Chapter 1 Objectives and Tools of World Regional Geography

DJ.Economic and Political Prospects

Nearly three-quarters of the people of Russia and the Near Abroad live in the “Fertile Triangle” core land, a mainly Slavic area of western Russia and neighboring countries. Most of the rest of the region’s land is lightly populated and non-Slavic. Moldova is a small non-Slavic nation in the core, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad lies between Lithuania and Poland. Ukraine was the USSR’s breadbasket, and today is an important center of heavy industry, though its agricultural production has plummeted since independence. Portions of Ukraine and Belarus will be incapable of safe agricultural production for years because of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Belarus has the closest ties to Russia of any former Soviet republic, and the two countries have attempted to institute a “union state” integrating their economic and political systems.

The Fertile Triangle was once a major global-scale producer of many agricultural products, though production fell after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia also lost access to many of the raw materials its industries need after 1991 and now must compete on the global marketplace for them, a wrenching change that continues today. Many Russian industries and factories are inefficient or controlled by the Russian “Mafia.” While recent exports of oil and other minerals has picked up the Russian economy, the country’s industrial sector is still deeply troubled, and Russia’s GDP contracted by half during the 1990s. Russia’s main manufacturing areas are located around Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Volga River, the Urals, and Novosibirsk.

Russia’s Far East is mountainous, lightly populated, and produces little agriculture, but oil production around the island of Sakhalin is booming. Russia’s Northern Lands were the site of many Soviet-era gulags. It is also sparsely populated but contains some significant concentrations of minerals and energy, including oil; several important seaports are located along the Arctic shore. Two major east-west railroads, the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the Trans-Siberian Railroad, were built across Siberia; there is talk of linking the BAM with railways in Alaska. Many residents of Siberia are ethnic minorities. Moscow bears a large cost of subsidizing residents of this region, and it would like to see the population decline by 10 percent; it has offered to pay for families to relocate south and west.

The Caucasus region lies between the Black and Caspian Seas and is the location of a tall mountain range of the same name. Over thousands of years many ethnic groups migrated to and through this area, and many have persisted in small mountain refuges to this day. The three countries in this area are Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia is a poor, Orthodox Christian country with a humid subtropical climate. Armenians belong to one of the oldest Christian faiths in the world, and Azerbaijanis are Muslims. There is a long history of animosity between Armenia and Azerbaijan; in 1992 war erupted over disputed land. Oil and natural gas are the most important products of this region, and the Caspian Sea is the world’s leading producer of caviar.

Central Asia is mainly an arid plain, with high mountains in the southeast. This Muslim region has been overrun with conquerors many times throughout history. Until Soviet times many Central Asians were nomadic. Dry conditions require the use of irrigation for farming most everywhere in this area; cotton is the major crop, and so much water has been diverted from rivers for cotton growing that the Aral Sea is in danger of drying up. National economies contracted here, as elsewhere in the region, after 1991 but valuable oil, gas and mineral deposits have led to Western investment. Kazakhstan has seen much of its farmland abandoned in recent years; however, it contains as much as 70 percent of the Caspian oil reserves. Turkmenistan remains an oppressive Communist dictatorship, but also has large oil reserves. Uzbekistan is the most populous Central Asian nation, and relies heavily upon cotton exports for revenue. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are the poorest countries in Central Asia; both are very mountainous and politically unstable. Tajiks are Iranian in ethnicity, while the other countries are mostly Turkic.

67. 
    The Fertile Triangle is the core area of Russia and the Near Abroad, comprising much of western Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, northern Kazakhstan, and a portion of southern Siberia. It is the location of the very fertile chernozem soils, and most of the region’s agriculturally cultivated land is found within it. [p. 183]
    

68. 
    Of the three nations, Belarus is the most similar to Russia, and the most dependent upon it. Almost all of Belarus’ trade is with Russia, and the two countries have discussed plans to create a “union state.” Ukraine’s population (like that of Belarus) is Slavic, and many of its citizens would like to cultivate a relationship with Russia based upon shared ethnicity. The played an important role in the development of Russia and later the Soviet Union; Ukraine has been described as “Russia writ small,” and the country is still dependent upon Russia economically, especially for imports of natural gas. The population of Moldova is not Slavic, and its territory was originally part of Romania before being seized by the Soviets. Russian soldiers continue to remain stationed in Moldova, especially in the troubled region east of the Dniester River. Their presence plus Russian language education in Moldovan schools has caused unrest in the country since its independence. [pp. 183-186]
    

69. 
    Ukraine’s main industrial region is the Donets Basin near the city of Donetsk, where coal is concentrated and also where most of the country’s iron and steel plants are. Significantly, this part of the country is linguistically and politically most akin to Russia. Like Russia, the main threat to its industry is corruption and the power of organized criminals. In Russia, the Moscow, Middle Volga, Urals, and Kuznetsk industrial regions are all located within the Fertile Triangle. The Moscow industrial region is the most important in Russia, with textiles, metallurgy and increasingly diversified industries predominating. The Middle Volga industrial region, including Samara, Volgograd, and Kazan, manufactures machinery, chemicals, automobiles, and arms. The Urals industrial region is heavily dependent upon mining and iron and steel production. The Kuznetsk region is also a major iron and steel producer, located there because of vast coal reserves nearby. [pp. 183-185, 188-192]
    

70. 
    Moscow is known as the “Port of Five Seas” because of its central location within western Russia, and its numerous transportation links radiating out from the city. The five seas referred to are the Baltic, White, Black, Azov, and Caspian seas. [p. 188]
    

71. 
    Russia’s “Detroit” is the city of Togliatti, which is the center of the Russian automobile manufacturing industry. Russia’s “Chicago” is the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, which has developed into a diversified industrial, trading, and transportation center. [pp. 190-191]
    

72. 
    Russia’s Far East is relatively mountainous and, in the case of the Kuril Islands and the Kamchatka Peninsula, volcanic. The region is thinly populated, except for Sakhalin Island and the small urban area around Vladivostok. The Amur River, which forms part of the boundary between Russia and China, and the Trans-Siberian Railroad are the two most important transportation arteries in the area. [pp. 191-192]
    

73. 
    The island of Sakhalin is vitally important to Russia’s economy because of its large petroleum and natural gas reserves. Japan is negotiating potentially lucrative contracts with Russia to import Sakhalin’s energy reserves. Kamchatka is largely economically undeveloped, and some residents would like it to stay that way, with only ecotourism providing the area with revenue; others would like to exploit the peninsula’s gold and oil reserves. The formerly Japanese Kuril Islands (along with the southern part of Sakhalin Island) were seized by the Soviets at the end of World War II, and the Japanese citizens living there were expelled back to Japan. Japan still claims these islands, and this ongoing dispute between Japan and Russia has prevented the two countries from reaching a formal post-World War II treaty. [pp. 191-192]
    

74. 
    Two broad belts of tundra and taiga dominate Russia’s northern lands. Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Irkutsk, and Yakutsk are among the main cities of this sparsely settled area. The northern lands are important for their energy resources, which forms most of the industry in the area. Hydropower and the extraction of coal, oil, and natural gas are all important here. Mining, transportation (especially along the BAM and Trans-Siberian Railroads), and logging also contribute to the northern lands’ economy. [pp. 192-198]
    

75. 
    The Caucasus region is composed of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The region, including the Russian territory north of the mountains, is home to many different ethnic groups, rendering the Caucasus a very volatile area. Most of these groups are small and confined to limited mountain areas. The main products exported from this region are oil and natural gas, particularly along Azerbaijan’s portion of the Caspian Sea. The Caspian is also the source for most of the world’s caviar. Tensions between Armenians and Azeris over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan, cost 30,000 lives and created a refugee population of nearly one million. This 1,700 square mile area will remain contested, and fighting between the two nations will likely continue. [pp. 198-200]
    

76. 
    Central Asia is largely flat and covered with plains and low uplands, except for the southeastern reaches of the region. Here, mountain ranges such as the Tian Shan and the Pamir Range rise to over 7,000 meters in elevation. Although at the moment the Central Asian nations are not especially prosperous economically, the region has numerous mineral resources such as gold, coal, iron ore, nickel, natural gas, and especially oil. Textiles, especially cotton, and some agriculture are the other economic mainstays of this region. Kazakhstan is the wealthiest of the five Central Asian republics, even as its population declines and its rich farmland is abandoned. Tajikistan exports little to the world’s markets and is the poorest nation in the region. [pp. 200-203]
    

This chapter should enable your students to…

• 
  Appreciate the environmental obstacles t k o development in vast areas of the world’s largest country and nearby nations
  
• 
  Become familiar with the ethnic complexity of a huge region until recently held together—against great odds—as a single country
  
• 
  Learn the significant milestones in the historical and geographic development of Russia and the Soviet Union, some of them accompanied by unimaginable loss of life
  
• 
  Recognize the differences between command and free-market economies and the post-Soviet difficulties in shifting from one to the other
  
• 
  Understand the reasons for the reversal of Russia’s progress through the demographic transition
  
• 
  Come to know the geopolitical and ethnic forces threatening the unity of Russia and pitting various groups and countries within and outside the region against one another
  

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