Cooperatives are a relatively recent business model, dating back only to the 1840s, but their short history has been full of twists and turns. Today, in countries once part of the Soviet Union, cooperatives operate under a wide variety of laws, regulations and tax codes.

Now those laws, civil codes and taxation regimes have been collected and published online by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In the new Overview of legislation: Cooperatives in the post-Soviet countries, documents are available for the following twelve countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.