The Economic Regionalization of the Soviet Union in the Lenin and Stalin Period

Economic regionalization has always been of special interest in large countries, such as the USA and the USSR, where the spatial pattern of the economy assumes greater importance than in smaller countries. The history of Russian economic regionalization can be traced as far back as the second part of the Eighteenth century (Chebotarev, 1776). Most of the regionalization attempts in Tsarist Russia were based on uniformity of natural, or of natural and economic criteria. In the latter case it was predominantly an economic regionalization based on natural conditions as these influenced agriculture. However, with the passage of time there was a conspicuous trend towards separate natural and economic regionalization. Among nineteenth century experiments, the most important were those of K. Arsenyev (1818 and 1848) with his division of the country into ten "territories" according to natural and economic factors; P. Kriukov (1853) and his industrial map of European Russia; and N. Ogarev (1847) who devoted much attention to the theory of economic regionalization. Further, the division of the country by P. Syemyonov-Tyan-Shansky (1880) into regions combining natural and economic elements should be mentioned, as well as D. Mendeleyev and his division of Russia into fourteen economic, mostly industrial, regions (1893). Among researchers active in this field in the twentieth century the names of A. Skvortsov (1914), who divided the country into thirty-four agricultural areas which he called economic regions, and V. Syemyonov-Tyan-Shansky (1911) are of interest. The latter guided a research project concerned with trade-industrial regionalization.