ABSTRACT
The Soviet period has differed little from the prerevolutionary czsarist period in terms of the economic development of the Russian Far East. The latter was, above all, regarded principally as Russia’s military outpost on the Pacific Ocean. The Russian Empire, and later the Soviet Union, relied upon this region as a rear base for military operations. Even the presence of rich natural resources, right up to the early 1960s, was not regarded as a serious argument for the investment of capital in the economic development of the region. The region was too remote and too sparsely populated.
