Damir Sagolj/Reuters

People walk in front of the Monument to the Foundation of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea, April 16, 2017.

They are known as “donju”: North Korea’s new class of moneyed elites, who have made their fortunes in their country’s small but expanding private sector.

Despite the universal image of North Koreans as scraping by on a meager bowl of rice and clad in drab fatigues, the “donju” – Korean for “masters of money” – drive around in imported luxury automobiles, shop in pricey designer stores, and live or dine in a section of the capital dubbed “Pyonghattan.”

And it is this new class of elites that some international experts say should be targeted with sanctions as a means of pressuring the regime of Kim Jong-un over his country’s galloping nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

“The reality is that Kim is increasingly opening up the country to private enterprise and building up the loyalties of the new elites by allowing them access to the cash and foreign products they need to live their comfortable lifestyles and to make more money,” says Melanie Hart, director of China policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

“But once you have an elite that is dependent on importing everything from ski-lifts and Audis to Coca-Cola to maintain that lifestyle and to build more wealth,” she adds, “that creates a broad vulnerability for the international community to exploit.”

Already high tensions between North Korea and the United States and its allies in the region were sent skyward over the weekend as Pyongyang carried out its sixth and by far most powerful nuclear test Saturday. To rub in the salt, the North released photos claiming to show a miniaturized nuclear weapon capable of being mounted on a long-range ballistic missile – the kind of missile Mr. Kim vows to perfect to be able to reach US East Coast cities.

The nuclear test once again raised alarms over threatened US military intervention to take out North Korea’s nuclear and missile sites, but signals out of the Trump administration suggest that – at least for now – diplomacy will be employed to respond to the North’s latest provocation.

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, declared at an emergency UN Security Council meeting Monday that North Korea is “begging for war.” But she also announced that the US will propose a new sanctions resolution that it hopes to put to a council vote next week.

Seven UN resolutions

Beginning more than a decade ago, the UN has passed seven resolutions targeting North Korea’s illicit weapons activities, and the public perception may be that, short of military action, the world has about exhausted the sanctions options and other avenues for pressuring the Kim regime.

But many diplomats and regional experts say the international community still has tools at its disposal to apply greater pressure.

Until now, most sanctions on the North have focused on the country’s income-producing exports – such as coal and other raw materials destined largely for China. But imports (both of consumer goods for the new elites and the parts and technology needed for the weapons programs) should be more aggressively targeted, they say.

Some even propose an oil embargo.

Moreover, the US has only begun to apply the kinds of unilateral sanctions on North Korea that it did on Iran and that ultimately helped create the environment for a diplomatic settlement of the Iran nuclear crisis, some experts note.

“The reality is that North Korea is still nowhere near as pressured with sanctions as other governments with whom we’ve had security problems, including Iran,” says Nicholas Eberstadt, an expert in Korean Peninsula security at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

“There’s much more to be done to restrict their access to financial markets – and by the way, a lot of that could be accomplished by the US unilaterally,” he adds. “We hold the advantage of having the world’s reserve currency, and we should employ that” as the US did in sanctioning Iran.

Opening to private enterprise

The conventional wisdom has been that the poor and despotic North Korea simply doesn’t have the domestic pressure points of, say, an Iran. But that picture changed once the Kim regime decreed an opening to private enterprise in the early 2000s and made economic growth a primary goal, Dr. Eberstadt says.

Sanctions targeting the “donju” class’s sources of wealth are one way of upping the pressure on Kim. But Eberstadt says his close study of the North Korean economy tells him that the regime continues to benefit from a steady inflow of outside revenues.

“Under Kim Jong-un the exchange rate has stabilized and the currency isn’t falling,” Eberstadt says. Last year the economy grew by 5 percent. “That suggests there’s an untracked source of international revenue, one that serves the purposes of the regime and the elites.”

But if the US has a means of seriously restricting North Korea’s access to dollars – and thus pressuring Kim – why hasn’t it gone with it full bore?

The reason, Dr. Hart of the Center for American Progress says, is that the US hasn’t wanted to alienate third countries – like China – by targeting their companies or financial institutions doing business in dollars with North Korea.

“We have this tool that is our big advantage, but the reason we always hesitate to really use it is that we have other irons in the fire with these countries and companies,” she says.

“When it comes down to it, the White House has wanted to avoid blowing up [deals with other countries and their companies] over North Korea,” Hart says. “But when we have the Pentagon telling us how messy and deadly any military option would be, I think we need to do more than scratch the surface of every other path forward before” resorting to military intervention.

Doubts about the consumer class

Some point out that the US has done little to implement the new sanctions the US Congress approved over the summer. And not everyone agrees in any case that the so-called Hermit Kingdom has really evolved to the point where financial sanctions targeting the consumer class and its outside partners would have any impact.

“Unlike Iran, the North Korean regime does not respond to public pressure, and I do not agree that there is an avenue opening up for that kind of pressure any time soon,” says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington.

The only measure that might work at this point, he adds, is a full oil embargo on the North – but that would require broad international buy-in, and so realistically could only be implemented if “coupled with a serious diplomatic effort” that includes direct US-North Korea talks.

“Sanctions are useful to get the North Koreans to readjust their cost-benefit calculation, but sanctions alone aren’t going to convince them to stop their missile tests” and nuclear advances, Mr. Kimball says.

American Enterprise’s Eberstadt says more can be accomplished with sanctions, but he also cautions that nothing is likely to dissuade Kim from his national security goals. As a result, he says US and international efforts should focus on “threat reduction” rather than on denuclearization.

“Sanctions can reduce the killing power of the DPRK,” he says using the acronym for the North’s full name, “they can slow their nuclear quest and slow the ballistic missile tests. But what it comes down to,” he adds, “is that governments a lot less weird than North Korea’s don’t negotiate away what they see as their national interests. And the DPRK sees its nuclear and missile programs as vital to its national security.”

Adrees Latif/Reuters

In Port Arthur, Texas, Motiva Enterprises is restarting the nation's largest refinery, which should be at 40 percent capacity this weekend.

A week after hurricane Harvey inundated Houston with historic flooding, the price of gas soared 27 cents in the United States. In the South, a gallon of regular gasoline cost an average of 31 cents more, the AAA motor club reported. In Delaware, it jumped 44 cents.

As jolting as those price increases are, they are only about half what the average motorist saw in the week after hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana coast in 2005. Back then, gas prices leaped to a historic high above $3 a gallon. After Harvey, prices are within a penny of reaching a two-year high: $2.67.

If anyone needed further evidence of how America’s energy picture has improved over the past decade, hurricane Harvey provided it. In 2005, the US was an oil importer and its refineries were stretching to process all of the crude coming in, even before hurricane Katrina hit. Twelve years on, the US is a net oil and gasoline exporter, which gives the industry considerable flexibility. A major reason behind Harvey’s more muted impact on gasoline prices was the ability to redirect US gasoline exports to American markets.

“I'm expecting a quicker recovery than from Katrina,” Guy Caruso, a senior adviser to the energy and national security program of the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told reporters at a webinar Tuesday.

The industry’s challenge now is to take the lessons it is learning from Harvey to minimize disruptions from future hurricanes. At the moment, hurricane Irma threatens gasoline refineries in the Dominican Republic and Cuba rather than the high concentration of refineries along the Texas-Louisiana coast. Thus, while Florida prepares for potential storm damage to homes, offices, and power lines, the main focus for the energy industry for now remains recovery in Houston.

Motorists are not out of the woods yet. The AAA predicts gas prices could go up another nickel or more. GasBuddy.com, a gas-price reporting website, says that peak could come as early as this week.

Eric Gay/AP

A sign at the pumps reflects a shortage of gas El Campo, Texas, Sept. 1. Gasoline prices in the US have risen to new high amid continuing concerns of shortages in Texas and other states in the wake of hurricane Harvey. But some analysts expect the effect to be muted because of changes in the oil industry over the past decade.

“While prices may tiptoe higher in some states for several more days at least, the national average is likely to peak later this week,” Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy, wrote in a blog Tuesday.

The US has the world’s largest refining capacity and just under half of it is concentrated in Texas and Louisiana (nearly 30 percent in Texas alone). In the wake of the extensive flooding from Harvey, roughly a quarter of the nation’s refining capacity was knocked out. As of Tuesday, six refineries were running at a reduced rate, another refinery had come back online, and five more were in the process of restarting, including the nation’s largest refinery. Also, parts of the Colonial Pipeline, a key distribution channel that brings Gulf Coast gasoline to the Southeast and Middle Atlantic states, have also restarted as of Tuesday.

Just as hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 caused the industry to strengthen offshore drilling platforms, hurricane Harvey is likely to force the industry to bolster the flooding defenses of refineries and other onshore infrastructure.

The lesson to absorb is “what do we do next time to make sure that toxic materials don't get into the water,” says Amy Myers Jaffe, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A broader solution, such as locating refineries away from the Gulf Coast and closer to major cities, is a nonstarter. For one thing, the Texas refineries were hit but not permanently damaged, Patrick Jankowski, senior vice president of research for the Greater Houston Partnership, told reporters at the webinar. “We're not going to have to rebuild this infrastructure.”

For another, current refineries are strategically located close to oil pipelines and water transportation and there’s little incentive to build a new one because gasoline demand is essentially flat. Also, those refineries continue to find ways to expand capacity. (The last major refinery was built in 1976.)

Attempts to build East Coast refineries during the past four decades have routinely failed, in part because of local and environmental opposition, says Lawrence Goldstein, director of Energy Policy Research Foundation Inc. and a consultant to that 1976 refinery. “If you can't build where you'd like to, you have to build where you can.”

Another solution involves converting a portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which stores oil in giant underground caverns, into an emergency supply of gasoline. That’s an expensive proposition because gasoline, unlike oil, would have to be stored in above-ground tanks and routinely changed out so that it doesn’t degrade, Mr. Goldstein points out.

But the US could keep costs down by copying the European model, where governments require refiners to store reserves of gasoline on their own facilities, says Ms. Jaffe of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In Iceland, it's the Pirate Party. In Spain, it's left-wing Podemos. In France, the communist-backed “La France Insoumise.” Across Europe, the anti-establishment parties noisily demanding radical political change are the ones attracting the youth vote.

Until you get to Germany, at least. There, youth are largely lining up behind the country's center-right, three-term, 63-year-old chancellor as the country heads toward federal elections Sept. 24.

And unlike many of their rebellious European peers, German youths say it is precisely Angela Merkel's promise to maintain the status quo that earns her their vote.

Ms. Merkel's secure position, with her party polling comfortably ahead of all her rivals, is partly due to the turbulent state of affairs today. From the unpredictable pronouncements made by President Trump, to the missiles launched by North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, to the terrorist threat closer to home, many young German voters, like older ones, believe Merkel’s steady hand is precisely what the world needs right now.

But experts also believe youths, faring well in Germany compared to their European Union peers, are generally more conservative today than in the past. And the pro-EU Merkel herself has made conservatism more palatable, by adopting policies on the left that have blurred political ideology.

Reinhard Krause/Reuters

A supporter of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a top candidate of the Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) for the upcoming general elections, holds posters reading 'For one Germany in which we will love to live and live well' before an election rally in Torgau, Germany, Sept. 6, 2017.

Vanessa Grothe, who is completing her masters in North American studies in Berlin, says that while many in her circle of friends vote on the left, she has joined the youth wing of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). “What Merkel does very well: She stands for stability. And I think that is simply important for many people,” she says in a cafe in the hip Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg. “Not just to make a wishy-washy policy, but a stable one.”

No desire for change

In a survey by the German polling firm Forsa in June, 57 percent of first-time voters said they back Merkel as chancellor. Only 21 percent preferred her main rival, Martin Schulz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Germans youths have it comparatively better than those around the continent. With its vaunted apprenticeship program and strong economy, Germany has the lowest youth unemployment in the EU, at 6.7 percent, compared with France at 21.6 percent or southern countries such as Greece, which has the highest rate at 46.6 percent. So Merkel’s promise to keep things the same resonates. “Merkel is telling them, ‘You can trust me. I’ll secure your life,’ ” says Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University.

Compare this with attitudes in France. Ultimately it was Emmanuel Macron who prevailed in May’s presidential runoff election in France, winning two-thirds of first-time voters (mirroring overall results), but that support level can be deceiving. Heading into the first round, it was the right-wing Marine Le Pen of the National Front and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the left-wing “La France Insoumise” who won more than 50 percent of first-time voters.

In a YouGov poll this year that surveyed the values of European youths, it was only in Germany that the polling agency found a majority of young people satisfied with their government. Eighty-seven percent of Greek youths, for example, are dissatisfied with theirs.

“Younger voters usually tend to vote for rather left-wing parties or left-wing candidates, whereas in Germany we have quite the opposite phenomenon,” says Peter Matuschek, head of political and social research at Forsa. He says it has something to do with the long incumbency of Merkel – first-time voters don’t know anyone else. But also, he says, “there is not really a longing, neither in the electorate as a whole nor among younger voters, for fundamental change. We have not this feeling, which would help the opposition parties, that we really need a turnaround.”

Fluid policy

Of course not all German youths want things to say the same – or want Merkel for another term in office. In the east especially, many are voting for the left and far left. It is there also where the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) has gained the most traction, both because of Merkel's 'open door' refugee policy at the height of the crisis in 2015 and much higher unemployment. Mandy Marx, a 23-year-old mother shopping at a Lidl discount store in the town of Merseburg, says she will not be voting for Merkel. “She’s spent billions of euros for refugees but we can't even get teachers here!"

But elsewhere youths rallied around the humanitarian stance on refugees coming from the center-right. In fact, Merkel's policies have often crossed ideological lines, making it harder for her competitors to differentiate themselves. Mr. Schulz, for example, enjoyed a bounce when he first announced his candidacy in January, but it quickly fizzled.

Since then Merkel supported a law allowing same-sex marriage, which Schulz had thrown his support behind. Merkel also took the wind out of the sails of the Greens, when she announced plans to end Germany’s dependence on nuclear energy in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown in 2011. This stymies her opponents – some have increasingly argued she is damaging democracy by muting debate, including during the one between between Merkel and Schulz on Sunday night.

Yet her policies make it easier for those across the political spectrum to support her. “I think that Merkel stands for sort of a soft conservatism that is much more accessible to a lot of young people than the Christian Democrats and their conservatism in the past,” says Joerg Forbrig, a transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US in Berlin. “If I go back 20 years to the time I was a first time voter the Christian Democrats were sort of more hard-line conservatives at the time and with it a lot less appealing to young people.”

'We do not need rock stars'

She’s still more popular among older people. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 said they trust Merkel to do the “right thing” regarding world affairs, while for the 18-29 percent group it was 73 percent. For all those Germans who applaud Merkel’s European policies, she angered many young leftists with hard-line austerity placed on Greece. Youth unemployment is low but many new jobs are so-called “mini jobs,” far from the quality standards enjoyed by the older generation.

Ulrich Schneekloth, senior director at Kantar Public in Germany, says that while it is true that Merkel is trusted among young Germans more so than Schulz, whom so many young people feel is unknown, her party itself is not their party of choice. For that reason he says it’s not a given where the youth vote will go Sept. 24.

Merkel seems not to be taking these vulnerabilities for granted, especially as one poll in late August showed nearly half of German voters still undecided. Merkel has sought to woo young people, campaigning at a computer-gaming convention last month for example, and doing a live YouTube interview where she revealed that her favorite emoji is the smiley face – with a heart emoji added too on particularly good days. It’s unlikely these kinds of moves will change perceptions of Merkel among young Germans. A poll by the German arm of YouGov in July among teens showed that many found her “far away from young people,” and “boring.”

But that’s just fine, says Ms. Grothe. “Politics should not be about entertainment, as it has now become more or less in the US,” she says. “We do not need rock stars in politics. This is the responsibility of the entertainment industry."

• Sara Miller Llana reported from Paris. Isabelle de Pommereau contributed reporting from Merserburg.

Whitney Eulich

Jairo Abraham Avilés López graduated from a professional tech school in Chihuahua last year after a new specialization in aerospace was introduced to try and connect the needs of industry employers with the skills taught in public high schools. Mr. Avilés quickly landed a job as a technician in a factory that makes parts for Bombardier Aerospace.

David Omar Chavira Pérez’s parents always encouraged him to finish school before deciding on his future. But, for a moment, he faltered.

Last year, he couldn’t see how his accounting degree from a public technical high school here would get him anywhere in the real world. The police force seemed like a more promising option – maybe, he thought, he should drop out of school and get on with his life.

It’s a common refrain among public school students in Mexico, where more than half drop out before finishing high school. One of the top reasons they cite for quitting school is an inability to see how their classroom learning applies to job opportunities, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). 

But changes to the curriculum at professional tech schools in the state of Chihuahua kept David in the classroom. A specialization in foreign trade – introduced via an international nongovermental organization working with the education sector, the government, and local industry – means David now has a clearer understanding of where his education can take him. 

“My internship changed my mind,” David says, referring to a required apprenticeship he’s currently participating in as part of his three-year program. He’s working in the accounting department of an aerospace company focusing on imports and exports, a high-demand job that requires knowledge of ever-changing trade regulations. “I love numbers and this work is so cool,” he says.

Mexico is about to enter a period where it has the largest – and most educated – population in its history. As the education system works to capitalize on this “youth bulge,” industries that rely on well-trained workers are emerging as key partners in bridging the education-to-employment gap.

“Brains are more important than brawn today,” says Luis Rubio, the president of COMEXI, the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. “We’re seeing factories totally full of robots, so Mexico’s advantage is no longer the price of labor. Either Mexico improves its education or we can’t be successful.”

School and industry partnerships 

Although Mexico invests more than 5 percent of its gross domestic product in education, on par with the spending in more developed nations, it isn’t seeing a well-qualified workforce as a result. Primary school enrollment is now nearly universal, and there’s roughly 70 percent enrollment in secondary school. But just because kids are in their seats doesn’t mean they are learning relevant skills. It’s a problem across the region, where on average students are more than one year behind what is expected, based on the economic and social development indices in Latin America, according to a new IDB study. 

As schools realign education with the demands of local industries, students are more prepared to step into advanced roles, thus earning more. David’s work in foreign trade, for example, could result in between 6,000 and 9,000 pesos ($340 and $510) per month in the aerospace industry once he graduates. That would double his family’s household income, he says. It is also higher than the typical $250 household income for the family of a tech school student, which is below Mexico's poverty line. 

Already, the International Youth Foundation (IYF), which introduced the curriculum changes to tech schools (known as Conalep) here via its Rutas program, has seen a six percent decrease in dropouts in schools that received the intervention between 2015 and 2016, according to an internal impact evaluation. They also found an increase in academic performance after socio-emotional skills – like teamwork – were introduced. The model is gaining the attention of other state governments and industries that want to retain and attract more high-skill employment opportunities – ones that move beyond routine conveyor belt work and produce higher-value products, like plane parts.

It was industry interest that spurred the change in Chihuahua, a state that borders New Mexico and Texas. In late 2013, almost 30 years after the first aerospace factory opened here, a group of industry leaders gathered to talk about the desire to improve the technology in their businesses. 

“We said, ok, so what do we need to make this happen?” recalls José Luis Rodriguez Ramos, the director of the aerospace committee for INDEX, a national organization of exporters and factories. “We needed the education part.”

Mr. Rodriguez was put in touch with IYF, which was already working with the United States Agency for International Development to identify a variety of dynamic industries – from automotive to hospitality to aerospace – that could benefit from better-trained technical school grads in both Chihuahua and Nuevo León. Their model has since expanded to other states including Mexico and Quintana Roo.

IYF designed the curriculum changes with Chihuahua’s industry needs in mind. It also created teacher trainings that focused on teaching skills such as showing up to work on time or how to be a team player. The curricula in six other sectors, besides aerospace, were also made available across tech schools nationally.

“I knew this program was working when we saw changes to the [Conalep] curriculum in less than nine months,” says Rodriguez. Mexico’s education system is highly centralized and change is not normally something that happens quickly. 

Flexibility moving forward is key 

The challenges that IYF and partners are confronting in Chihuahua – such as students who don’t necessarily see a connection between their studies and future work opportunities – are common across Latin America and the Caribbean, according to The IDB's new report, “Learning Better: Public Policy for Skills Development,” released Aug. 30. 

In Mexico, 44 percent of companies say they have trouble filling jobs, compared to a 35 percent global average, according to the IDB. The IYF found that there were 15 million unfilled job vacancies in Mexico over the past five years. Between 7 and 9 percent of those, or roughly 1.2 million jobs, were at the technician level, the positions Conalep is training its graduates for. Professional technical high schools in Mexico are not often a student’s first choice after junior high. They tend to attract a population already predisposed to early dropouts, where the opportunity of finishing school is often outweighed by the cost of not earning money for the family. 

What’s lacking are channels between the private sector and schools, says Laura Ripani, an editor of the IDB report, and a labor market specialist. She points to internships and open communication as key to improving the school-to-work pipeline. 

To succeed, the relationship between industry, government, and schools will have to stay flexible, says Jose Nuñez, the human resource manager for American Industries Group, a company that helps international manufacturers establish plants in Mexico and works with Conalep interns and graduates.

“These grads are now coming out with expert knowledge, and we are starting to get the exact kinds of technicians we need. But, in two years, I might not need any more foreign trade technicians,” Mr. Nuñez says. “It all depends on the market, on the work being done here, and we need the schools to be flexible to those changes.”

Jairo Abraham Avilés López graduated from Conalep last year and is already enrolled in a part-time engineering degree program at the Chihuahua Institute of Technology. From his cubicle on a local factory floor, he troubleshoots malfunctioning products and tools. As assemblymen buff sheet metal and hammer stencils at work stations in front of him, Mr. Avilés describes his trajectory.

“This is a really specialized industry – it’s hard to get into,” says Avilés. “You need at least 1-2 years experience” to become a technician in this field, something he accomplished straight out of school after Rutas introduced a specialization in aerospace during his second year of studies. He completed an internship in this same factory, where he’s now working.

“If aerospace hadn’t been a study option I would have stuck with [a degree in] automatization,” he says, describing it as robot mechanics. “There aren’t as many job options [in that field], and it’s certainly not as exciting,” he says. 

Fernando Alberto Mora Soto, the head of training and partnerships for Conalep Chihuahua, is on the factory floor visiting Avilés today. After more than 24 years working with Conalep students, Mr. Mora says it’s a thrill to travel by plane these days.

“I look around and know that at least one part of the plane I’m on was made in Chihuahua,” he says. “And probably some of our graduates” had a hand in it. 

Just behind the glitzy Vegas shopping mall on Moscow's outer ring highway lies a huge island of Soviet socialism, the Lenin Sovkhoz.

This former state farm, with its broad fields growing berries, fruits, and vegetables literally amid the vast apartment blocs and rush hour traffic of outer Moscow, has maintained its collective roots and even prospered as everything around it has changed beyond recognition.

Some deride the place and its members' proud embrace of Soviet ideals and symbols as a "museum." But Farm Director Pavel Grudinin says it's more complicated than that. The survival of the Lenin Sovkhoz is an extraordinary post-Soviet tale of how the new freedoms afforded by capitalism can be harnessed to preserve a way of life that people here say they never wanted to give up.

Fred Weir

The brand new children's playground at the Lenin Sovkhoz collective farm in Moscow, with the farm's strawberry fields in the background.

"It turns out that survival doesn't necessarily go to the strongest, but to the one who can adapt to changing conditions," says Mr. Grudinin. "We have managed. Today ours are the only strawberry fields practically within sight of the Kremlin."

He claims that Lenin Sovkhoz is not so much a remnant of the past as it is a beacon for the future.

"We live quite well here. This is perhaps the way we would all have lived if not for the collapse of the USSR and all that mad privatization that followed," he says.

Agricultural transformation

The5-sq.-mile Lenin Sovkhoz is today the only farm of its kind within 30 miles of Moscow, though just 25 years ago, 11 similar ones were its immediate neighbors.

Russia passed laws in the 1990s aimed at dissolving the country's 27,000 state and collective farms into shareholder societies, while additional legislation 15 years ago allowed the sale of agricultural lands for commercial purposes. Most have since been broken up into private plots, sold off to big agro-concerns or – for those near big cities like Moscow – carved up by real estate interests who bought out their shareholders and resold the land for lucrative urban development.

Today, Russian agriculture is gradually recovering from decades of communist-era torpor and post-Soviet chaos, thanks mainly to systematic state support for private farming over the past decade. The rebound has been impressive. For example, the USSR was once the world's biggest importer of wheat. But today Russia has become wheat's biggest exporter, overtaking traditional leaders like Canada, Australia, and the United States. The war of sanctions and counter-sanctions in recent years, along with the devaluation of the ruble, has further stimulated domestic farming.

But serious bottlenecks and systemic failures remain, largely stemming from the disorderly decollectivization of Soviet farms in the past 25 years.

"Here in Pskov region [western Russia], farming is completely depressed, people are leaving the countryside in droves," says Alexander Konoshenkov, president of the independent Pskov Farmer's Association. "If our state had thought about it soon enough, it might have created conditions for people to stay on the land and develop it. Now restoration would be too expensive. The state and collective farms were doomed because if everything belongs to everybody, there is no sense of personal responsibility."

Fred Weir

One of the few Lenin monuments to be erected since the collapse of the Soviet Union stands in the Lenin Sovkhoz collective farm in Moscow. This one was installed by the Sovkhoz members two years ago next to the farm's library and cultural center.

A socialist enterprise

The Lenin Sovkhoz seems to have squared that circle through good luck, the determination of its members to stick together, and astute management. According to Grudinin, the farm has endured four campaigns by "raiders," or outside investors, who tried to buy up enough members' shares to force the farm's dissolution so it could be repurposed for urban development.

After the first attack, he says, they circled the wagons by concentrating all the shares in the hands of 40 core members. Grudinin says the shares do not yield dividends, which means that no conflicts of interest crop up between the shareholders and the approximately 300 other members of the farm. But under Russian law, that makes the farm a "closed shareholder society," which is a huge legal leap from the industrial state farm it was not too long ago.

"Many different forms of property can co-exist and be effective. If it isn't profitable, it goes bankrupt," says Nabi Avarsky, an expert with the official Russian Institute of Agricultural Economics. "The Lenin Sovkhoz is a successful and well-managed cooperative farm." He says there are other examples of working cooperatives in the world, such as kibbutzim in Israel.

"The management of the Lenin farm, led by its director Grudinin, were able to resist takeover bids and the lure of quick, easy money, and convince their members that by staying together they had better long-term prospects. They have since demonstrated that. I must say that we are surprised about the success of that farm. No wonder the Communist Party is holding it up as a great example," Mr. Avarsky says.

The Lenin farm's proximity to the huge Moscow market has proven a huge advantage; its fresh produce commands premium prices in city supermarkets. It was also able to avoid the debt trap that has ruined so many other Russian farms by hiving off parcels of valuable real estate and selling it for huge sums. About 20 years ago they sold a plot of land next to Moscow's outer-ring highway to Russia's "mall king" Aras Agalarov (of recent Russiagate notoriety) to build the Vegas shopping center, and used the proceeds to buy modern farm equipment. Last year they sold another parcel to the Swedish furniture giant IKEA, and built a school for 600 local children. The farm has also constructed new housing for all its workers, a children's amusement park that attracts visitors from all over Moscow, and many other amenities for its members.

"I could have been a multi-millionaire many times over, if I'd chosen that path," says Grudinin. He insists that, despite having acquired the form of a capitalist company to survive, the farm remains a "socialist enterprise."

"How are we different from all these new businessmen? Well, we do not send our profits offshore or line our personal bank accounts. We invest in development of our own people, and our own farm. We carry out social programs like the school, kindergartens, and medical clinic. We take care of our pensioners and children," he says.

'I feel secure here'

Workers on the farm, most of whom have been there – like Grudinin – since Soviet times, say they like the way things have turned out. The average salary on the farm, about 78,000 rubles ($1,350) per month, is three times the Russian average, while housing, medical care, and children's education is guaranteed.

"I feel secure here. I know I have a place to live, good wages and solid work," says Vladimir Dolgachev, an agronomist who oversees the farm's experimental orchards, where they are developing new strains of apples, pears, and cherries for the Russian market. "More than that, this is the kind of work I studied to do many years ago. So many professional agronomists have had to give it up, become salesmen or computer repairmen, or something, but I'm doing what I want."

The farm has also benefited from the growing wave of Soviet nostalgia that is reshaping Russian perceptions of the past. Politicians, especially from the still-powerful Communist Party, make regular pilgrimages to the farm and stage photo ops amid its Soviet-like surroundings.

"The days are gone when Russians think imported goods mean high quality. Nowadays nostalgia is a great marketing tool. People want to have a 'taste of the USSR,' and the Lenin Sovkhoz has certainly benefited from this," says Svetlana Barsukova, an expert with the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. "Another recent trend is to promote Russian producers who are feeding the country with pure, Russian products. Opinion polls show that 90 percent of people, given a choice between similar equally priced Russian and Western products, would choose the Russian one."

Grudinin argues it's about much more than that.

"The future is with popular enterprises like this," he says. "All the world is headed this way. The inequalities between rich and poor lead to explosions. Russia has had its own history lessons about this, and more and more people are realizing that we have to find a different path."

Reuters

Kenya's Supreme Court Chief Justice David Maraga (c) delivers the Sept. 1 ruling nullifying the Aug. 8 presidential election.

When David Maraga was interviewed last year for the position of chief justice of Kenya’s Supreme Court, he was asked by a panel if he had ever accepted a bribe in his judicial career. He demanded a Bible and swore on it that he had never taken a bribe and never would. Then he added that his goal as a judge was always to do “justice to all irrespective of their status in society.”

Those words probably did not mean much at the time to Kenyans, many of whom are doubtful about the independence of the courts and the rule of law. Yet on Sept. 1, Chief Justice Maraga read out a decision that shocked not only Kenya but the rest of Africa for its stark integrity. He announced the court was nullifying the Aug. 8 election of President Uhuru Kenyatta because of massive irregularities in the transmission of vote tallies. And a new election was ordered within 60 days.

Never before in Africa has a court of law blocked the election of a sitting president. In much of the continent, judges are under the thumb of authoritarian-style rulers who practice democracy at a minimum with little regard for the kind of equality that Maraga seeks. But Kenya’s high court has now set a model, one that builds on other recent successes in a continent only fitfully moving toward the practice of democratic ideals.

One success is Nigeria’s first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another after a 2015 election. In Ghana, an incumbent government was removed last year after a fair election. And in Gambia earlier this year, a president who sought to rule for life was forced to accept the result of an election he didn’t expect.

“More and more segments of Africans are demanding accountability, inclusion, good governance and the chance to make their choice and vote to count. This is what can lead to and guarantee peace,” writes Samuel Olugbemiga Afolabi, a Nigerian scholar, in a recent article in the Journal of Pan African Studies.

Kenya’s high court ruling was a bold stand, one originating in judges who see higher civic principles at work in a society still stuck in ethnic rivalry, wide economic disparity, and a propensity toward violence to resolve political disputes. The court may need to intervene again. The new election, set for Oct. 17, may not meet the high standards of the justices unless there is major reform of the electoral commission.

Many African countries are struggling to ensure the integrity of the voting process. They are being helped by a program at the University of South Africa, funded by the United States, that has trained hundreds of election officials from around Africa since 2011. A key point in that training is the guarantee of democratic ideals to all “irrespective of their status in society,” as Kenya’s chief justice said.