SOME ASPECTS OF THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE USSR

Studies of the geography of higher education have become increasingly common in the Soviet Union in view of two basic issues: (1) what some consider an excessive concentration of educational and research centers in Moscow and Leningrad, and a sparse distribution of such institutions in some other regions of the USSR; (2) the need for relating the specialization of institutions of higher learning to the basic economic activities of the regions in which they are situated. The author develops a number of measures such as indices of localization of undergraduates, graduate students and holders of academic degrees to assess the significance of higher education in various regions of the Soviet Union.     

SPATIAL PATTERNS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SOVIET UNION

Analysis of spatial patterns of attained educational levels is helpful in understanding the cultural geography of an area, perhaps especially in the Soviet Union, with its many ethnic groups and stated aim of providing equality of education regardless of ethnicity or sex. The proportion of the population that had completed a higher education was mapped at oblast level from 1970 census data. High rates are found in certain urban areas, Estonia and Latvia, Georgia, and certain sparsely populated areas of the Far North, Siberia, and the Far East. There are regional patterns of disparity between male and female rates of completed higher education and between rural and urban rates, despite Soviet attempts to reduce these inequalities. The distribution of Soviet higher educational institutions conforms generally to the distribution of population, although access to higher education opportunities appears to be geographically limited in some regions. (Maps by Joann L. Krupa, George Mason University.)     

Problems in the Evolution of Urban Agglomerations

Large urban agglomerations, which have been viewed as undesirable by some authors, are described as legitimate and efficient forms of economic organization and settlement in a modern industrial society. A number of processes in the Soviet economy tend to foster the development of agglomerations; however, the trend toward agglomerations in the USSR is still at a very early stage compared, say, with the United States. If agglomerations are defined on the basis of a central city of 250,000 or more, the USSR had 75 agglomerations in 1970 compared with 240 standard metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. In contrast to the United States, where suburban development has outstripped central-city growth, three-fourths of the population of Soviet agglomerations is concentrated in central cities. In the author's view, control of the evolution of agglomerations should not be designed merely to curb big-city growth, but to foster the development of these urban clusters within the limitations of environmental constraints.     

THE SOVIET METROPOLITAN HIERARCHY: REGIONALIZATION AND COMPARISON WITH THE UNITED STATES

The rapid growth of Soviet cities is converging toward a hierarchy similar to that of the United States. The numbers of aggregate populations of metropolitan centers by five size categories in the two countries are compared for growth and change from 1939 to 1976. Also, nine Soviet urban regions are identified, mapped, and correlated with comparable American groupings. Growth rates of Soviet metropolises are normalizing with less recent variation as compared to the 1939–59 period, a trend that parallels the one in the United States. Also, it appears that certain functions, such as administration and transportation, are stabilizing factors in urban growth. Governmental policies of investment in underdeveloped regions, balanced growth and diversification may be partially thwarted by five-year planning goals that have stimulated supragrowth in large cities of the South and East. However, it seems likely that increasing mobility, amenities and the expansion of consumer goods and services will produce a reversal of trends toward higher growth rates in the metropolitan centers of the West. Projections to the year 2000 suggest that Soviet metropolises will have a larger share of the national population and a more uniform growth pattern than those in the United States.     

RECENT DEMOGRAPHIC AND MIGRATORY TRENDS AMONG SOVIET JEWS: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY

A prominent authority on the Jewish population of the former USSR focuses on demographic trends and migration behavior (both within the former USSR and abroad), while also addressing the effect of Soviet state policy toward the Jewish population. Among the factors whose effects on population dynamics are examined, emphasis is placed on the Jewish population's concentration in large urban areas, the effects of emigration on age structure of the remaining population, self-identification as a method in census enumeration, ethnic intermarriage and family characteristics, and the outlook and prospects for emigres in Israel and the United States.     

LAND AND HOUSING IN THE USSR DURING THE GORBACHEV YEARS

An American urban and regional scholar familiar with the Soviet scene surveys changes in USSR and republic legislation on housing and land (both urban and rural) and outlines “grey” areas falling in the gap between extant Soviet law and yet-to-be-enacted republican legislation. He identifies changes in the land use pattern which can be expected as land begins to be transformed into a form of property where use decisions predominantly are made by private actors. A final section focuses upon the potential significance of these changes, to the extent they materialize, for urban theory in general.     

REGIONAL PLANNING IN THE USSR

The theory and practice of drawing up and implementing regional plans, or “territorial plans,” as they are known in the Soviet Union, has been a matter of considerable debate in the Soviet literature, a debate that has been complicated by differences in terminology. The author discusses various Soviet definitions of “territorial planning” and points out disagreement concerning its nature and scope. The major forms of territorial planning as now practiced in the USSR are reviewed, and two forms in particular—regional economic planning and regional physical planning—are distinguished. It is concluded that territorial planning continues to have a somewhat uncertain status in the USSR, with inadequate official support, although the issue remains a matter of considerable interest to the leadership under the Gorbachev administration.     

INDUSTRIAL DISPERSION IN THE SOVIET UNION: AN APPLICATION OF ENTROPY MEASURES

Industrial dispersion across the republics of the USSR between 1926 and 1974 is described through the use of entropy measures. Ostensibly, a set of location principles would guide such dispersion, and several of them stress regional equalization as an important consideration in locating industry. Therefore, trends in regional inequality (in industrialization) are investigated through the use of inequality statistics derived from entropy measures at three different spatial scales. Between 1926 and 1960, inequality among the republics decreased, but has increased between 1960 and 1974. However, inequality has decreased between the economic regions of the USSR between 1940 and 1975, and at the oblast level, there has been a tendency toward greater equality (homogeneity) within each economic region or republic since 1960. In attempting to account for these diverse trends, it is suggested that they are largely the result of the priority of efficiency considerations in location decisions rather than those of regional equity per se.     

URBANIZATION IN THE USSR: PROBLEMS OF SPATIAL DIFFERENTIATION

The process of formation of settlement systems “in the USSR is conceptualized as proceeding at eight levels of a hierarchy corresponding to the system of economic regions, from a national system down to rayon-level systems. An important element in the present process of urbanization is the formation of urban agglomerations. The fact that these urban entities still lack juridical or even statistical status deprives urban and economic planners of a valuable data base for planning purposes so that the agglomerations often evolve in undesirable, uncoordinated ways. Greater attention needs to be given to the study of the internal structure of urban entities, a field neglected by Soviet population geographers. An undesirable tendency in Soviet agglomerations is to aim at continuously built-up territory, thus converting agglomerations into traditional compact cities, instead of making provision for open spaces for use in agriculture and forestry, recreation and communications.     

PECULIARITIES IN THE FORMATION OF POPULATED PLACES ON THE SEABOARD OF THE USSR

A number of investigators have noted a movement of Soviet population toward the seacoasts, contrasting with the nation's traditional inland development. The pull of the coast has been linked to the increasing foreign trade of the USSR and to greater involvement in ocean affairs in general. The author analyzes the recent growth of maritime urban places in terms of the nation's major maritime regions: Azov-Black Sea, Baltic, Caspian, Pacific and Arctic, compares the rates of urban population growth and discusses some of the factors that account for differences in regional development.     

CONCEPT FOR PRESERVING AND RESTORING THE ARAL SEA AND NORMALIZING THE ECOLOGICAL,PUBLIC HEALTH,AND SOCIOECONOMIC SITUATION IN THE ARAL REGION

The government committee charged by the former USSR Supreme Soviet with formulating measures for resolving the Aral Sea crisis presents a list of basic recommendations for ameliorating public health and economic problems in the Aral Region and reversing the decline of the sea. Considerable emphasis is placed on basic structural change in the regional economy and water budget. A staged procedure is outlined for the gradual transformation of the water balance and economic structure while maintaining the Aral Sea as a single (unified) water body.     

Specialization of Agriculture in Relatively Similar Natural Environments of the USSR and the United States

Four pairs of minor civil divisions in the United States and the USSR are compared to determine differences of agricultural land use in areas with similar soils and heat and moisture supplies. In the United States, crops exceed animal products as a source of farm income only in the driest area. In the Soviet Union, crops are the principal source of farm income in both dry and more humid areas. This is related to the fact that the United States produces forage grasses and forage root crops mainly in more humid areas, while the Soviet Union relegates forage crops to a secondary role after bread grains and industrial row crops. Grain yields in the United States rise markedly from drier to more humid areas. In the Soviet Union the highest yields are achieved in the moderately dry chernozem zone.     

SUBSTITUTION OF NATURAL GAS LIQUIDS FOR PETROLEUM IN THE SOVIET PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY

This paper examines the prospects for switching the Soviet petrochemical industry from an oil to a gas base, by substituting more natural gas liquids (NGL) for the light petroleum fractions currently used. In other countries with a large domestic gas industry, such as the United States, the petrochemical industry is based largely on natural gas liquids (NGL). Thus, with the accelerating development of its own gas industry (now the largest in the world), the USSR has the potential to change its feedstock mix to take advantage of increased NGL supplies, freeing more of the light petroleum fractions for other uses, such as transportation. However, changes in feedstock usage have been in the opposite direction, with increasing reliance on refined petroleum liquids, with little of the available NGL being used for petrochemicals. This is partly because of differences in regional availability of NGL: most of the Soviet petrochemical industry is concentrated in the Volga-Urals region, while most of Soviet hydrocarbons now are produced in West Siberia. Another factor is the small size and limited capabilities of the Soviet gas processing industry.     

SOCIALIST FEDERALISM AND SPATIAL EQUITY: REVIEW OF A DISCUSSION

The proceedings of a wide-ranging discussion at the Institute of Geography, Moscow on current political and territorial issues in the USSR are summarized by one of its participants. The key thrust of the discussion centered on the need to find ways of increasing the involvement of Soviet political and other geographers in the analysis of critical questions of Soviet federalism: the incongruence of political-administrative boundaries with ethnic and economic regions; the search for a viable division of authority among Moscow, the republics, and local soviets; mitigation of growing regional inequality engendered by perestroyka and regional khozraschet (translated by Jay K. Mitchell, PlanEcon, Inc., Washington, DC 20005).     

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.     

The Second Interagency Conference on Population Geography

A theory that areal variations in economic development in the USSR (analyzed at the oblast level for most republics) depend on regional economic structure, economic policy, cultural factors, and the center-periphery dichotomy is tested via simple regression analysis, using retail sales per capita as the indicator of economic level. The independent variables are: share of urban population (for economic structure), investments (for economic policy), percentage of Moslem population (for the cultural factor), and distance from Moscow (for the periphery effect). All of these variables except distance were significant in explaining the real variation in retail sales per capita.     

The Heat and Water Balance of the Earth's Surface,the General Theory of Physical Geography and the Problem of the Transformation of Nature

Two Soviet specialists in the geography of the United States analyze regional shifts in terms of the three major regions distinguished by Soviet geographers: North, South, West. The article, written before the 1960 census, is based largely on the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 1959 and earlier years as well as Current Population Reports. Problems of urban growth are also discussed, including traffic problems and population shifts to the suburbs.     

Estimates of Income and Income Inequality in the United States and in Each of the Fifty States: 1988–1999

Abstract Estimates of income levels and income inequality in the United States in 1988, 1995, and 1999 are presented based on a dataset created by a statistical match of Internal Revenue Service and decennial Census data. In addition, estimates are presented of income levels and income distribution in each of the fifty states of the United States during those same years. Trends in national and regional income inequality and income levels over the period are analyzed also.     

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.     

Working women in the city and urban wage growth in the United States

Although the female labor force participation rate of women has been steadily rising in the United States, there is substantial variation across cities. Previous cross‐county studies find that gender inequality in employment reduces economic efficiency hindering growth. This result is examined in a regional context, across metropolitan areas in the United States. Throughout multiple model formulations including instrumental variables approaches, higher initial female labor force participation rates are positively related to subsequent wage growth in metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2010. Specifically, every 10 percent increase in female labor force participation rates is associated with an increase in real wages of nearly 5 percent.