Condition of Road Infrastructure Related with Regional Development

Abstract

Russia, as many other large countries, is a historically multinational state. In the conditions of administrative and territorial dissociation the social infrastructure of the remote regions, where transport systems are poorly developed, degrades. It is common especially for the northern regions with their severe climate. For example, various subjects of the Russian Federation are inhabited by over 180 national populations, one third of whom can be considered small ethnic groups. Total, they account for 500 thousand, or 0.3% of the whole Russian population. The fact that the 20th century industrialization almost didn't affect these remote ethnic regions was caused by poor road infrastructure. On the one hand, this contributed to the preservation of these ethnic group identity, but on the other hand, this led to the problems in realizing state social programs for such small ethnic groups. For the latest 50 years a number of small ethnic group population has significantly reduced. This is not caused only by the natural assimilation, but also by the ineffective implementation of the projects aimed at the development of road networks. The present article considers this problem referring to the situation with Finno-Ugric ethnic group Vespians in modern Russia. The article provides the proposal about complex development of social and transport infrastructure aimed at the preservation of this small ethnic group in the globalization conditions.