The experience of the history of Ukraine and many countries around the world shows that reforms related to private land ownership have become an economic lever that can force the effective operation of economic mechanisms at all stages of development of productive forces. However, the transformation is complicated by many factors, including -weak methodological preparation for reform, different approaches to its implementation, lack of clear legal framework, etc. The answer to some of these questions gives a historical overview of land relations reforms in Ukraine in pre-revolutionary Russia (1861 ), half a century later Stolypin, and later -in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine.History teaches that the core of the famous agrarian reforms was land reform, with its simple and understandable essence: such a change of ownership of land, which fell into the hands of those who can effectively cultivate it and care for its preservation. This principle has become decisive in our conditions. Any deviation from it makes land reform pointless, unnecessary and harmful, because the despair of the peasants that it is carried out in their interests. Therefore, the development of land aspects should be particularly careful and mandatory, taking into account the historical development of individual territories and regions. Restoration of private land ownership puts land management on a higher level. Land surveying is an unconditional and necessary act at all stages of human development. Only in the initial epoch of human settlement in any territory did every farmer have the opportunity to occupy such a space of land that he could cultivate on his own. Land surveyors of that time had to be well-versed, able to count, navigate the prince's laws and have the simplest methods of measurement.The law did not prevent the choice of forms and order of peasant land use: individual, sowing or farm had equal rights to exist. Exit from the community was allowed with full redistribution and deployment and was not restricted by anything. Land management work was carried out at the expense of the population.The first all-Union codified land act (General Principles of Land Use and Land Management), consisting of 13 chapters and 63 articles, was adopted on December 15, 1928. With its adoption de jure, only state ownership of land was secured. In the following years, land legislation was developed taking into account this situation. Land funds of all union republics were transformed into the land fund of the USSR, which became the sole subject of state ownership of land.The only legal basis for land use was the right to use the land. A further direction in the development of union and republican land legislation was the improvement of the main land law institutions formed as a result of nationalization