies ^[3] . In 1932, he graduated from the magistracy, defended his diploma, and continued work on the topic of collectivization, hoping to defend a doctoral dissertation. His knowledge of Russian, his direct acquaintance with the subject, and his keen analytical mind enabled him to create an in-depth study of collectivization in the USSR . The result of his work was summarized in the 90-page printed work Collectivization of Agriculture in the Soviet Union, published in 1934 in two issues of Political Science Quarterly magazine ^{[5] [6] [3]} . Apparently, this work was supposed to become his doctoral dissertation after completion, however, Ladezhinsky did not defend his dissertation ^{[1] [3]} . Most likely the case was the ongoing Great Depression and the acute shortage of competent professionals to work in the Roosevelt government. The publication demonstrated its potential as a specialist and in 1935, on the recommendation of Professor Rexford Tagwell , a member of the Brain Trust under President Roosevelt ^[1] , Wolf Ladezhinsky was hired by the US Department of Agriculture as an expert on Asian and agricultural issues of the USSR .

The first eleven years in the civil service (from 1935 to 1945) Ladezhinsky spent in the Department of Foreign Agricultural Relations of the Ministry and was mainly engaged in analytical work. During this time, he prepared and published for the internal use of the ministry about twenty works devoted to agriculture in the USSR and Asian countries. In 1939, the Soviet embassy issued him an entry visa and, with the approval of his leadership, Ladezhinsky spent more than two months in the USSR, studying the results of collectivization and talking with relatives whom he had not seen for almost twenty years ^[3] .

Two articles written by him during this period: one - "Peasant rent in agriculture in Japan " published in 1937 in the ministerial publication Foreign Agriculture ^{[7] [8]} and the second - "Peasant unrest in Japan", published in 1939 in the journal Foreign Affairs ^[7] , earned him a reputation in the ministry as a connoisseur of Japanese rural habits. With the beginning of the American occupation of Japan, this reputation and knowledge proved to be most welcome.

Japan Agrarian Reform

The defeat of Japan exacerbated the traditional social contradictions in the Japanese countryside, which was used by the Japanese Communists, who demanded the confiscation of the landlords' lands and their redistribution. At the level of the allied command, the demand for confiscation of property of large owners was actively defended by the Soviet representative General Derevyanko ^{[3] [4]} . Understanding that redistribution is necessary to relieve social tension, but that any free confiscation will undermine the legal foundations of the state, on October 26, 1945, George Atcheson, political adviser to the Command of the Occupation Forces, presented to General MacArthur a memorandum prepared by adviser Robert Firi in collaboration with Ladezhinsky. The memorandum was devoted to possible agrarian transformations in occupied Japan through the redemption and normalized sale of land and emphasized the fundamental importance of land ownership to neutralize the communist sentiment that swept the villages ^{[9] [4] [10]} . MacArthur approved the project and Ladezhinsky was called to Tokyo for practical work on the reform.

After almost a year of intensive study of land relations practices in Japan, as well as after numerous consultations with the Japanese authorities, Ladezhinsky’s group developed a reform project. It is believed that at the same time Ladezhinsky could be guided by the experience of the Stolypin agrarian reform ^[11] . According to the project, drawn up under the leadership of Ladezhinsky, the land was bought back from the landlords by the landowners, and they were sold on favorable terms, with a 30-year installment plan, to peasant tenants. The project was presented to the head of the occupation administration MacArthur in June 1946, and after its approval was sent as a guide to the action of the Japanese administration. In October 1946, the bill was passed by the Japanese parliament and reform began. Three years later, a class of owner-owned farmers appeared in Japan, and this practically eliminated the social base for left-wing radical moods in the Japanese village. It was also a very important step in the modernization of the economy: the reform eliminated the predatory landowner rent and small farmers-owners began to receive significantly more income from their plots than under lease conditions. And the former landowners, who received quite a lot of money for their land, became investors in new economic undertakings ^[4] . The American press of that time praised Ladezhinsky’s personal contribution to eliminating the threat of social unrest in Japan ^[3] .

Describing this period, Ladezhinsky himself never mentioned his role in the development of the reform plan and called the main architect of the socialist transformations Hiroo Wada , the former Minister of Agriculture of Japan ^[12] . Perhaps this position was the result of Ladezhinsky’s deep understanding of the specifics of acceptable forms of social progress in Japanese society.

Agrarian Reform in Taiwan

In 1949, Ladezhinsky was sent to study the prospects of agrarian reform in China. The document drawn up by him following a trip to Sichuan from October 13 to 20, 1949, on the one hand, marks a positive reaction of Chinese peasants to reforms, and on the other hand, missed opportunities and the inevitable loss of Sichuan by the Kuomintang and withdrawal from the continent ^[13] . Since 1950, he worked as the agricultural attache of the US Embassy in Tokyo, while overseeing the continuation of the agrarian reform in Japan and advising on a similar reform in Taiwan .

Taiwanese agrarian reform was governed by a 1953 law called Land to the Tiller Act. The law as a whole repeated the basic ideas of Japanese agrarian reform and had a similar result, serving as the economic and social basis for the future " Taiwan miracle ." As in Japan, the state forcibly redeemed their lands from large landowners and transferred them into the ownership of peasant tenants. Former tenants replenished the class of landowners, which drastically reduced social tension in the countryside and deprived the landowners of their traditional power over the peasants.

Dismissal from the Ministry

In January 1955, in the wake of McCarthyism, Ladezhinsky was at the center of the conflict, which received considerable publicity in the American press. Several community groups involved in identifying “communists” and “subversive activities” included Ladezhinsky on the “black lists” at the end of 1954, followed by Russian Minister of Agriculture Benson deprived him of access to government information and dismissed him because of "increased risks." At the same time, he was charged with evidence of suspicious activity in Amtorg in 1931 ^[3] , a visit to the USSR in 1939 on the instructions of the US Department of Agriculture, and writing articles on Soviet collectivization ^[14] .

Almost immediately after the dismissal from the Department of Agriculture, Ladezhinsky was offered a position in the US State Department, where he was returned admission to government information and sent to South Vietnam to help carry out land reform ^[15] . The personnel shuffle attracted the attention of the press, and President Eisenhower at the next press conference asked several uncomfortable questions about the validity of the dismissal and contradictions in the policies of various government departments ^[16] .

The apparent bias of dismissal in the "Ladezhinsky case" caused a wave of criticism in the press and Minister Benson was forced to apologize ^[3] . In general, the episode served as one of the grounds for revising the practice of granting and withdrawing admission to US government departments ^[17] .

In South Vietnam

From 1955 to 1961, Ladezhinsky worked at the US State Department , was an adviser on land reform and the refugee settlement program under the President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Zieme . The main work of Ladezhinsky on the preparation of agrarian reform occurred in 1955-1956 and culminated in the adoption by the Vietnamese authorities in October 1956 of Resolution 57 on reform ^[18] . In the decision, you can see all the features characteristic of the reforms prepared by Ladezhinsky: a detailed calculation of the norm for the peasant land allotment in relation to the realities of the country; calculation and balancing of the price and conditions for the purchase of land into property affordable for peasants and not too low for landowners; a thorough study of the structure of reform committees at the provincial and municipal levels.

Ordinance 57 turned out to be a much less successful reform than Japanese or Taiwanese, mainly due to opposition from large French landowners, which extended the transfer of land for four years. In addition, the development of events in Vietnam as a whole did not add optimism and from 1957 to 1961, Ladezhinsky, while in Saigon , practically did not deal with Vietnam, advising other regional governments.

In 1961, Ladezhinsky left the civil service in the Ford Foundation ^[19] .

From 1961 to 1963, Ladezhinsky collaborated with the Ford Foundation, mainly engaged in an agrarian reform program in Nepal . The program was unsuccessful due to the inconsistent position of the ruling monarch Mahendra , who refused to radically limit rents and liberalize land relations under pressure from the country's nomenclature ^[19] . Disagreement with the course of the reform, categorically expressed to the king in a note written in March 1963, apparently, forever closed the doors to the Ladezhinsky royal palace ^[20] .

In 1964, Ladezhinsky transferred to work at the World Bank to participate in a large-scale study of the problems of India . After completing his research in India, the World Bank Directorate first invited him to new projects in Mexico and Iran , and then he was offered a position in the World Bank's permanent mission in India, where he worked until his death in 1975.

Wolf Ladezhinsky died in the summer of 1975 in Washington, as an employee of the World Bank mission in India. He collected a rich collection of works of oriental art was transferred by his will to the Museum of Israel . In 1977, the World Bank published a collection of selected works by Ladezhinsky, which includes a complete bibliography of his works ^[21] .

In his views on the social structure, Ladezhinsky was close to the new institutionalists , relentlessly emphasizing the deep connection between the development of the institution of private ownership of land and social progress. This topic runs through all his works. Awareness of the practical importance of property reform for the destruction of the old feudal system and the neutralization of radical communist sentiments in the village brings his views closer to the modern Peruvian reformer Hernando de Soto .

Ladezhinsky attached particular importance to the political influence of the class of small proprietors, which may have been the result of his personal experience of the first revolutionary years in Russia. Many of his works emphasize that the Leninist slogan “Earth to the peasants!”, Supported by the Russian peasantry, was a turning factor in ensuring the Bolsheviks victory in the Civil War , a factor that the White Guards could neither evaluate nor use.

The ensuing collectivization, the forcible seizure of land in the USSR into public property, was considered by Ladezhinsky not only to be a rejection of social progress, but also as a betrayal by the communists of people who provided them with key support in the Civil War. Apparently, this moral assessment turned him into a staunch opponent of the communist ideology, which he remained until the last day.

• Ladejinsky, Wolf. Collectivization of Agriculture in the Soviet Union I. - New York: Political Science Quarterly, 1934. - Vol. 49, No. 1 (Mar., 1934). - P. 1-43.
• Ladejinsky, Wolf. Collectivization of Agriculture in the Soviet Union II . - New York: Political Science Quarterly, 1934. - Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun., 1934). - P. 207-252.
• Ladejinsky, Wolf. Agrarian Reform as Unfinished Business: The Selected Papers of Wolf Ladejinsky (LJ Walinsky, Ed.) . - London: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1977 .-- 603 p.
• Sergey Agafonov. Groundhog Shadow. Notes (continued) // “New Youth”. - 2004. - No. 3 (66) . Archived on October 17, 2015.
• Odd Man Out // Time magazine. - 1955. - January 3.
• Back To Work // Time magazine. - 1955. - January 17.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower: The President's News Conference // The American Presidency Project. - 1955. - January 12. Archived on October 17, 2015.
• James Rorty. The Dossier of Wolf Ladejinsky. The Fair Rewards of Distinguished Civil Service // Commentary magazine. - 1955. - April 1. Archived on October 17, 2015.
• Katerinopol (neopr.) . Becket, Historical and Genealogical Database of Ukraine. Date of treatment October 18, 2015. Archived October 17, 2015.