THE PROGRAM OF INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN THE NONCHERNOZEM ZONE

A Soviet economic planner discusses the ambitious long-term program to help upgrade the agriculture of the Nonchernozem zone of the RSFSR. This vast region in northern and central European Russia has suffered from a decline of farm employment and has lagged behind other regions of the Soviet Union in farm modernization. The development program envisages reclamation projects to drain many of the waterlogged areas in the zone; intensive fertilizer application and liming to improve the poor, acidic soils; the development of vegetable farms around the region's large urban centers; and the construction of centralized livestock raising establishments using industrial techniques.     

THE PRESENT STATE AND TASKS OF COMPLEX MAPPING IN THE USSR

Recent developments in the Soviet Union's program of national thematic mapping and regional complex mapping are reviewed. A comprehensive mapping program along these lines, formulated in 1969 by GUGK, the government planning agency, has not been implemented. National thematic maps in the Soviet Union continue to be compiled by individual government agencies without coordination and without uniformity in legend and design, so that comparability is made difficult. The only thematic GUGK maps now being prepared are concerned with two long-term regional development programs in the Soviet Union–the rural development plan for the Nonchernozem zone of the European RSFSR and the construction of the Baykal-Amur Mainline (BAM) railroad in the Soviet Far East. The need for a comprehensive and coordinated program of national thematic maps and regional atlases or map series is once again stressed in connection with economic planning and environmental problems, and a program of continuously updated regional atlases, based on digital data banks, is proposed. Suggestions are also made for the coordination of thematic maps at the international level.     

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.     

BASIC PRINCIPLES FOR A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF DEVELOPMENT AND LOCATION OF PRODUCTIVE FORCES IN THE NONCHERNOZEM ZONE OF THE RSFSR

A development strategy is proposed for the Nonchernozem zone of the European RSFSR, which is now the object of a major program of rural modernization (see S.G., March, April 1975). The principal factors affecting future strategy are geographical situation and physical setting, resource potential, level of economic development and settlement, availability of skilled labor and technical progress. The proposed strategy calls for focusing northern development on resource exploitation, fostering manufacturing development in the central oblasts outside the major industrial nodes, where industrial expansion should be restricted, and limiting industrial construction in the southern grain-growing oblasts to avoid diverting valuable agricultural land to nonfarm uses. The Nonchernozem zone will continue to be the nation's research and development center and aim at economic growth through intensive methods in view of a labor shortage.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE LOCATION OF SERVICES AND RURAL SETTLEMENT

Soviet planners are advised to consider the linkage between rural settlement patterns and the provision of services, an issue that is assuming particular significance in connection with the present development program in the Nonchernozem Zone of the RSFSR. The number of service establishments per 1,000 population is not considered a useful indicator because it tends to be high in areas with widely dispersed settlement in small inhabited places, and yet does not reflect a high level of services because of the small size of the establishments. It is desirable to cluster sets of services in central places; the presence of a single kind of service (store, school, etc.) in a small place is found tantamount to having no service whatever. Adequate provision of services is found to reduce, or even reverse, rural out-migration.     

ON UNDERESTIMATION OF THE CLIMATIC FACTOR IN GEOMORPHOLOGY

A plea for greater consideration of the climatic factor in Soviet geomorphology, which, in the view of the dean of Moscow University geomorphologists, tends to place undue emphasis on the engodenic factors of relief formation. The author would not go so far as to favor a separate climatically oriented discipline in geomorphology, but he urges greater emphasis on the climatic factor in the training of geomorphologists in the Soviet Union. The author cites examples of recent Soviet work in which the climatic factor was neglected and an example in which it was properly considered.     

OVER TIME: TIME AND POLITICS IN THE USSR

In areas in which 46 million Soviet citizens live, official statutory time is not observed. Most of these areas lie in the western part of the third Soviet time zone and date from 1930-31 when the Soviet Union adopted Daylight Saving Time on a year round basis. When an additional Summer Time was announced in 1980 (beginning in 1981 from April 1 to October 1), putting the clock two hours ahead of standard time for the summer, it was also announced that local deviations from statutory time would be terminated. In 1982, however, continued local deviations were noted, and some, in fact, permitted by the state. The explanation offered is that citizens and local readers in these areas wish to be on the same time as Moscow.     

PANEL ON THE SOVIET UNION IN THE YEAR 2000

A panel of geographers debates possible future developments in the Soviet Union in regional and environmental policy, water resource management, agriculture, industry, energy, population, urban growth and planning, transportation, and foreign trade. The present emphasis on modernization of existing plant capacity in cities of the western, more heavily settled regions of the USSR seems destined to continue, although it will be constrained by a growing shortage of industrial labor, declining terms of trade and resource oversupply in increasingly competitive export markets, and the continued resistance of Central Asian populations to urbanization and industrial employment.     

VON THUNEN AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HIS WORK FOR THE GEOGRAPHY OF AGRICULTURE

Von Thünen's classical model of agricultural location was published in the Soviet Union in Russian translation in 1926, a hundred years after its original publication in Germany, but was soon denounced as a bourgeois theory seeking to optimize location from the point of view of minimizing production costs or maximizing the profit of the entrepreneur. The view that the von Thünen model was not applicable to Soviet conditions was stated as late as 1966 in Vol. V of the Kratkaya geograficheskaya entsiklopediya [Short Geographical Encyclopedia], pp. 196, 525. A Moscow University agricultural geographer, in reassessing the von Thünen model, now points out that its objective of determining optimal production systems for a given set of physical (land quality) and economic (market) conditions is shared by anyone who seeks the most highly cost-effective form of agriculture in a particular setting.     

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.     

THE ROLE AND MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE OUTER ZONE IN THE TERRITORIAL STRUCTURE OF THE MOSCOW REGION

The proposed basic functions and structure of the “Outer Zone” of the Moscow Region are outlined as part of a long-term physical planning model. The zone, which includes the Transition Zone, Linear Anti-Cores I and II, and Peripheral Zone I of the original model (Soviet Geography, February 1987), is to serve primarily as a check to territorial growth of the Core (a function once assigned to the more centrally located, but now largely developed Buffer Zone) and a potential base for new economic development in the future. A ranking of sites for limited, more immediate development is included (translated by H. L. Haslett, Birmingham, UK).     

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.     

PREDICTION OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF MINING AND METALLURGICAL PRODUCTION IN THE TAYGA ZONE (with reference to the copper-nickel complexes of Mochegorsk and Sudbury)

The environmental impact of smelter gases of the nickel-copper complexes of Sudbury, Ont., and Monchegorsk, in the Soviet Union's Kola Peninsula, is compared. Despite the larger volume of production and of emissions from the Sudbury smelters, exceeding those of Monchegorsk by one order of magnitude, a relatively smaller area around the Sudbury smelter is affected by pollutants. The greater vulnerability of the biotic environment around Monchegorsk is related to the fact that the Soviet smelter complex lies in the northern tayga, with smaller biomass and biological productivity, while the Sudbury complex is situated in a richer forest region of mixed broadleaf and needle species, corresponding to the southern tayga in the Soviet Union.     

THE LOCATION OF METAL-INTENSIVE AND LABOR-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES IN THE EASTERN REGIONS

The author argues against the widespread view (stated in several articles in Soviet Geography) that labor-intensive industries should be kept out of Siberia because of the shortage of labor resources in that region. Taking the specific example of labor-intensive machinery industry such as instrument-making, as opposed to steel-intensive industry, he points out that labor-intensive plants, by virtue of their smaller size, usually have smaller labor requirements than large heavy-machinery manufacturing plants. Moreover, he argues, location must not be based on total population or total labor resources of a region, but on the availability of so-called free (nonemployed) labor resources, which consist largely of women and of young people just entering upon a career. This category of labor resources happens to be greater in the eastern regions than in the western regions of the Soviet Union. In fact, one reason for the net out-migration from Siberia, according to the author, is that second and third members of households find it difficult to obtain jobs in a regional economy that is largely oriented toward male employment (in extractive industry, timber felling, etc.). The introduction of labor-intensive industries into existing Siberian industrial complexes would thus help provide employment to other household members and eliminate one reason for out-migration.     

AN APPRAISAL OF THE SOVIET CONCEPT OF THE TERRITORIAL PRODUCTION COMPLEX

The paper, contributing to one of the research goals of the Commission on Industrial Systems, International Geographical Union, provides an appraisal of the Soviet approach to spatial organization of the economy known as the territorial production complex. The authors review the genesis of the concept, definitional criteria, and its practical formation and operation, making occasional comparison with Western approaches to spatial economic organization. An unresolved problem for Soviet planners is the provision of a coordinating administrative authority for each territorial complex that would integrate the activities of individual industrial ministries involved in the creation of the complex; the current thinking of Soviet planners is illuminated by a recent statement appended to the paper. (For a previous Western view of Soviet regional development models, see G. A. Huzinec in Soviet Geography, October 1976.)     

PRINCIPAL TRENDS AND PROSPECTS OF THE USE OF WATER RESOURCES IN THE USSR

The increasing demand on water in the Soviet Union and the problem of assuring water quality require the construction of long-term water-management balances by drainage basins. These balances, based on predicted demand and water availability, would suggest the need for water-management projects within basins and interbasin transfers. Water needs would be evaluated both in terms of water requirements by categories of users and in terms of water quality. The most crucial regional problems involve the increasing shortage of water in Central Asia (with the prospect of interbasin transfer from Siberia) and in southern regions of the European USSR (with the problem of diverting water southward from the northern runoff slope). The Caspian Sea is expected to require a supplementary inflow of 80 to 100 cubic kilometers a year by the end of the century if the decline of its waterlevel is to be arrested. But southward diversion of northern waters is not expected to add more than 50 to 70 km³ at best, with a possible saving of an additional 10 to 20 km³ through decline of evaporation from a reduced Caspian Sea surface. The preservation of conditions in the Sea of Azov, the Aral Sea and Lake Balkhash pose additional water problems. [The senior author died in October, 1974].     

BASIC TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOREST INDUSTRY ALONG THE BAYKAL-AMUR MAINLINE

The zone served by the Baykal-Amur Mainline is expected ultimately to contribute roughly one-tenth of the Soviet Union's timber products, which would represent one-fourth to one-third of the freight traffic of the railroad in some segments. Total removals of roundwood are now roughly 15 million m³ in the zone to be served by the BAM, including 11 million in the inner zone (total Soviet roundwood removals now run 380–390 million m³ a year). In the foreseeable future, removals in the BAM zone are expected to reach 30 to 35 million m³, including 20 million in the inner zone. Projections for 10 logging districts suggest that most of the logging activities will be concentrated at the two extremities of the BAM—the Upper Lena district (34% of projected removals) and the Komsomol'sk district (39%). Timber processing complexes will also be concentrated in these two areas.     

THE USE OF ANALYTICAL METHODS OF MATHEMATICAL STATISTICS FOR IDENTIFYING RURAL PLACES WITH GROWTH PROSPECTS: (with particular reference to Kaliningrad Oblast)

One of the key objectives in the rural development program for the Nonchernozem Zone of the RSFSR is the consolidation of rural settlement in larger places. An example of the dispersed settlement pattern is Kaliningrad Oblast, which has a total of 1,527 rural places ranging from fewer than 5 to more than 2,000 inhabitants, with a total rural population of 195,529 (1970 census). The author shows that growth prospects are dependent on a combination of five factors—geographical setting and level of development; population; fixed assets in agriculture; nonfarm fixed assets; availability of services—and, using correlation analysis, identifies 283 places with prospects of future growth, ranging from 32 in the 51–100 size class to one of more than 2,000 population. The preservation of some small rural places is termed inevitable because many serve as outlying settlements for livestock subdivisions of collective and state farms, and dairy and beef cattle represents a characteristic type of farming in Kaliningrad Oblast.     

INTEGRATION AND DIFFERENTIATION IN MODERN GEOGRAPHY

A leading physical geographer reviews recent efforts in the Soviet Union to foster integration among the physical and socioeconomic disciplines of geography. He identifies a number of barriers that stand in the way of integration: the ever increasing multiplicity of conceptual approaches and models in geography, runaway terminological innovation and confusion, the increasing tendency of socioeconomic geographers to give their particular disciplines a greater economic and sociological orientation, the lack of cohesion in efforts to work out general geographic concepts and theories, the absence of physical-geographic background in work on social and economic geography, the increasing trend toward differentiation in geography, the fact that there is actually very little joint work among physical and socioeconomic geographers. In Isachenko's view, geography in the Soviet Union remains inevitably a dualistic discipline, in which progress toward genuine integration would require, for example, genuine collaboration among geographers in the various subfields.     

THE SYSTEM OF PROTECTED NATURAL AREAS IN THE USSR AND PROSPECTS FOR ITS DEVELOPMENT

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources has developed a 10-category system for classifying the world's protected natural areas. The present article by two Soviet biogeographers, presented at Unesco's “Man and the Biosphere” conference in Minsk in 1983, analyzes the way in which the Soviet Union's protected areas fall into the classification system devised by the International Union. The article also discusses the types of protected areas found in the USSR, and the functions assigned to each. (The translation is by Philip R. Pryde, San Diego State University.)