In November 1906, Russia’s tsarist regime launched a land reform under which peasants, who had held most of their land communally and in multiple scattered plots, obtained rights to convert to exclusive ownership and to consolidate their tracts. In Liberal Reform in an Illiberal Regime, 1906–1915: The Creation of Private Property in Russia (Hoover Institution Press, 2006), Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit examines the measure as a case study of “reform from above.” Can a reform undertaken by an autocracy—not in response to pressure from a formerly disenfranchised group, but as a voluntary decision aimed at economic and social transformations—advance a country toward liberal democracy and prosperity? Or can such reforms actually retard progress because they aggravate social tensions and because they are designed without the political participation of those who will be directly affected?

At this luncheon seminar held on the hundredth anniversary of the Russian reforms, Judge Williams will present the main arguments and conclusions of his book. His presentation will be followed by commentary from the eminent Russian economist Yegor Gaidar, the acting prime minister during the first government of President Boris Yeltsin and the architect of the free-market revolution in post-Soviet Russia.