The Soviet Far East: New Centre of Attention in the U.S.S.R.

Abstract

THE Soviet Far East has existed as a Major Economic Region in its present form since I963. It stretches about a thousand miles inland from the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, occupying an area twothirds the size of the United States. Though far from homogeneous physically or in human terms, it is distinguished as a whole by its relative lack of settlement and economic development, despite a large natural resource endowment (Table i). With 6.7 million inhabitants, or 2.6 per cent of the national total, in 28 per cent of the national area it is by far the least densely inhabited region of the Soviet Union. It is also one of the two regions most poorly provided with physical infrastructure,' and the one in which extractive industries are most heavily represented in industrial employment.2 Writing a decade ago, Z. Mieczkowski described the Soviet Far East with good reason as a problem region of the USSR.3 Remoteness and harsh physical conditions had severely limited the range of resources worth exploiting for the domestic market.4 Nationally scarce minerals (such as gold, tin, tungsten, mercury, and diamonds) had