Lots has changed in Russia since Soviet times, but private rights are still non-absolute. Building on my recently published book, Gleaning for Communism, I argue that this baseline property relation presupposes and entails a particular moral economy, in which ethical obligations to social collectives are valued above a blind obedience to regulations and rules. People rely on their personal ties to make social ventures viable, often in irregular ways: these informal relations help keep a poorly legislated society functional, and they ground the state’s ideological image in socially-situated relationships, giving concrete personification to such patriotic slogans as “we do not abandon our own.”