In a major correction to the Ledbetter legend, this chapter explores a series of events and trials that led to Huddie Ledbetter being sentenced to a chain gang (a road work crew) in 1915, despite his parents turning over 30 acres of land – nearly half of their hard-earned farm – to a white law firm they hired to defend him.

This chapter provides a historical background of the enduring devastation of the post-World War II agricultural sector in Ukraine that encouraged local authorities to pursue various policies to organise their economies in opposition to laws and practice of their superior central authorities. This chapter provides the proper context to understand the case studies analysed in the following chapters.

Chapter 2 analyses the various methods used by local authorities to appropriate land illegally from the collective farm sector and to disguise these attempts from superior authorities. It begins to trace the scale of this activity across Kyiv Oblast and Ukraine and to unravel a widespread conspiracy at different levels of government that conducted illegal appropriations and protected their members from prosecution from superior authorities.