Includes bibliograhical references (p.[271]-290) and index.

Introduction. Reform from above ; Stolypin: the man behind the reforms ; This book's goals -- Creating private property, dispersing power. the gist of the reforms ; Liberal democracy ; Property rights, civil society, and liberal democracy ; Transitions to liberal democracy ; Liberalizing property rights in tsarist Russia -- The property rights to be reformed. Open fields ; Repartition ; Family v. individual tenure ; The costs of open fields, repartition, and family ownership ; Post-emancipation limits on exit, sale, or exchange ; Rule changes on the eve of the Stolypin reforms ; Sociology of the commune ; Attitudes toward law, property, and individual achievement -- Peasant conditions on the eve of reform. Trends in agricultural productivity per capita ; Peasant landholdings ; Peasant and pomeshchik productivity ; Land and grain prices: the Peasant Land Bank ; Tax burdens ; A glimpse of peasant life -- The politics of reform. Composition of the first Duma ; The pomeshchiki ; The SRs, the Trudoviki and other peasant representatives ; The Kadets ; Use of article 87 ; Collateral reforms -- Overview of the reforms. Reform provisions: a rough cut ; The results of the reforms ; The flow of applications over time ; Regional variation ; Variations in size of holdings converted or consolidated -- Purposes and pressure: issues of reform design. Red herrings ; "Administrative pressure" ; Biases in favor of title conversion and consolidation ; Title conversion as an impediment to consolidation ; Government insistence on form of consolidation ; Shortfalls in the rights granted -- The long-term implications. Productivity ; Short-term social stress ; Peasant acceptance in perspective: reversal and re-reversal in the Revolution: Siberian zemleustroistvo ; Gains: the soft variables ; Stifling the new property rights ; Prospects for liberal democracy from an illiberal regime's voluntary steps toward liberalism ; Coda: privatization of Russian agricultural land today.