The Work of Geographers on Regionalization of the USSR in the Interests of Agriculture

A progress report on coordinated research by Soviet university geographers on physical-geographic regionalization of the USSR for agricultural purposes. A previous paper by the author on this research program appeared in Soviet Geography, November 1960, pp. 5–19).     

Some Aspects of Lower-Level Economic and Administrative Divisions of the Northern Part of Transbaykalia

The basic notion in Soviet economic regionalization that administrative divisions should correspond closely to economic regions is often ignored at the local level. The Muya area, an intermontane basin in northern Transbaykalia, is discussed as an example of an area in which an artificial administrative division hampers the resolution of economic problems of the area as a whole.     

ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SECTORAL AND SPATIAL MANAGEMENT IN THE ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY OF THE USSR

The management system of the electric power industry of the USSR operates at two technological levels: a lower level of 92 regional power systems, each encompassing one or more oblast-type civil divisions or a small union republic; an upper level in which regional systems are combined into 11 unified power systems, where peak loads can be more easily moved between time zones. In addition there are electric power administrations within the RSFSR and ministries within the union republics, concerned mainly with administrative functions. Power administrations often do not coincide with unified systems, creating problems of efficient electric power management. Furthermore, the boundaries of unified power systems and power administrations often do not conform to the boundaries of major economic regions, which are used for current and long-term planning of the Soviet economy. This does not necessarily mean that the power systems are out of step with the economic regions. Soviet economic regionalization theory has long stressed the important region-shaping role of electric power systems. It may well be that in some cases, the boundaries of economic regions, not the power systems, require adjustment.     

Fifty Years of Development of Soviet Geographic Thought

A review of trends in Soviet geography covers the increasing specialization of physical-geographic disciplines and attempts to integrate physical geography through landscape-study techniques and the theory of a physical-geographic envelope of the earth. Economic geography has focused on regionalization problems and the formation of territorial-production complexes. The controversy over the content of geography is reviewed, and cartography and regional geography are viewed as frameworks for the generalization of geographic information. The new constructive school of Soviet geography is described.     

The Significance and Role of Sectoral-Production Complexes in the Formation and Evolution of Economic Regions

Soviet economic regionalization has traditionally focused on the concept of the areal-production complex (or territorial-production complex), representing the aggregate of economic activities within a particular area. These complexes may range in scale from a local group of interrelated activities all the way to the national economic complex of the USSR. A Soviet economic geographer specializing in the Northern Caucasus now introduces the concept of the “sectoral-production complex” as a subdivision of the areal complex. The sectoral complex contains one or more sectors of production that are linked by a common resource base and common economic relations; for example, the agricultural complex, comprising farming and agricultural processing, rests on agricultural resources; the metallurgy and machine-building complex, combining metallurgy and metal fabrication, rests on a common ore-resource base. According to the author, the concept of a sectoral-production complex must be differentiated from N. N. Kolosovskiy's concept of “energy-and-production cycles” [see Journal of Regional Science, 3 (1961), pp. 1–25] on the ground that Kolosovskiy's cycles are based on a common basic technology, while the sectoral complex involves common resources and economic relations.     

Problems in the Economic Regionalization of India

The authors propose a framework of a system of economic regions based on economic production principles. This principle is designed, on the one hand, to promote a regional economic specialization, and, on the other hand, to ensure integrated development of the regional economy. The Soviet geographers find that some major economic regions are already evident, for example, Western India (including West Bengal, Bihar and possibly Orissa), but that large parts of the country, especially in the north, lack sufficiently clear characteristics to make possible an economic regionalization without further detailed study.     

A Preliminary Scheme for the Economic Regionalization of Cuba

The authors propose a scheme of economic regionalization for Cuba, based on Soviet Marxist principles. These include the idea of objective existence of a region, independently of man's will; the need for considering future developmental prospects; energy supply; the prerequisites for integrated development of the regional economy; the presence of a regional specialization; maximum promotion of a geographical division of labor, and the factor of the country's defense capability. The resulting system of six regions in described.     

Agroclimatic Conditions of the Distribution and Specialization of Agriculture

The author uses the annual march of precipitation as a basis for climatic regionalization of small areas. He finds that this method meets the requirement of using an index related directly to the circulation of the atmosphere and easily constructed from widely available precipitation data. He also holds that the march-of-precipitation method yields more precise regional boundaries than other methods. The author finds virtually complete agreement between his climatic regions and the regional units delimited by Soviet geobotanists.     

SOIL-CLIMATIC BELTS–DO THEY ACTUALLY EXIST?

The use of combined soil-climatic belts (or soil-bioclimatic belts) has become widespread in the Soviet literature to designate the highest taxonomic entities of a world soil-geographic regionalization. These belts, which include such designations as polar (cold), boreal (cold-temperate), subboreal (temperate), etc., have been defined on the basis of mean annual temperature and the sum of temperatures during the growing season. The author finds that the entire concept of soil-climatic belts lacks a sound theoretical basis and is of little practical significance, with no attempt made to define such belts in terms of soils. A new approach to defining the highest taxonomic units in a world soil-geographic regionalization is urged.     

The Iron and Steel Industry of the Lipetsk Industrial Node

The Lipetsk iron and steel industry, in existence since 1899, began a major expansion program in the middle 1950's, designed to make it one of the principal steel producers of the Soviet Union. The status of the expansion program as of 1969–70 is analyzed in detail, including a rundown of ore, flux and coke sources. The use of sintered ore from near-by deposits of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly, high-temperature oxygen-enriched air blasts in the blast furnaces, large-capacity blast furnaces and steelmaking oxygen converters are expected to reduce the costs of production below existing levels in the Soviet iron and steel industry and to foster an efficient operation based on modern, automated equipment. (See also Shabad, Basic Industrial Resources of the USSR, pp. 98–101; maps, pp. 40, 96; News Notes, Soviet Geography, February 1970, p. 143; June 1972, pp. 409–410; June 1973, p. 407.)     

Fifty Years of Soviet Landscape Science

A review of Soviet landscape research, which focuses on the study of a hierarchy of natural geocomplexes, their origin, dynamics and structure, and physical-geographic regionalization. The main centers of landscape research thus far have been the universities. However, the utilitarian character of much of the research, with a direct bearing on agriculture, construction, urban planning and public health, suggests that government planning, designing and operating agencies should make wider use of geographers trained in landscape research.     

THE NATURE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND WAYS OF INCREASING ITS GEOGRAPHICAL CONTENT

Political geography's essence and place in the system of Soviet geographical sciences are assessed and key elements of political geographical analysis defined. The latter include the space-time paradigm, the principle of territoriality, the study of center-periphery relationships, analysis of regional planning policy and theory, consideration of the role of the church and armed forces, and the importance of political geographical regionalization. Examples of Soviet work and thinking in many of these areas are provided (translated by H. L. Haslett, Leamington Spa, UK).     

Between Social Reformism and Conservatism: Soviet women under the Finnish occupation regime, 1941–1944

The article deals with the Finnish gender policies during the occupation of Soviet Karelia in 1941–1944. It explores the wartime occupation of Soviet Karelia as a clash of Bolshevik and Finnish visions of the woman's position in society, including the level of visual propaganda. Based on oral history interviews and former Soviet archival materials, it also demonstrates how the local population reacted to social visions imposed from above, thus combining the approaches from ‘above’ and from ‘below’.     

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.     

Physical-Geographic Processes Unfavorable for Agriculture and Control Measures Against Them

The authors describe the distribution of drought, sukhovey winds, dust storms, and waterlogging in the Ukraine, and the measures taken to combat these phenomena. They urge deeper research into physical-geographic processes that are harmful to agriculture and the devising of a scientifically grounded system of control measures. A previous paper on physical-geographic regionalization of the Ukraine [see Soviet Geography, December 1960] represented an earlier stage of their research project.     

Constructing Familiarity in Finnish–Russian Karelia: Shifting Uses of History and the Re-Interpretation of Regions

This paper will present evidence of regionalization processes taking shape in “Finnish–Russian” Karelia based on the construction of “familiarity”. This region-building strategy harks back to the well-known Euroregion model developed within the context of European integration. However, if Euroregions can be seen as largely public sector projects of “place-making” the construction of familiarity is a much more socially grounded process. The major shift under consideration is that of transcending the national appropriations of Karelia that have characterized Finnish, Russian and Soviet policies in the past. The focus will be on two aspects: (1) notions of a common regional space in order to promote cross-border co-operation and (2) the re-framing of history and the influence of tourism in developed multifaceted (partly post-national) regional ideas of Karelia. Rather than understand Karelia within the framework of nationalizing historiographies, these contemporary interpretations depict Karelia as a borderland—as a space of cultural and historical ambiguity marked but not dominated by alternating phases of Russification, Finnishization and Sovietization.     

The Present State of Toponymy in the USSR

A review of recent place-name research, methods, and publications in the Soviet Union by a deputy chairman of the Toponymy Commission of the Moscow Branch of the Geographical Society USSR. For a previous article on Soviet toponymy, see E. M. Murzayev, “Origin of geographic names,” Soviet Geography, Accomplishments and Tasks, American Geographical Society, 1962, pp. 254–58.     

Agricultural Regionalization

The authors explain the methodology used in compiling a small-scale map of agricultural regions of the USSR under a joint inter-university project. The boundaries of these farming-type regions are found to coincide in some cases with natural boundaries, but such coincidence cannot always be explained in terms of simple causal relationships. These authors make recommendations for improving the locational pattern of agriculture by shifting the agricultural center of gravity from the less humid to the more humid zone and for increasing the role of animal production in the more humid zones. For previous articles on agricultural regionalization, see Soviet Geography, November and December 1960.     

Soviet official critiques of the resource scarcity prediction by limits to growth report: the case of Evgenii Fedorov’s ecological crisis rhetoric

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on official Soviet attitudes towards ‘ecological crisis’ and the rhetoric developed to address it. It analyses in particular the discussions in the Soviet Union that followed the publication of the Club of Rome report Limits to Growth (1972). It contributes to the better understanding of the debate around resource scarcity in a framework of so-called ‘ecological crisis’ as it was conceptualized in the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. It is based on the analysis of writings by the Soviet geophysicist Evgenii Fedorov (1910–81) who was among the few Soviet members of the Club of Rome and thus had direct access to contemporary Western scholarship. The paper explores how such rhetoric accepted and reconceptualized the notion of crisis for use in both domestic and international environmental politics and the associated advancement of technology as the most effective remedy against resource scarcity. Fedorov largely built his ideas on Soviet Marxism and Vladimir Vernadsky’s concepts, which preceded the current notion of the Anthropocene. In addition, his experience in nuclear projects and weather modification research –– both more or less successful technocratic projects – gave him some kind of assurance of the power of technology. The paper also provides some comparison of the views of the problem from the other side of the Iron Curtain through a discussion of the thoughts of the left-wing American environmentalist Barry Commoner (1917–2012), which had been popularized for the Soviet public by Fedorov.     

Towards World Heritage. International Origins of the Preservation Movement 1870–1930

This article examines the negotiations in the years 1945–7 between Soviet and Swedish diplomats over the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who was arrested by the Soviets in Budapest on 17 January 1945. As is clear from both Soviet and Swedish archival records, including the recently de-classified encrypted Soviet diplomatic cables, the nature of the communication about Wallenberg went through a number of shifts, dividing the years 1945–7 into three periods. Despite in-depth reviews of both the Soviet and Swedish Foreign Ministry archives, no instructions from the political leaderships of Sweden and the USSR explaining these shifts have been identified. Why is it that we can distinguish changing patterns of communication despite the absence of corresponding instructions from the leaders of the two states? This article argues that dynamics inherent to the diplomatic dialogue itself go a long way to explain the shifting communication patterns. In order to make the case viable as well as communicable, Soviet and Swedish diplomats, short of authoritative guidance, were bound to ascribe meaning and purpose to the behaviour of ‘the other’ on the basis of analogical reasoning founded on their experiences from parallel matters on the Soviet–Swedish agenda.