GEOG 101 – World Regional Geography
Professor: Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue
Chapter 2 – Russia
A – A Constraining Physical Geography
B – Evolution of the Russian State
C – The Soviet Union
D – Contemporary Russia
E – Regions of the Realm
A A Constraining Physical Geography
■ Geographic attributes
Immense territorial state; a continental power.
Northernmost large and populous country in the world.
A former world colonial power.
A comparatively small (<145 million) and concentrated
population.
• Concentrated development.
• Multicultural state.
• Minimal ports; limited access to a warm water masses (except
the Pacific at Vladivostok).
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A Constraining Physical Geography
■ Dimensions
• Spans 11 time zones.
• Gulf of Finland to Alaska (west to east), and well above the arctic
circle to salt lake city (north to south)
• Twice the size of the US or China.
• Siberia: “sleeping land”.
• Russia makes up 76.6% of the total territory of the former USSR
(17,075,400 km--almost twice the size of the US).
Russia - US Size Comparison
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A Constraining Physical Geography
■ Climate
• Average weather conditions for a given area over an extended
period of time.
■ Weather
• Refers to the atmospheric conditions at a specific place and
time.
■ Climatology
• A branch of physical geography.
• Spatial arrangement of climate over the surface of the earth.
• Processes which contribute to the distribution.
A Constraining Physical Geography
■ Russian Climate
• Affected by 3 natural conditions.
• Latitudinal position:
• Colder climate with increasing latitude.
• 60o North latitude line; split the country in half.
• Continental position:
• Dryer air.
• Limited temperature regulation by oceanic masses.
• Altitudinal effect:
• Colder climate with increasing altitude.
• Location of major mountains.
• Limited impact for Russia.
A Constraining Physical Geography
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Mountain Effect
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Continental Effect
-90o F (-68o C)
Artic Circle (66.5o N)
60o N
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Zones of Artic and Sub Arctic Vegetation
Tundra
Taiga
A Constraining Physical Geography
■ Climate as a restrictive element
• Agriculture; Short growing seasons.
• Drought prone (thawing season and main river flows).
• Erosion (accelerated via snow melt).
■ Settlements
• Collective oriented (lower heating costs).
• Limited outdoor activities.
■ Transportation
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Higher construction costs.
Maintenance costs.
Significant damage done by freezing and thawing cycles.
Rail is a more privileged mode of transportation.
Limited highway infrastructures.
A Constraining Physical Geography
■ Industry
• High energy consumption.
• Specialized equipment and facilities.
• Extractive:
• Permafrost.
• Spring and fall mud.
B Evolution of the Russian State
■ Origins
• Slavs establishing Rus in the 10th century.
• Kievan Rus and Novgorod Rus united in the 12th century.
■ Mongol Invasion
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Mongols were nomadic tribes living in Central Asia.
United by Gengis Khan (1167?-1227) in 1206.
Creation of a military force based on cavalry to invade neighbors.
Kublai Khan (1215-1294):
• Grandson of Gensis Khan.
• Established the largest empire in human history.
• Slavs retreated into the northwest and pay tribute.
• Empire collapsed into several Khanates (1368).
• Many Khanates remained (Golden Horde until 1480).
Mongolian Empire, 1300 AD
Evolution of the Russian State
■ Grand Duchy of Moscow (Moscovy)
• Formation of the modern Russian state (1462).
• Expansion in the Volga basin.
• Fall of Kazan (1552), held by the Tatars.
■ Cossacks
• Semi-nomadic group mainly responsible for the settling of the
Russian Far East from the 16th century.
• Expanded mainly through sparsely populated Siberia.
• Pacific was reached by the mid 17th century.
• Moved into Alaska in the late 18th century (1784).
• Settled north of San Francisco (1812).
Evolution of the Russian State
■ Territorial expansion
• The formation of a large continental empire.
• Colonialism outside the Russian core:
• Overland expansion instead of maritime expansion for other European
powers.
• Active leaders such as Peter the Great (1682-1725) and
Catherine the Great (1760-1796).
• Foundation of St. Petersburg, a forward capital (1703).
• Conquest of Muslim areas in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
• Southern expansion halted by the Turks and the British.
• Vladivostok founded in 1860.
• Eastern expansion in Manchuria halted by the Japanese (war of
1904-1905).
• Alaska sold to the United States for $7.2 million (1867).
C The Soviet Union
■ Causes of the Soviet Revolution
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Outcome of the abuses of czarist Russia; Detached ruling class.
Serfdom of peasants.
Exploitation of workers in the industrial revolution.
No democratic revolution.
■ Revolution (1905-1917)
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Bolsheviks versus Mensheviks.
Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov).
Capital: Petrograd to Moscow (1918).
Federation/federal structure.
USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) -1924.
SSRS, ASSRS (autonomous regions).
Russification.
Former Soviet Union
Russian SSR
Kazakh SSR
The Soviet Union
Total Government
communism /
fascism /
socialism
Little Government
No Government
capitalism
anarchism
■ Centrally planned (command) economies:
• Do not allow free market mechanisms (economic laws of supply
and demand) to dictate economic policy making.
• Advocate government intervention at virtually all levels of the
economy.
• Co-ordinates activities of different, if not all, economic sectors.
• Fix the price and the quantity of what is being produced.
• Establish a long-term perspective on the distribution of goods,
capital and resources with “five-year plans”.
The Soviet Union
■ Features of the soviet economy
• Production of particular manufactured goods to particular places.
• Large amounts of unnecessary movements leading to delays
and shortages.
• Economic interdependence of the republics as a tool of national
unity.
• State subsidy of uneconomic industries also furthers the goal of
state security.
■ Labor
• Compensation not based on productivity.
• Obligatory moves.
• Went hand-in-hand with the Russification process and attempted
to better integrate the entirety of Soviet society.
The Soviet Union
■ Five-year plans
• Emphasized quotas for production at all levels and were often
poorly conceived.
• Compartmentalization of economic decisions.
• Bureaucracy:
• A tool of government control.
• Centralized administration of its economy.
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Removed decision-making from the local, factory or farm level.
Lacked flexibility to take account of changes.
Synchronization of different parts of the economy suffered.
Rendering many inefficiencies in the production, assembly, and
distribution of goods.
The Soviet Union
■ Soviet Leaders
• Lenin (1918 - 1927):
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Introduced Marxist philosophy.
Replaced private with public ownership.
Developed national economic plans.
Established soviet political structure based on ethnic identities.
• Stalin (1927 - 1953):
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All assets nationalized.
Creation of huge centralized state machine over all aspects of soviet life.
Purges of dissidents (30-60 million).
Collectivized farming (Sovkhoz).
Concentration on heavy industry at expense of agriculture.
The Soviet Union
■ Soviet relocation of ethnic groups (1936-1952)
• More than 3 million people were deported.
• Along the Soviet Union’s western borders.
• Dumped thousands of kilometers away in eastern and central
Siberia or in the Central Asian republics.
• 20 major groups suffered in this way.
• 8 entire “nations” were removed from their ancestral homelands:
• 1 was non-Orthodox Christian (the Volga Germans).
• 1 Buddhist (the Kalmyks).
• 6 Muslim (Chechens, Ingush, Karachai, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and
Meskhetians).
• Russians are experiencing resentment in former Soviet
Republics.
Nations Deported by the Soviet Union during WWII
Meskhetians: Nov 1944
Crimean Tatars: May 1944
Balkars: Apr 1944
Ingush: Feb 1944
Chechens: Feb 1944
Kalmyks: Dec 1943
Karachai: Nov 1943
Volga Germans: Sept 1941
0
100,000
200,000
300,000
400,000
The Soviet Union
■ Kruschev (1953 - 1964)
• Greater emphasis on agriculture.
• Virgin lands program - pastures into irrigated wheat fields.
• Ultimately led to Aral Sea environmental disaster.
■ Brezhnev (1964 - 1982)
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Height of the cold war.
Military/industrial economy.
Economic stagnation (agriculture).
Limits to the Soviet model of economic development.
The Soviet Union
■ Industrial location
• State security:
• Primary consideration in determining where factories or other key
economic establishments.
• Rather than location near markets, available labor forces, or sources of
raw materials.
• Dispersal of industry:
• Render the state’s industrial base less vulnerable to attack (WWII).
• May cause diseconomies with regard to transportation costs but the state
considers this less important than the protection of the industries.
• Location of industry away from frontiers.
• The USSR has three primary industrial hearths:
• The central region centered on Moscow.
• The Ukraine, an elongated belt along the Volga River
• The Urals region.
The Soviet Union
■ Productivity
• Workers never realized the benefits of the efforts with the ability
to purchase goods.
• In many cases, lack of money was not the problem; there \was
simply nothing to buy.
• Emphasis on capital goods.
• Diminished the incentive of the Soviet public and lowered overall
productivity levels.
The Soviet Union
■ Absence of competition
• Reduced efficiency.
• All industries were essentially protected from competition.
• Had to meet quotas rather than establish linkages with other
aspects of the economy.
• This will make the conversion to a market economy very difficult
to achieve.
■ Currency
• No real exchange value on world markets.
• Maintained at artificially high levels by government policy and did
not float freely on world money markets.
• Rendered the Ruble virtually worthless.
• Kept prices artificially low at home.
Consumer Prices in Moscow and Washington, 1986 (in
minutes of work)
18
Chicken
189
37
Washing machine (hours)
4
Jeans (hours)
177
56
Bus fare
7
3
Grapefruit
6
112
18
11
Loaf of bread
0
50
100
Washington
Moscow
150
200
The Soviet Union
■ Gorbachev (1985 - 1991)
• Initiated economic and political reform.
• Perestroika:
• Restructuring.
• Intended to produce major changes to both the economic and political
system.
• Economic aim: to catch up with western economies.
• Political aim: reform of the communist party.
• Glasnost:
• Policy of encouraging greater openness in both internal and external
affairs.
• Reforms aimed towards boosting the productivity of the Soviet
economy, but have led to unexpected consequences.
D Contemporary Russia
■ The collapse of the Soviet Union
• Economic and political collapse.
• Even if the Soviet model initially enabled high growth rates,
growth slowed rapidly starting from the 1950s.
• Growth was around 10% in the 1950s, 7% in the 1960s, 5% in
the 1970s and 2% in the 1980s.
• Linked to a drop of productivity in the industrial sector.
• Even if investments increased, they generated no returns since
the mid 1970s.
• Capital was sank in unproductive activities (e.g. military).
• The military race during the Reagan administration may have
accelerated the downfall.
• The country simply went bankrupt.
Contemporary Russia
■ Consequences
• A sharp decline in agricultural and industrial production:
• Economic output down by 4% in 1990 & 10-15% in first half of 1991.
• Intensification of ethno-cultural nationalism & separatism:
• Unity of the soviet union (macro) & unity of republics (micro) threatened.
• Pluralization of soviet politics & steady erosion of communist party
monopoly or power.
• Demographic and life expectancy decline:
• The Russian population stood at 144 million in 2002.
• Down 4.3 million from its peak at the beginning of 1992.
Net Migration and Natural Increase in Russia, 1985 –
2001
1000
66
800
64
600
62
400
200
60
0
-200
-400
-600
-800
-1000
1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Natural Increase
Net Migration
Life expectancy for males
58
56
54
52
Contemporary Russia
■ Russian Federation (1992)
• 89 political units.
• Reflects the complexity of the federation with a variety of local
power levels.
• 21 republics.
• 11 autonomous regions (Okrugs).
• 49 provinces (Oblasts).
• 6 territories (Krays).
• 2 autonomous federal cities (Moscow & St. Petersburg).
Administrative Divisions of Russia
Federal City
Krai
Oblast
Okrug
Respublik
Contemporary Russia
■ Natural resource distribution
• Many natural resources now in former soviet republics.
■ Irredentism
• Concern for Russians outside its borders.
■ National pride
• Determination to remain the champion of Slavic interests.
• Desire to remain a power in international community.
■ Centrifugal forces
• Separatist aims in the Caucasian periphery.
Russian Ethnicity
Contemporary Russia
■ Chechnya
• Chechens are a distinct Muslim nation (Sunni).
• Opponents of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus (19th
century).
• Declaration of independence during the Soviet Revolution
(1917).
• Forcefully incorporated in the Soviet Union (1924).
• Collaboration with German invaders during WWII.
• Deportation of 400,000 Chechens by Stalin (1944):
• More than 100,000 died in Siberia.
• Strong anti-Russian legacy.
• Declaration of independence following the collapse of the Soviet
Union (1991).
Contemporary Russia
■ Reasons why Chechnya is
not granted independence
Russia
Caspian
Sea
Black Sea
Turkey
Georgia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
• Fear of a “domino effect” among
several small political units within
the Russian federation.
• Russian pride to maintain the
integrity of the continental
empire.
• Significant natural resources,
including oil.
• Major oil pipeline going through
Chechnya.
E
Physiographic Regions of Russia
Regions of the Russian Realm
Russia’s Manufacturing Regions
Oil and Gas Regions of Russia