The Soviet Northwest: Economic Regionalization

Abstract

T-IHE economic regionalization of a country-its division into regions reflecting economic specialization and function-is vital for the comprehensive study of that country. This is especially true of the Soviet Union. Differences in climate, soils, vegetation, and the distribution of mineral and human resources in the various parts have produced vastly different economic conditions. In the Soviet Union economic regionalization is dominated by political considerations: the country is divided into economic regions to facilitate political administration. According to Soviet economists, each economic region should have at least one center or duster of proletarians, who are the elite of the working class; each economic region should have some heavy industry on which other economic activities are based. These considerations predude the treatment of a region as purely agricultural or industrially undeveloped even if it is located in the tundra or taiga zone. Such a region is not considered an economic entity but is attached to a nearby industrial region or even to an industrial center. These political considerations came into play in the rejection of the proposed Viatsko-Vetluzhskiy region, which would have been based exclusively on lumbering and woodworking industries. On the same ground the advanced industrial areas of the south were combined with the economically backward (fishing and hunting) northern areas of the West Siberia region, and similar considerations applied to the Krasnoyarskiy region and to all of the Far East. On the other hand, it is always assumed that administrative boundaries must also be regarded as boundaries of corresponding economic regions. Even if a region represents an economic whole, it cannot be treated as such if it cuts across political boundary lines. Only a combination of several national republics into one economic region is permitted, as in the case of the three Baltic republics, the three Caucasian republics, and the four Central Asian republics. Even in textbooks regional studies are divided first according to