Russia has problems developing Siberia

Press, 27 August 1979, Page 13

Russia has problems developing Siberia

(Reprinted from the ‘ Economist,” London.) Things were easier in Stalin's day. Whole populations of slave labour could be cattle-trucked eastward at the Kremlin’s whim, like the hundreds of thousands of Poles deported after the joint Nazi-Soviet butchery of their country in 1939. Poor Brezhnev trying to run goulash rather than gulag Communism has greater needs but fewer whips to meet them with. The Russian economic planners’ problems czn be summarised like this: — The western part of the Soviet Union has a tolerable climate, about three-quarters of both its industrial and its agricultural output and a large but slow-growing Deputation: the first results of last January’s census, published recently, showed a growth of only 6 per cent since 1970 in the three Slavic republics. — Nearly all of Siberia and the far east is a foul place to live, and only 10 per cent of the population is unlucky enough to do so. But this area contains maybe 70-80 per cent of all the country’s natural resources. — Below these two areas lies Soviet central Asia, a tolerable place to live for the largely Moslem people native to it, who are not very’ manv (about 40 million to 50 million in a total Soviet population of 262 million) but multiplving verv fast: their numbers seem to have grown bv about 30 E PR CENT since 1970. Question: If the planners wish to develop Siberia’s natural resources, do they also try to develop on the spot industries that will make use of some of them?

Second question: Do the planners (a) aim to persuade the surplus Asiatic population north and east into Siberia, west into European Russia; or (b) do they shift investment priorities to favour industrial growth in central Asia? The necessity of developing Siberian resources is an accepted truth. But what about the industries to use them The official policy of the past was that each region of the Soviet Union should be developed more or less as a self-sufficient unit. This policy has not been wholly abandoned. The current economic plan requires each region, as far as possible, to provide for its own needs of fairly basic products such as building materials, t< avoid long rail hauls. And there is some attempt to build on the spot the equipment needed for developing raw materials. For example, the projected development of opencast brown-coal mines in southern Siberia is to be accompanied by the construction of the heavy excavators at Krasnoyarsk nearby. Similarly western Siberia’s oil resources are to be the basis of a petrochemical industrv, and process-plant building, on the spot. But the sheer nastiness of Siberia is persuading the central planners to see it essentially as a place to be exploited, a source of raw materials. The next stage downstream from the petro-chemical plants, the production of plastics and synthetic fibres, was originally expected to go to Siberia, partly because its water requirements could be more easily met there. Now that recycling technology is more ad-

vanced, it is likely to stay in the west. Who is going to do the development and how? Even if it were possible to install a large permanent population in the Soviet far east, that would involve large investment in social infrastructure and secondary industry. So might it be possible to keep the permanent population relatively low by bringing it in from outside? The authorities have tried two techniques. One is to move, indeed airlift, workers to dormitory settlements in remote areas for some weeks at a time from eastern towns where they live with their families. The other, bolder solution, is to transport them, for longer periods, from farther away in European' Russia. If the labouring masses could be persuaded to find Siberia fun, there would be no problem. But for all the heroic pioneers one hears of, they mostly do not want to go. A survey of the Magadan district in the extreme far east 10 years ago found that one quarter of the population arrived in, or left, the district in the course of two years. The folk from central Asia show no vast zeal to move either. Life at home is nicer, cheaper and easier — not least because there is more private housing («bout a third of the total in central Asia) and more private marketing of basic goods. It seems likely that the planners will opt for shifting work — relatively labourintensive light industry — to the people in central Asia rather than trying to shift the people to the work. That, of course, will involve diverting some extra capital resources, presumably from Siberia — which with good reason, the planners do not want to do. How very nice if western countries and other Comecon members — all of whom could benefit from development of Soviet raw materials — would help to fill the gap (provided, which is none too certain, that the local resources to match western inputs could be found). Or perhaps the Soviet Union could even cut a bit off the enormous proportion of gross national profit 11 to 13 per cent according to the C.1.A., for what that agency’s figures are worth — that it at present devotes to its armed forces.