ABSTRACT
One of the striking results of Soviet policy has been the urbanization of the country, although historically the town in Russia has played an important role in the growth of nationhood and in the integration of incorporated territory into the Russian state. In northern European Russia, villages are usually small, comprising less than a dozen houses, and widely scattered, lying on patches of drier ground, notably sandy terraces above the flood plains of rivers and avoiding the wet and not uncommonly swampy interfluves. A series of major economic regions, varying in number from time to time with fluctuations in Soviet thought, are used for broader economic planning, statistical, and fiscal purposes, but they are without any administrative governmental function. Lowland settlements in Caucasia have been influenced by-Russian ideas; but the mountain villages are compact masses of houses built on valley benches which offer a defensive site and water supplies.
