The Outlook for Regional Development in the Soviet Union

Extract

The natural inclination of most “area” scholars—not to mention others—is to become preoccupied with the personalities, institutions, and achievements of the dominant culture, through the nationally aggregated values and norms. The justification for this approach is a belief in the supposedly inexorable process of the “homogenization” of the national culture and the inevitability of greater centralized control as a result of the technology of mass communications and organization. But it is increasingly apparent that even in “developed” countries, such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—let alone Italy, Nigeria, or Pakistan—some of the more insistent and intractable “national” problems turn out to be basically regional in origin and character. At least as important in the long run as conflict of ethnic or religious origin is the increasingly familiar deepening of regional inequalities in the richer nations as a result of more perfect interregional competition, diffusion of information, and the high potential mobility of educated and affluent populations. At first glance the Soviet Union, with its traditional practice of centralized control over the bodies and souls of its citizens and the all-pervading pressure toward national coherence and uniformity, might appear more appropriate than most countries for study as a national system with national character and goals. Yet here, too, some of the more interesting and thorny problems facing the Soviet leaders and planners concerning the health and general viability of their country resolve themselves into essentially regional ones.