The Agrarian Party of Russia (Аграрная Партия России, АПР) was a Russian socialist, agrarian party founded in 1993, which merged with United Russia in 2008. It supported Dmitry Medvedev’s successful presidential campaign in the same year.
APR was founded by Mikhail Lapshin, who headed the party until 2004. It was one of the earliest parties to emerge following the collapse of the Soviet Union and shared elements of communist ideology while supporting some ownership of private property for small-scale farmers. APR won 37 seats in the 1993 State Duma elections, accounting for 8% of the vote, but failed to reach the required threshold for seats in the house in elections held in 1995, 2003 and 2007.     
Nikolay Kharitonov, a member of APR, ran as a presidential candidate of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the 2004 Russian Presidential election, coming second to Vladimir Putin, with 13.7% of the vote. APR member Alexander Nazarchuk served as minister of agriculture from 1994 to 1995.   

Party Objectives and Program

- to protect the political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights and freedoms of farmers, of all workers of the agro-industrial complex and rural residents;

- to radically improve the rural resident's social status, achieve the growth of the rural worker's well-being, establish equitable and mutually advantageous relations between town and country and between industry and agriculture, and promote the development of agricultural production;

- to collectively work out the agrarian policy, its separate trends and the strategy and tactics of implementing this policy;

- to consolidate society for the revival of the Russian countryside, the farmer's life-style, culture and traditions;

- to take part in forming the bodies of state authority and administration, and also in implementing the party's program goals through its representatives in these bodies.

Program
The party’s Program was adopted by the tenth APR congress held on December 8, 2001.
- Tasks in the political sphere: to gain power at all levels by using constitutional methods either independently or in coalition with national patriotic and other progressive forces; to put farmers in the foreground of the country’s state and social life as an independent subject of politics, and to strengthen an equitable union of farmers, workers and the intellectuals.

- In the economic sphere the Agrarian Party of Russia sets the following top priority tasks: to adjust the market policy course towards raising the living standards of the majority of the country’s population, especially its poorest layers; to ensure state regulation of agricultural production by using the mechanisms of state order and price formation; to introduce quotas for the import of foodstuffs which are produced, or can be produced in sufficient quantities in Russia.

- In the sphere of agrarian policy, the key task for the near future is to stop the destruction of the existing production structures, the social sphere and the rural areas’ demographic potential, as well as the decline of agricultural production. Under the party program, in order to achieve these goals, it is necessary that the state should give priority to the agro-industrial complex in the system of material production, introduce easy-term credits for agricultural producers, restore large-scale agricultural production providing for the most effective concentration of capital and the highest yield on capital, and support agricultural science and education in the sphere of agriculture.

- In the sphere of land relations, the APR advocates a legislative framework which would not undermine the rights and interests of the present and future generations of farmers. Land can be owned, possessed and used by those who work it. The APR supports the development of leasing relations in land management. The turnover of agricultural lands must be carried out on the basis of legislation excluding its free purchase and sale.
In the sphere of agribusiness, the APR favours the introduction of agricultural cooperation, which used to be a massive, historically tried and tested, and economically substantiated movement of Russian farmers in their fight to protect their interests.

- Tasks in the social sphere: to restore and develop the social sphere in rural areas raising it to the level of city standards, including gas and electricity supply, telephone network, the building of roads, socio-cultural facilities and utilities, and the building of housing in the countryside with due account taken of the specific features of the traditional life-style in rural areas (a house for every family); when drafting and implementing nation-wide programmes aimed at overcoming the demographic crisis and protecting motherhood and childhood, to give special attention to state support for the rural family and create economic conditions for strengthening it.

- In the moral sphere, the APR’s major tasks are to instill genuine patriotism and the feeling of pride for the Fatherland and the nation in Russian citizens; to multiply spiritual and cultural wealth of Russia’s peoples; to create the basis and conditions for a healthy way of life and support initiatives aimed at combating alcoholism, drug-addiction and other vices dangerous for people’s life and health.

- In the sphere of youth policy, the APR relies on the creation of an active youth wing, which should form the basis for the growth of its ranks and promote its ideology among sections of the rural population which are most receptive to political influences.
In its activities, the Agrarian Party of Russia relies on a mass farmers’ movement in its multiple forms, i.e., coordinating councils of joint actions of workers of the agro-industrial complex, the Agro-Industrial Union of Russia, farmers and other agricultural producers’ associations, the trade union of workers of the agro-industrial complex and other professional unions, women, ecological, scientific and educational, cultural, patriotic, youth and other independent associations.

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