ABSTRACT

From the outset, Soviet regional policies were carried out within a framework of highly centralized economic administration and geared to serve the perceived interests of the union as a whole. The particular needs and preferences of the republics got short shrift in this process. Whereas republic planners wanted to create relatively diversified economies, Moscow planners opted for specialization enforced through its control over investment. Although political rhetoric long proclaimed the goal of evening out levels of development among the republics and various national groups, the policies actually implemented did not consistently promote that goal, although they did foster some industrialization everywhere and they put in place systems of universally available education and health care.

122The ultimate consequences of Soviet regional policies can be seen in the present large disparities in levels of development among the republics. In the late 1980s, the poorest republics (Uzbekistan and Tadzhikistan) had estimated per capita GNPs of only about a third of that of the R.S.F.S.R. Living standards in Tadzhikistan, as measured by per capita consumption, were only about half the Russian level, which in turn was 22 percent below that in Estonia. Differences had widened in recent years. All republics had economic structures that were severely distorted by Western comparison, with overblown industrial sectors and grossly underdeveloped service sectors, especially retail trade and personal services. Environmental damage was ubiquitous. The distortions and damage are physically embodied in each republic in its patterns of land use, its plants and equipment, and the skills and distribution of its work force.

Moscow’s preference for regional specialization and its penchant for gigantomania combined to produce monopolistic industries and large interrepublic trade dependencies. Most republics conduct the majority of their trade with one another, and that trade supplies critical needs to sustain domestic consumption and also provides outlets for surplus production. Such are the physical legacies and economic realities that Soviet regional policies bequeathed to its fifteen successor states in varying degrees and configurations. Other legacies are republic governments without experience in real governance and ethnically fragmented population structures.

Although Gorbachev sought to revitalize the Soviet state and its constituent peoples, his often contradictory and misguided policies instead hastened its demise. Glasnost provided republican leaders with many forums in which to air long-standing grievances against policies made in Moscow and their consequences. Perestroika with its inconsistent economic reforms added to the list of grievances, but also accorded the republics and enterprises more leeway in economic decision making. The latter, coupled with Gorbachev’s policy of democratization and greater autonomy for the republics in general, fueled the smoldering fires of latent separatism that were inherent in an administrative structure based on dominant nationality groups. Gorbachev was unable to control the centrifugal forces rooted in Soviet regional policies that he unintentionally unleashed.