The Present State and Basic Problems in the Study of Migration in the USSR

A review of Soviet migration research finds that only a modest beginning has been made despite some useful results. Further progress in this area requires broader migration studies, beyond the manpower-oriented approach adopted thus far; wider use of mathematical techniques and improved research methods; improvements in the statistical data base on migration, and the coordination of Soviet migration research through the establishment of a central research center in this field.     

Recent Tendencies in the Development of Geography at Moscow University

Dean Ryabchikov of the Geography Faculty discusses the increasing use of physical, mathematical and chemical analytical methods by geographers, and their efforts to bring geographical research and teaching closer to the practical requirements of the Soviet economy. The article lists the principal field studies in which Moscow University geographers have been engaged in recent years.     

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.     

Geography in higher education in the USSR

Abstract

Soviet geography in higher education stems from a solid tradition long pre‐dating 1917, but in Soviet times the subject's practical relevance to environmental problems has been especially emphasised. University courses are very specialised, yet in certain respects they are also extraordinarily broad by British standards. Geography graduates usually enter either teaching or scientific/ research bodies, to which they are readily suited by their training. The practical emphasis of geographical education, however, occasionally produces certain strains in the discipline.     

Problems of General Economic Regionalization at the Present Stage

Professor Ryabchikov, Dean of the Geography Faculty of Moscow University, finds that Soviet teachers colleges are adequate to supply geography teachers to the middle schools, especially in view of a gradual reduction of the number of class hours devoted to geography in those schools. He sees the primary function of university geography as the training of specialized geographers for industry, agriculture and other segments of the national economy. Universities are therefore urged to reorganize their curricula from the present somewhat academic approach to a greater practical and applied content that would benefit graduates in their new jobs. The author calls on universities to strengthen their ties with industry by taking advantage of the Soviet system of contractual research for production organizations.     

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.)     

Resolution of the Fifth Congress of the Geographical Society USSR

A 1978 collection of articles devoted to geocybernetics, a subfield of geography concerned with spatial aspects of management, focuses on the problem of administration of the Soviet economy through a system of socio-economic regions at three levels–macro, meso and micro levels. The reviewer examines critically some of the basic ideas of regionalization underlying the proposed new discipline. He questions, in particular, what he considers an exaggerated research emphasis on problems of middle–level and lower–level regionalization without adequate attention to the issue of the Soviet Union's macroregions.     

Progress in Water Desalination Technology

The status of Soviet research and development in water salination technology is reviewed through 1969, with emphasis on the use of Caspian seawater at Shevchenko, center of the new Mangyshlak oil fields, and at Krasnovodsk, port of the Turkmen SSR. For a previous report by the same author, see M. V. Kolodin, “The results of Soviet research on desalting of water,” Soviet Geography, June 1968, pp. 493–503.     

Let's Not!

Armand finds that Anuchin painted an overly dark picture of the future of geography in the Soviet Union. The issue of a unified geography versus two or more geographies is regarded by Armand as a fruitless terminological argument. He holds that geographers can make their research count increasingly in national planning by making more use of mathematical apparatus, familiarizing themselves with related technical disciplines, and by being bolder in making practical recommendations to policy makers.     

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).     

Applications of Mathematics to Some Problems in Economic Geography

The author, a staff member of the Institute of Scientific Information of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, discusses some aspects of the use of mathematics in research on settlement geography. He develops a number of methods originated abroad, such as the nearest-neighbor distance and the Zipf rule on city-size distribution, and applies them to the study of patterns of urban settlements and the size and spacing of cities in national and regional systems.     

The Latest Approaches and Concepts in Geography

The article discusses the present state of knowledge of the basic components of the heat balance of the earth's surface (radiation balance, loss of heat to evaporation, turbulent heat exchange) and the distribution of these components in time and space. Soviet research is concerned with applying heat-balance data to the study of physical-geographical processes (hydrologic regime, plant and soil cover), to the study of integrated geographic problems (geographic zonality) and practical problems (weather and hydrologic forecasting, the use of solar energy for productive purposes, and the use of heat-balance data for planning reclamation projects and other nature-transforming measures.)     

On new Directions in the Development of Soviet Economic Geography

A review of new research areas in Soviet economic geography distinguishes three categories of topics in terms of the level of advance and the volume of research being done. The most viable new areas, with a large number of studies, include the resource-oriented approach to economic geography and the systems approach to settlement geography. In other research areas, such as the geography of services and the geography of land use, only the first steps are being made. The lag in land-use studies behind the West is explained in terms of the large territory of the USSR, which is said to have made this type of research unnecessary until recently. The potentialities of some research areas are only just beginning to be perceived, notably in the case of studies on spatial value relationships, involving regional accounts and balance of payments.     

The displacement of Nenets women from reindeer herding and the tundra in the Nenets autonomous Okrug,Northwestern Russia

“One of the biggest problems of current reindeer herding is the fact that there are only a few women on the tundra. It creates pitfalls for the normal running of reindeer herding. Soviet policy caused women to lose interest in reindeer herding”, recounted a local Nenets reindeer herding administrator. Herders, both women and men, pointed out that Soviet officials effectively displaced women from reindeer herding, and claimed that this has lead to serious problems.

The Nenets and Soviet approaches to the life of nomadic herders were diametrically opposed. For the Soviet state, reindeer herding entailed producing meat and hides ‐ a purely economic action ‐ and life on the tundra was seen as backward. The Soviet state viewed the presence of an entire family on the tundra as an obstacle to increasing production. In contrast, for the Nenets the presence of the family was a prerequisite of normal life. Soviet officials implemented a policy to end the presence of women and children on the tundra. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 this policy was abandoned, but there remain practical obstacles for the return of families to the tundra. In this article I will discuss the content of this policy, its impact on the Nenets reindeer herding family, and the role of women in contemporary Nenets reindeer herding.     

新中国成立前夕苏联对华政策剖析--以苏联将使馆由南京撤至广州事件为中心

1949年1～2月间,在中国革命即将取得全面胜利之际,苏联驻华使馆却令人吃惊地追随正在逃亡的国民党政府由南京迁至广州.有关苏联驻华使馆撤离南京的真正用意,是史学界长期以来关注的焦点,同时也是部分研究成果论证苏联、斯大林本人怀疑中国革命说法的基础.实际上,苏联驻华使馆撤离事件是苏联方面采取历史上惯用的双重对华政策的必然结果,既不是苏联方面对中国革命的进程判断失误,也不是苏联方面坚持了不干涉中国内政的原则.相反,在意识形态(革命利益)和国家利益之间发生冲突的时候,苏联方面首先选择的是自身国家利益.苏联驻华使馆在新中国成立前的撤退,符合苏联的国家利益,最大限度地保护了苏联在华的政治和经济利益.客观地看,苏联驻华使馆由南京撤至广州作为外交手段捍卫国家利益本无可厚非,但从联共(布)和中共共同的革命利益出发,上述做法显然欠妥.     

Convergence in Cold War Physics: Coinventing the Maser in the Postwar Soviet Union

At the height of the Cold War, in the 1950s, the process of parallel invention of masers and lasers took place on the opposing sides of the Iron Curtain. While the American part of the story has been investigated by historians in much penetrating detail, comparable Soviet developments were described more superficially. This study aims at, to some extent, repairing this discrepancy by analyzing the Soviet path towards the maser from a comparative angle. It identifies, on the one hand, significant differences between the two projects regarding their heuristics, the relationship between theory and experiment, grounding in different academic cultures, and the resulting conceptualization of the maser principle. At the same time, the case also illustrates more fundamental transformations in the practices of postwar research that can be characterized as a convergence between the Soviet and the American science of the period.     

Soviet Geographers at the 19th International Geographical Congress

Reviewing the contribution of Soviet geographers at the Stockholm congress, the author makes a plea for more papers on economic geography and on integrated problems in geography. He denies that a trend toward greater emphasis on specialized disciplines is characteristic of Soviet geography. He criticizes some Soviet geographers for preparing what Saushkin considers misleading summaries of papers presented by foreign geographers.     

Deep Impact: Robert Goddard and the Soviet ‘Space Fad’ of the 1920s

Using newly available information from Russian archives, this paper explores American rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard’s relationship to the Soviet space‐flight advocacy community in the 1920s. In post‐Revolutionary Russia, Goddard enjoyed a curious kind of fame. News of his alleged plan to launch a rocket to the Moon permeated widely through a Soviet audience interested in the possibility of space exploration. Goddard’s practical work in developing rockets became a metaphor for the aspirations of the many in Soviet Russia who were unwilling to limit their horizons to theory and prognostication. The new research into Goddard’s relationship to the Soviet space‐flight enthusiast community underscores how international contacts shaped the space advocacy movements of the early twentieth century. The new evidence prompts us to consider an alternative approach to the ‘foundation myth’ of space history involving Tsiolkovskii, Goddard and Oberth, one that privileges an international context instead of the usual multiple national contexts.     

Present Problems in Soviet Cartography and the Tasks of the Geographical Society

After having long existed as a technical discipline serving the needs of geographers, cartography in the Soviet Union has become increasingly a research discipline involving many common interests with geography. Collaboration between cartographers and geographers is becoming increasingly essential as more attention is being given to thematic cartography involving not only particular disciplines (geomorphology, economic geography, population geography) but what may be called an integrated “geographical” cartography. Much effort continues to be devoted in the Soviet Union to the compilation of regional atlases and to a wide range of thematic maps. Increasing attention is being given to the production of evaluative maps, assessing the potential use of the physical environment and natural resources. School maps represent a major part of Soviet map production. Tourist and hiking maps need to be seriously improved.     

The Geography of Population and the Geography of Services

In discussing a methodology for a geography of services, a new branch of Soviet geographic research, the authors propose geographically meaningful classifications of services, the use of value and labor-input indicators, the problem of a typology of service regions, and other aspects of research in this new discipline. The geography of services is found to be closely related to population geography because of the correlation between the distribution of services and the distribution of population.