俄罗斯红场大阅兵

俄罗斯是世界上最早开展阅兵式的国家之一,莫斯科红场也因为雄壮的阅兵式而名扬天下。苏联解体后,红场阅兵一度中断。近年来,俄罗斯恢复了红场阅兵,随着经济复苏,红场阅兵也在悄然发生变化。     

俄罗斯东正教堂巡礼

夕阳余晖,炊烟袅袅,飞鸟归巢,一条静静的小河上,农民们正坐着渡船驶向彼岸,对岸的树林里露出了教堂的一角,低沉而洪亮的钟声正从那向四周荡漾……这是19世纪俄罗斯画家列维坦描绘的田园风光,其中有着奇特球形圆顶的东正教堂已经成为俄罗斯的一道别致景观。     

RUSSIA ON THE PACIFIC: THE ROLE OF THE AMUR

The key to the expansion of Russia to the Far East and to America is to be found in the loss of the valley of the Amur to China by the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 and its reacquisition in the period from 1854 to 1860. R. J. Kerner, "Russian Expansion to America, Its Bibliographical Foundations, Papers of the Bibliographicul Society of America.     

THE DYNAMICS AND ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF THE POPULATION OF RUSSIA IN THE ERA OF IMPERIALISM (FROM THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY TO 1917)

The authors critically survey tsarist censuses before the October Revolution and Soviet works on historical demography, and they re-estimate population numbers, natural and mechanical increase, and internal and external migration between 1897 and 1917, as well as changes in ethnic composition. (The translation was prepared by James R. Gibson of York University, Toronto.)     

河北省环京津休闲旅游产业带城市群竞合研究

随着我国经济的迅猛发展和人们旅游需求的持续增长,休闲旅游已经成为旅游消费的新亮点和现代旅游产业发展的一个重要趋势,是推动经济社会和旅游产业发展的核心力量。区域之间旅游产业的竞争与合作是旅游业发展的内在要求。本文以河北省环京津休闲旅游产业带所包含的7个城市为研究对象,构建了旅游产业竞争力评价指标体系,运用因子分析和聚类分析方法对其旅游产业竞争力进行了测评和分类,在此基础上提出了竞合对策,旨在推动7城市开展合理分工和有序竞争,以增强河北省环京津休闲旅游产业带的整体竞争力,为河北省旅游产业的跨越式发展提供决策参考。     

THE SETTLEMENT OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA DURING THE ROMANOV PERIOD (1613-1917)

This paper compares and contrasts Russian frontier experiences on the northern and southern parts of the European plain during the Romanov era (1613-1917). Both were “open” frontiers, in Turner's sense of a frontier as the “hither edge of free land,” but their environments and the settlement processes which affected them were very different. It is suggested that the character of a frontier society is decisively influenced by the process whereby settlers must adapt to their new environment, the features which attract them to that environment, and the character of the pre-existing inhabitants. The northern frontier formed part of what Meinig has called a “boreal riverine empire” with a harsh environment, to which paradoxically the Russians found it relatively easy to adapt, the great attraction of fur-bearing animals and reasonably benign relations with native peoples. By contrast, the southern frontier was a “frontier of exclusion,” following Lattimore's phrase, with hostile indigenes, a natural environment demanding special methods of adaptation, but with many more attractions than the north. Such contrasts gave rise to considerable differences in the settlement process, in the character of land allocation and in the type of society evolving subsequently, with long-term consequences for emerging human landscapes.     

SPATIAL ADJUSTMENTS IN GRAIN PRODUCTION IN LATE TSARIST RUSSIA

The late nineteenth century world grain market expanded as prices declined and trade increased. As competition increased, Russian producers adapted to market conditions. Russian grain output increased, first by the extension of arable southward and eastward and later as a result of land reform. Analysis of grain output data using information statistics demonstrated dispersed patterns of production from 1885 to 1909. Among individual grain types, rye and oats displayed dispersed output patterns, while wheat and barley output became more concentrated. Changes in these patterns are evidence of adaptation to world market conditions and changes in Russia's socioeconomic system.     

URBAN POLICY IN RUSSIA: A GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE

A senior Russian urban geographer describes current features of the Russian urban settlement system, recounts erroneous planning practices of the past, and prescribes changes for the improvement of settlement planning in the future. Of particular interest are tables, disaggregated to the economic regional level, showing spatial variations in the number of new cities registered over the period 1927–1989. In an interesting modification of conventional former Soviet thinking, a case is made in favor of such processes as polarization of space, agglomeration, spontaneous transformation of urban economic profiles, and place-based rather than norm-based planning.     

BASIC PROBLEMS IN THE STAGE-BY-STAGE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TRANSPORT NET IN THE ZONE OF THE BAIKAL-AMUR MAINLINE

The evolution of the transport net within the BAM zone is examined in terms of three development stages. The first stage will involve the construction of the initial framework of the future transport net; aside from the BAM itself, it is recommended that consideration be given to the construction of a permanent motor road instead of the temporary construction road now envisaged. The second stage, in the author's view, should include the start of an extension of the Little BAM northward toward Yakutsk, as well as an oil pipeline (the author does not agree with the view that the BAM would replace earlier plans for a Trans-Siberian pipeline). The third stage would include a gas pipeline from the Yakutian fields to the coast; it is recommended that the gas line follow the alignment of the new railroads. No specific time frame is attached to the proposed three development stages.     

THE PHYSICAL FACTOR IN THE SYSTEM OF CONDITIONS DETERMINING THE LOCATION OF INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION IN THE USSR

The generally accepted view that material-intensive industries tend to gravitate toward raw-material sources is analyzed in the case of the USSR. Primary processing is found to gravitate toward raw-material sources mainly in underdeveloped parts of the country. In the developed zone (European USSR, Urals, Transcaucasia), a significant spatial gap has developed between primary processing activities and raw-material sources as the original local resources become depleted and the industry must draw increasingly on long-haul raw materials. Several industrial groups are distinguished in terms of the pull of resource sites. In view of the current trend toward greater concentration of production (for cost-benefit reasons) and the growing volumes of production per establishment, primary processing establishments are usually dependent on more than one resource site, and this also tends to increase the length of haul. At the same time, the distribution of fuels, energy and water resources is assuming greater significance and tends to pull such industries as iron and steel, nonferrous metals, pulp and paper as well as petroleum refining toward the eastern areas of the USSR. The controversy over the location of a new integrated iron and steel plant based on ore from the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly is recalled.     

ISSUES IN THE REGIONALIZATION OF INDUSTRY IN THE SOCIALIST COUNTRIES OF EASTERN EUROPE

A hierarchy of industrial areas in Eastern Europe is described, consisting of 40 industrial regions, about 200 industrial nodes, and numerous industrial centers and ordinary industrial places. Evidence of the formation of a higher-ranking industrial macroregion covering the border area of East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia is adduced. Six other entities of industrial macroregion rank are identified in the rest of Europe (including the European USSR east to the Urals).     

THE NATURE OF THE MANPOWER PROBLEM IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SIBERIA

The traditional picture of the economic development in Siberia presents a formidable obstacle in the form of a manpower deficit and high labor turnover. The official policy to combat this problem has been to give priority to the development of social and cultural amenities. Substantial changes in wage differentials and other economic and non-economic benefits seem to be a measure of the past. This article presents an overview of the situation and suggests that if any public policy is to be effective, it has to combine accelerated development in the social and cultural spheres and economic and noneconomic benefits as well. Furthermore, these measures have to be more differentiated regionally and among worker categories. Any such policy would require massive investment. The question is whether Soviet society can bear this huge burden in view of more immediate needs. Another question is whether the additional investment required would be compensated by a comparable increase in the productivity of labor. In view of substantial cost increases, capital productivity is likely to decline if not compensated by a change in the calculated prices on Siberian products, especially oil and gas, which seems doubtful in view of the present international situation.     

THE WATER ASPECT OF THE GEOGRAPHY OF AGRICULTURE IN THE USSR

The long-term grain requirements of the growing Soviet population are calculated. On the basis of the relationship between water use and grain yields by natural soil zones of the USSR, the authors show that the amount of water needed per unit of output declines with a growth of productivity, especially in the non-chernozem zone of the Soviet Union. It is therefore concluded that greater water savings might be assured by expanding grain production in zones with an adequate supply of natural moisture rather than by the use of artificial irrigation of arid lands.     

THE RULES OF THE GAME IN THE STUDY OF ANCIENT HISTORY

“The Rules of the Game,” expounded in ten remarkably bold theses, can easily be read as a synthetic retrospective or introduction to the formidable oeuvre of Arnaldo Momigliano. Indeed, this piece served as the opening chapter to his Introduzione bibliografica alla storia greca fino a Socrate (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975), and its subsequent reprints as an independent essay in several Italian journals and anthologies signal its importance for Momigliano. In this provocative and occasionally brilliantly witty essay, Momigliano sets forth his programmatic views on the ethos of the historian, as well as on the historical method and its applications in the study of ancient history. Here, as elsewhere, Momigliano is interested in detailing the link between ancient documents and their historical interpretations in later millennia. Ancient sources, he cautions, do not capture ancient realities transparently or completely, but are mediated documents whose historical value hinges, within certain limits, on the historian's analytical questions, inflected as they inevitably are by different ideological commitments. For this reason, he places special emphasis on the comparative method, stressing difference rather than similarity, and advises that historians with various areas of expertise collaborate, a point underscored throughout the essay. What is more, the essay contains the salutary reminder that the historian ought to attend not only to the surviving documents but also to the conspicuous silences and lacunae in the evidence.     

THE PERIODICITY OF DROUGHTS IN THE GRAIN-GROWING AREAS OF THE USSR

On the basis of a chronology of droughts in the grain-growing regions of the USSR, compiled from historical sources and the more recent period of instrumental observations, the author shows that the occurrence of drought may be regarded as a random process characterized as a quasi-stationary Poisson series of events. Most of the grain regions in the USSR follow this regularity. In the case of simultaneous drought throughout the principal grain zone of the USSR, comprising the European part and the Midland region (West Siberia and Kazakhstan), the sequence of events assumes a nonstationary character. Statistical parameters are developed for the time series of drought years and nondrought years, and are compared with extreme values in grain-yield fluctuations. Over the last 140 years, drought occurred in 76 years in at least one of the three major grain regions of the USSR (European part, West Siberia, Kazakhstan) while 64 years had no drought and corresponding normal or higher yields. A catastrophic drought affecting all three grain regions simultaneously is virtually (95%) certain to occur at least once in 20 years.