SOVIET ASIAN-PACIFIC TRADE AND THE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOVIET FAR EAST

During the 1970s and early 1980s it was generally accepted, by both Soviet and Western specialists, that in the Soviet Far East the expansion of exports to the nations of the Pacific Basin offered a solution to the region's economic problems. However, recent policy statements suggest the rejection of this export-led development strategy. This study examines the changing structure and dynamics of Soviet trade with the Asian-Pacific region. At present, for a combination of economic and political reasons, Soviet trade with the Asian-Pacific region is dominated by exports of machinery and equipment and petroleum to the socialist nations of the region, inasmuch as Japanese demand for Soviet natural resources is stagnant. Therefore, because of the resource orientation of the Far Eastern economy, contemporary trade relations do not favor the expansion of the Soviet Far Eastern export base. Consequently, the future role of the region in the national economic system will be determined largely by the availability of domestic capital investment funds.     

REGIONAL INEQUITY AND SOVIET CONCERN FOR RURAL AND SMALL-TOWN INDUSTRALIZATION

Regional inequity has been an important national issue in most industrial societies. Measures to reduce inequity usually include the location of more industries in rural and small-town areas. The USSR has always possessed a strong ideologically based concern for regional inequity, but it was not until the 1960's that the matter was given serious attention. The last three five-year plans have called for more industry in small towns and rural villages. Life in these areas is to be made more attractive, labor resources more fully utilized, local economies improved, and the out- migration of people reduced. However, there are obvious barriers to industrialization in rural and small-town areas, and as in most industrial nations, the reduction of regional inequity is a slow and difficult process.     

SOVIET REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND THE 10th FIVE-YEAR PLAN

The Guidelines for the 10th Five-Year Plan (1976–80) are assessed in terms of their suggestions and probable implications for Soviet regional development policy. The new plan is examined both for evidence of regional concerns in specific economic and social programs as well as for more general indications of regional development philosophy and strategy. The current plan is then compared with previous plans for evidence of shifts in regional development policy. Finally the regional dimensions of Soviet development are considered in light of more general ideas of regional development and modernization.     

REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION'S EXPORT EARNINGS OUTSIDE THE FORMER SOVIET UNION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR REGIONAL ECONOMIC AUTONOMY

The distribution of foreign export earnings by area of origin is analyzed for the Russian Federation, to convertible and non-convertible currency areas, as well as for four major commodity categories. The paper focuses on identifying, because of Russia's narrow export composition, oblast-level units (and commodities) that contribute disproportionately to the Federation's overall convertible currency earnings. It then explores the implications of the extremely uneven spatial districution of such earnings for the Russian government's efforts to devise a workable formula for distributing export revenues between the “Center” and the localities.     

REGIONAL GROWTH IN THE SOVIET ECONOMY A MODEL AND ANALYSIS*

A multiregional econometric model of the Soviet economy is presented. It consists of 1,391 equations, with time-series information for 1965-1980. In conformity with the number of the country's republics, 15 input-output tables are incorporated. The discussion includes the methodological framework, the structure and equations, theoretical justification for the interaction between the econometric and input-output components, data and estimation, and forecasting results.     

REGIONAL PATTERNS OF MEDICAL CARE AVAILABILITY IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION

This paper analyzes patterns of change in the regional availability of medical care resources in the former Soviet Union for selected years from 1940 to 1989 by examining the relationships among the supplies of physicians, mid-level medical personnel, and hospital beds. Data from economic handbooks, the 1989 health handbook, and unpublished Goskomstat USSR statistics are used to construct composite (ratio) indices of medical care availability for oblast-level units. Maps of these indices reveal that distinct medical resources regions existed in the former Soviet Union in 1989.     

THE SIZE OF SOVIET RAYONS AND INTRA-RAYON LINKAGES

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the relationship between the area of Soviet rayons (minor civil divisions) and population density. It is assumed that a network of rayons is shaped for purposes of administrative convenience, minimizing administration-related trips from the periphery to the center. The solution of the minimization problem yields a set of relationships among population density, radius, area and total population of rayons.     

ATTRIBUTION OF CONCEPTS AND PROBLEMS WITH ANACHRONISM1

Many long‐standing debates about anachronistic concept‐attributions derive from an essentialist understanding of concepts that is often difficult to sustain for metaphysical or epistemological reasons. The intentionalist alternative to essentialism elaborated in this article successfully clarifies and avoids many standard problems with anachronism.     

COMMUTING IN SMALL AND MIDDLE-SIZE TOWNS OF SOVIET GEORGIA

The author takes issue with the view expressed by M. I. Artamonov, an archeologist, that an ethnos, or ethnic group, represents a social state rather than a process. In the author's view, ethnos IS a vast system in constant development, which tends to be stabilized by endogamy and undermined by exogamy. An ethnic hierarchy is proposed to illustrate the process of ethnogenesis. It ranges from the lowest order of ethnic grouping, a consortium, through subethnos, ethnos and superethnos to mankind as a whole. Each order in the hierarchy is distinguished by particular forms of associations, trends of development and culminating phases. The concept of ethnos as an ongoing process is illustrated with reference to ethnic change in ancient China and in the Ottoman empire.     

GUEST EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION: NORDIC GEOGRAPHIES OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH

The aim of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the sub field 'geographies of children and youth' and outline ongoing research within the subfield in the Nordic countries. It is shown how geography of children and youth is a relatively new subfield in the Nordic countries but is thriving being spearheaded primarily by young researchers. The main fieldwork locations are the Nordic countries and Africa where principally qualitative methodologies are employed in data collection. Thematically a wide range of issues are being researched. Much of the work being carried out fits within the growing interest in examining the connection between ordinary young people's social position and the production of space, including young people's use of public space. The relationship between place and identity is another important focus. Mobility and migration, however, is arguably where Nordic researchers are making the greatest contribution to the literature on the geographies of children and youth. This special issue should be of interest both to geographers outside of the sub-field who are curious to know what is going on within geographies of children and youth, and to those who are already specialists in this area but know little about the research emanating from the Nordic countries.     

THE BAM AND THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOVIET FAR EAST

The construction of the Baykal-Amur Mainline, which began in 1974 and is scheduled to be completed in 1983, is expected to have a profound impact on the economy of the Soviet Far East, whose development has long lagged because of lack of transport access to regional resources. The BAM is expected to foster the development of new industries, such as coal and steel, oil and gas, hydropower, metal fabrication and chemicals, and stimulate the expansion of traditional activities, such as gold and tin mining, fisheries and forest products. The BAM is also expected to play a key role in expanding trade between the Soviet Far East and the countries of the Pacific basin and the Indian Ocean. In light of the complex aspects of the BAM project, it is suggested that integrated planning procedures encompass not only the transport aspects of the project, but all economic activities to be generated as a result of the construction of the new railroad. In view of the labor shortage, a high level of labor-saving technology is recommended. Concern for the local environment is expressed in view of the extensive construction activities in permafrost. (Previous articles on the BAM appeared in Soviet Geography, April and October 1975.)     

AGGLOMERATION AND REGIONAL COSTS OF LIVING*

ABSTRACT Standard models of the new economic geography predict that costs of living are lower in the core than in the periphery. But in reality they tend to be higher in agglomeration areas, mainly because of regional differences in housing costs. In this paper, we add a home goods sector to the seminal NEG model of Krugman (1991) . We show that a core–periphery structure can endogenously emerge in which the core is the more expensive area. This result has an important normative implication. Since higher costs of living imply falling real wages if there is no nominal wage premium, it is not desirable for everybody to live in the core region.     

SOVIET ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY: SIX DECADES OF DEVELOPMENT AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS

A senior Russian economic geographer reviews the peripatetic evolution of the discipline during the Soviet period. After an early phase in the 1920s and 1930s, when it made some practical contributions to economic planning, particularly in regionalization, economic geography was long relegated to the status of a teaching discipline separating it from the more goal-oriented economic sciences. In recent years, economic geography has again acquired greater practical relevance, largely because of the development, and official endorsement, of the theory and application of territorial-production complex theory as an approach to spatial organization of the Soviet economy. Its thematic content has been broadened by the inclusion of the increasingly active field of population geography and urban geography. The growing “social” content of the discipline has given rise to suggestions that it be renamed “social geography,” or at least “social-economic geography,” reflecting a similar change of designations of the Soviet economic plans to social-economic plans.     

CONCEPTS OF THE INNER CITY AND RECENT TRENDS IN CANADA

This essay evaluates the explanatory power of two current models - ‘centrifugal’ and ‘centripetal’ - of the evolution of inner cities. This in done in the light of data on socioeconomic trends that affect residential areas in the cores of the nine major Canadian metropolitan regions. The centrifugal model focuses on the attraction of suburbs on central city residents; the centripetal concentrates on the lure of some inner-city neighbourhoods for certain middle- and upper-income households. While the Canadian trends support some propositions of the models, they seriously challenge others, us models seem unsuitable for explaining Canadian urban reality. They fail to account for the relative socioeconomic stability of core neighourboods in major Canadian cities and the dissociation between trends in their residents' incomes and in housing values. Cet article évalue le pouvoir d'explication démontré par les ébauches théoriques qui visent à faire comprendre l'évolution des quartiers situés à l'interieur des centres urbains. Cette évaluation se sert de données relatives aux tendances socio-économiques qui marquent les secteurs résidentiels situés au coeur des neuf plus grandes zones métropolitaines du Canada. Deux modèles dominent ce champ d'étude: il y a d'abord le modèle ‘centrifuge,’ qui postule une attraction des banlieues exercée sur les résidents de la ville centrale; puis le modèle ‘centripète,’ qui explique l'attrait qu'exercent ces quartiers sur certains manages a moyens et hauls revenus. Alors que les tendances observées dans les agglomérations canadiennes viennent donner du poids à certaines propositions de ces modèles, elles présentent également un défi de taille à certaines autres. Les difficultés ressenties dans l'application de ces deux modèles paraissent relever de l'inadaptation de modèles conçus aux Etats-Unis à la réalité urbaine canadienne. Ces modèles sont considérés particulièrement inaptes à expliquer la relative stabilité socio-économique des quartiers des grandes agglomérations canadiennes et à rendre compte d'un écart grandissant entre lesrevenus de leurs résidents et la valeur des unités de logement qui s'y trouvent.     

RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY PREFERENCES OF RESIDENT AND TOURIST CAMPERS IN THE YELLOWKNIFE REGION

Tourism may represent an important component of regional economic development strategies, and geographic research on recreation behaviour can provide data, of potential planning utility, about recreational activity preferences. The results of a campground survey in the Yellowknife region showed that residents and tourists differed in recreational activity preferences but not in recreational satisfaction. The residence variable has implications beyond the superficial spatial separation of residential origin and recreational destination and can guide choices between natural environmental protection and facility development in recreational resource management.
Le tourisme peut ětre un element important des stratégies de développement économique régional, et les recherches géographiques sur le sujet de la récréation peut fournir des renseignements, d'un intérět capital pour la planification, au sujet des préférences pour des activités récréatives. Les résultats de l'enquète des terrains de camping dans la région de Yellowknife ont montré que les résidents et touristes different dans leurs activités récréatives alors qu'ils s'accordent en ce qu'il concerne les satisfactions récréatives. Le variable de résidence posséde des implications qui surpassent la séparation spatiale et superficielle entre l'origine de résidence et la destination de récréation, et peut informer les décisions entre la protection du milieu naturel et le développement des facilités pour l'amenagement des ressources de récréation.