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The Outlook for Regional Development in the Soviet Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

David Hooson
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Extract

The natural inclination of most “area” scholars—not to mention others—is to become preoccupied with the personalities, institutions, and achievements of the dominant culture, through the nationally aggregated values and norms. The justification for this approach is a belief in the supposedly inexorable process of the “homogenization” of the national culture and the inevitability of greater centralized control as a result of the technology of mass communications and organization. But it is increasingly apparent that even in “developed” countries, such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—let alone Italy, Nigeria, or Pakistan—some of the more insistent and intractable “national” problems turn out to be basically regional in origin and character. At least as important in the long run as conflict of ethnic or religious origin is the increasingly familiar deepening of regional inequalities in the richer nations as a result of more perfect interregional competition, diffusion of information, and the high potential mobility of educated and affluent populations. At first glance the Soviet Union, with its traditional practice of centralized control over the bodies and souls of its citizens and the all-pervading pressure toward national coherence and uniformity, might appear more appropriate than most countries for study as a national system with national character and goals. Yet here, too, some of the more interesting and thorny problems facing the Soviet leaders and planners concerning the health and general viability of their country resolve themselves into essentially regional ones.

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 1972 , pp. 535 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1972

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References

1. Hooson, David, The Soviet Union : People and Regions (Belmont, Calif., 1968).Google Scholar

2. See Treadgold, Donald W., The Great Siberian Migration (Princeton, 1997)Google Scholar.

3. A great deal of detail on this is found in Shabad, Theodore, Basic Industrial Resources of the USSR (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, with up-dating in the monthly journal Soviet Geography : Review and Translation (New York).

4. See Holzman, Franklyn D., “The Soviet Ural-Kuznetsk Combine : A Study in Investment Criteria and Industrialization Policies,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 71, no. 3 (August 1957) : 368–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. A thorough analysis of the growth of the cities is found in Harris, Chauncy D., Cities of the Soviet Union : Studies in Their Functions, Size, Density, and Growth (Chicago, 1970)Google Scholar.

6. An interesting exposition of these arguments in one field is found in Dienes, Leslie, “Issues in Soviet Energy Policy and Conflicts Over Fuel Costs in Regional Development,” Soviet Studies, 23, no. 1 (July 1971) : 26–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. See, for example, Ekonomicheskaia gazeta, 1972, no. 1, p. 4.

8. See, for example, I. S. Koropeckyj, “Industrial Location Policy in the U.S.S.R. During the Postwar Period,” in Economic Performance and the Military Burden in the Soviet Union : A Compendium of Papers, submitted to the Subcommittee on Foreign Economic Policy of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress (Washington, D.C., 1970), pp. 263-64.

9. See, for example, Nove, Alec and Newth, J. A., The Soviet Middle East : A Communist Model for Development (New York, 1967).Google Scholar