A PREDICTIVE HYPOTHESIS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE EUROPEAN PART OF THE USSR

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Abstract
A programmatic analysis of the long-term development strategy of the USSR recommends continued dominance of the European part of the country in investment allocations. This pronounced proEuropean view in the continuing East-West controversy over economic location trends is based on the need for greater regional specialization within the USSR. In such a division of labor, Siberia is viewed as concentrating on primary resource-oriented industries and energy or power-intensive activities, while the European part of the USSR would continue to play its historically dominant role in the overall economic potential of the country. In the author's view it is far more important to raise the production potential of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, with its vast human resources, than to close the East-West gap within the RSFSR. The recommended development strategy seeks to optimize the development of the Soviet economy as a whole and minimize regional autarky. The admittedly poor resource endowment of the European part is not viewed as a serious obstacle to further economic growth for the following reasons: (1) the declining role of the resource factor in the location of industry as the upper stages of manufacturing assume increasing importance; (2) a reduction of energy and raw-material inputs per unit of output as the intensification of production proceeds; (3) advances in transport technology make it more economical to transfer energy and raw materials over great distances. The need for further priority development of the European part also finds support in the region's dominant agricultural potential and in migration patterns away from the Asian part of the RSFSR. Among the limiting factors are ecological constraints, which argue against the locating of a number of polluting industries in the industrial districts of the European part. (The author, chief of the Department of Economic Geography USSR at the Institute of Geography in Moscow, was killed in a plane crash in February 1973 at age 43.)

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