ABSTRACT
This is a theme which has received little attention in previous chapters, for little sustained thought was given to the issue in earlier periods, when cores and peripheries were tacitly accepted as facts of life and demographic shifts were made accordingly. Discovery of compelling natural resources meant readjustment, as in the case of the Upper Silesian coalfield, and ad hoc programmes were launched in the Banat region in the eighteenth century, while the Second World War encouraged exercises in wartime dispersal to evade enemy bombing. On the other hand, regional power structures sometimes operated in order to reinforce established trends so that there may even have been ‘conspiracies’ to perpetuate the ‘natural order’ of regional variations and limit assistance to backward areas. However, regional policy was launched by the USSR as a fundamental component of its revolutionary strategy since a secure future for the state required a transformed geography of industrial production based on newly discovered resources in secure locations remote from Central Europe that could now offer better opportunities for nonagricultural work. Although radical relocation of production was not an appropriate strategic objective in ECE, given the relatively small distances involved, it was understandable that regional perspectives should be part of the communist agenda since there was a very strong desire for faster development and the region was certainly replete with classic backward areas-heavily dependent on subsistence agriculture and inured to persistent emigration-which now had their potential enhanced by the alliances forged with the USSR and programmes to develop the central places and their infrastructure.
