Rolling Back Russia's Spatial Disparities : Re-assembling the Soviet Jigsaw Under a Market Economy
Russia’s spatial disparities stem largely from its economic geography, which is unique and has no parallels even when compared to seemingly similar countries such as Australia and Canada. While Australia and Canada also have large land masses and e...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Washington, DC: World Bank
2018
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/283561528098640490/Rolling-back-Russias-spatial-disparities-re-assembling-the-Soviet-Jigsaw-under-a-market-economy http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29866 |
| Summary: | Russia’s spatial disparities stem
largely from its economic geography, which is unique and has
no parallels even when compared to seemingly similar
countries such as Australia and Canada. While Australia and
Canada also have large land masses and even lower population
densities than Russia, a large share of their populations
live near the border or the sea. In contrast, Russia’s
people are more dispersed inland. Moreover, the populations
of Australia and Canada are concentrated in major cities:
more than two-thirds of their populations live in the three
largest urban centers. On the other hand, Moscow, St.
Petersburg, and Nizhny Novgorod are home to only one-eighth
of Russia’s population. Combined with its population
decline, an aging workforce, and having to constantly adapt
to a sequence of economic shocks, Russia’s unique economic
geography has therefore led to a spatial pattern of
development counter to what is observed in other large
countries. What explains Russia’s unique economic geography
and its spatial disparities? A cocktail of three factors is
useful for answering this question: (i) a persistent Soviet
legacy; (ii) a diverse physical geography laced with harsh
climactic conditions; and (iii) a dominance of natural
resources (mostly oil/gas) in peripheral regions. The Soviet
legacy of a planned economy remains a burden for regions.
One indicator of this persistent legacy can be seen in the
ongoing socio-economic challenges facing Soviet-era
industrial monotowns. Today, 319 settlements in Russia are
legally identified as monotowns, with 94 classified as
monotowns with a high level of socio-economic deprivation.
This is despite them remaining a target of many support
programs implemented by the federal government. Geography
and climactic conditions do not help the situation. Russia
accounts for 42 percent of the world’s land mass but its
population is less than 1.9 percent of the world’s
population. In addition, its extreme winter weather greatly
impairs transportation services (built on continuous
permafrost, Yakutsk is the coldest major city in the world,
recording temperatures as low as minus 64.4°C). A sequence
of shocks that hit the country over the last 25 years and
the boom in the oil industry created rapid growth in
peripheral, oil-rich regions. But other regions have been
stymied by the persistence of structural constraints: an
industrial legacy, population decline, and an aging population. |
|---|