PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • List of Members
    • Ukraine Experts
    • About Membership
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcast
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
Contacts

Address
1957 E St NW,
Washington, DC 20052

adminponars@gwu.edu
202.994.5915

NEWSLETTER
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Podcast
PONARS Eurasia
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • List of Members
    • Ukraine Experts
    • About Membership
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcast
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
DIGITAL RESOURCES
digital resources

Bookstore 📚

Knowledge Hub

Course Syllabi

Point & Counterpoint

Policy Perspectives

RECOMMENDED
  • Illiberalism and Public Opinion Junctures in Russia’s War on Ukraine

    View
  • Policy Exchange Discussion & Memos: Guaranteeing Ukraine’s Long-Run Security (June 9)

    View
  • Ukraine’s Best Chance for Peace

    View
  • We want the war to end. But should calls for negotiating with Putin be taken seriously?

    View
  • Policy Briefs | BEAR Network-PONARS Eurasia Conference

    View
RSS PONARS Eurasia Podcast
  • The Putin-Xi Summit: What's New In Their Joint Communique ? February 23, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman speaks with Russian China experts Vita Spivak and Alexander Gabuev about the February meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and what it may tell us about where the Russian-Chinese relationship is headed.
  • Exploring the Russian Courts' Ruling to Liquidate the Memorial Society January 28, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with scholars Kelly Smith and Benjamin Nathans about the history, achievements, and impending shutdown of the Memorial Society, Russia's oldest and most venerable civic organization, and what its imminent liquidation portends for the Russian civil society.
  • Russia's 2021 census and the Kremlin's nationalities policy [Lipman Series 2021] December 9, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with social scientist Andrey Shcherbak about the quality of the data collected in the recent population census and the goals of Vladimir Putin's government's nationalities policy
  • Active citizens of any kind are under threat [Lipman Series 2021] November 5, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Alexander Verkhovsky about the Kremlin's ever expanding toolkit against political and civic activists, journalists, and other dissidents.
  • Russia's Legislative Elections followup [Lipman Series 2021] October 4, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Tanya Lokot and Nikolay Petrov about the results of Russia’s legislative elections and about what comes next.
  • Why Is the Kremlin Nervous? [Lipman Series 2021] September 14, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Ben Noble and Nikolay Petrov about Russia’s September 17-19 legislative elections, repressive measures against electoral challengers, and whether to expect anything other than preordained results.
  • Vaccine Hesitancy in Russia, France, and the United States [Lipman Series 2021] August 31, 2021
    In this week's PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Denis Volkov, Naira Davlashyan, and Peter Slevin about why COVID-19 vaccination rates are still so low across the globe, comparing vaccine hesitant constituencies across Russia, France, and the United States.  
  • Is Russia Becoming More Soviet? [Lipman Series 2021] July 26, 2021
      In a new PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Maxim Trudolyubov about the current tightening of the Russian political sphere, asking whether or not it’s helpful to draw comparisons to the late Soviet period.
  • The Evolution of Russia's Political Regime [Lipman Series 2021] June 21, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Grigory Golosov and Henry Hale about the evolution of Russia's political regime, and what to expect in the lead-up to September's Duma elections.
  • Volodymyr Zelensky: Year Two [Lipman Series 2021] May 24, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Sergiy Kudelia and Georgiy Kasianov about Ukrainian President Zelensky's second year in office, and how he has handled the political turbulence of the past year.
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Point & Counterpoint

Rebalancing Russia’s Spatial Development? Infrastructural Transformations Under Vladimir Putin

  • June 7, 2018
  • PONARS Eurasia

 


► Putin’s long tenure has been marked by profound changes in the spatial organization of the country’s territory. Measures have been taken to modernize infrastructure and develop the most sensitive and strategic regions but a more sophisticated regional strategy is needed.


 

Vladimir Putin’s long tenure as the head of the Russian Federation has been marked by profound changes in the spatial organization of the country’s territory, especially in terms of its connections with foreign countries and internal connectedness. Beyond some highly publicized episodes, very concrete measures have been taken to modernize infrastructure and develop the most sensitive and strategic regions.

“The concrete inequalities between regions in terms of transport infrastructure and accessibility, an essential fact that explains both the appearance of certain structuring axes and the fragilities that may threaten the very unity of the country.”

The heterogeneity of Russia’s territory and its key dimensions are known: physical (remoteness, huge distances, natural resource inequities), economic, demographic, and ethnic. On a purely practical level, the immensity of the territory is such that many leaders, in Moscow and the regions alike, feel a need for territorial cohesion. The 2011 decision to reduce the number of time zones from 11 to 9 was intended to facilitate links between the regional administrations and the capital city. But this symbolic measure could hardly hope to affect the concrete inequalities between regions in terms of transport infrastructure and accessibility, an essential fact that explains both the appearance of certain structuring axes and the fragilities that may threaten the very unity of the country.

At the end of the Soviet era, the major transportation networks suffered several blows that accentuated the heterogeneity of Russian territory. With republic borders becoming state borders, several routes involved passing through the territory of another state: the Moscow-Rostov-Sochi railway passed through Ukraine, while the Trans-Siberian Railway traversed Kazakhstan. To avoid having to clear customs in these countries Russian Railways was compelled to construct “strategic” bypass routes. Several regions of the Far North and the Far East found themselves, too, poorly connected to the rest of the country due to a lack of year-round roads and railways. Far from being purely a media stunt, Putin’s 2010 expedition across Siberia in a yellow Lada highlighted the importance of developing new transport axes to unify the country and develop its eastern regions, which are hemorrhaging people as residents relocate to big cities further to the west. The authorities’ plan includes improving the road network in Transbaikalia, completing the railway linking Baikal-Amur Magistral to Yakutsk, and a proposed project to extend the railway line to Magadan, as well as the reopening of a railway works located on the northern bank of the Ob River.

 

If the Russian authorities are concerned primarily about the weakness of transport networks in Siberia, the Arctic, and the Far East, they have not forgotten the European part of the country. After years of hesitation, the Sapsan high-speed train, which travels from Moscow to St. Petersburg in under 4 hours, was inaugurated in 2009. Moreover, new high-speed trains to Kazan or Sochi are under discussion. The decision to privatize part of the M11 between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and to introduce tolls, should speed up the motorway project, allowing for its completion by 2019.

“If the Russian authorities are concerned primarily about the weakness of transport networks in Siberia, the Arctic, and the Far East, they have not forgotten the European part of the country.”

Beyond these spectacular and oft-cited examples, hundreds of less publicized projects are being undertaken across the country to remove the obstacles that were, at the end of the Soviet era, the daily lot of freighters and travelers: missing or deteriorated bridges, anarchic access to city centers, and the almost complete absence of highways and bypass roads around main cities, which caused innumerable bottlenecks. On all these fronts, steady progress is being made. Dozens of bridges have been built across rivers in the European part of the country, shortening many journeys, and bridges over the Ob and the Lena are under construction. New express lanes are being built everywhere, not only in Moscow (the two new inner peripherals and exit radials) but also in many peripheral regions, such as the Kola peninsula (where there is now a bypass serving Murmansk and its civilian and military ports). A highway bypassing the center of Sochi and serving the sites of the 2014 Olympic Games, as well as new mountain roads in Chechnya and Dagestan, will allow for the control and development of these sensitive regions. The decision, taken immediately after the annexation of Crimea, to build a bridge over the Strait of Kerch by the end of 2018, is part of this strategic work to make inter-regional links more coherent.

 

A key policy relates to new port infrastructure, which is progressively overhauling the geography of interactions between Russia and the European Union. In the north, the new ports of St. Petersburg are gradually outpacing those of the Eastern Baltic, Vyborg, and Primorsk in terms of hydrocarbon exports. The ports of Ust-Luga (opened in 2007, reached 100 million tons in 2017 and should be the starting point for Nord Stream 2) and Bronka (a new container terminal built at the intersection of the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland and the motorway ring road built through Kotlin Island, where Kronstadt is located) will predominate in terms of other cargos. This spectacular effort is reminiscent of the decisions to create the new ports of Rotterdam or Hamburg and represents a real departure from the previous situation. The port of Kaliningrad has become marginal due to its isolation from Russian territory, and its new container terminal serves mainly the local Free Economic Zone. As for the Port of St Petersburg, it is too enclosed in the conurbation and will be refocused on passenger traffic and some specialized transport.

“The decision, taken immediately after the annexation of Crimea, to build a bridge over the Strait of Kerch by the end of 2018, is part of this strategic work to make inter-regional links more coherent.”

In the south, on the Black Sea side, a similar trend is at work with the accelerated modernization of Novorossiysk, which in 2016 became the first Russian port with 131 million tons of traffic (compared to 50-70 million tons at the end of the Soviet era). Also worth noting is the rise of a series of new terminals in Port Kavkaz (the point of departure of ferries to Crimea), Taman, Tuapse, and Rostov-on-Don. The objective of this dual plan is explicit: gradually reducing transit through ‘near abroad’ countries to the benefit of new Russian infrastructure. Putin was particularly explicit in congratulating Transneft president Nikolai Tokarev for deciding to abolish, after 2018, any transit of hydrocarbons through the ports of the three Baltic states. This step could revolutionize the geographical logic of the region, which has, since the creation of the Hanseatic ports, developed primarily as a point of exchange between Northern and Western Europe and the Russian hinterland. A similar trend is underway with Ukraine, here too with potentially dramatic consequences for Kyiv. Through the spectacular development of its port and logistical facilities, Russia is breaking away from its history of interdependence.

 

“In the absence of a more sophisticated regional strategy, infrastructural changes—especially those in Siberia, the Far North, and the Far East—do not seem to provide solutions to Russia’s ills.”

However, the Russian system continues to operate largely through federal programs administered by the center, the effectiveness of which is questionable. In the most sensitive regions, such as the Caucasus, the Far East, and the Arctic, this control requires the establishment of dedicated administrations (either a ministry or a committee), which interfere with the autonomy of regional authorities. Elsewhere, government action relies mainly on careful monitoring of local social and political situations: to avoid crisis, the president may replace the governor or initiate an urgent investment plan. Moreover, the desire to maintain control over the most profitable sectors in each region has led to the strengthening of the role of siloviki. The presence of “urban binaries”—Moscow vs. Saint Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod vs. Kazan, Krasnodar vs. Rostov-on-Don, Krasnoyarsk vs. Vladivostok—shapes several regions and is problematic for development.

In the absence of a more sophisticated regional strategy, infrastructural changes—especially those in Siberia, the Far North, and the Far East—do not seem to provide solutions to Russia’s ills, in particular the need to de-concentrate activities outside the hypertrophied capital region and implement a policy that would support more balanced spatial development.

 


Jean Radvanyi is Professor of Geography at INALCO (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations, Paris), Co-director of the Europe-Eurasia Research Center, Paris. He is the Co-author of Understanding Russia: The Challenges of Transformation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

 

 

 

Image credits: (c) 2018 Shutterstock

Secondary Author:
Jean Radvanyi
PONARS Eurasia
+ posts
  • PONARS Eurasia
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/author/ponars-eurasia/
    Policy Exchange Discussion & Memos: Guaranteeing Ukraine's Long-Run Security (June 9)
  • PONARS Eurasia
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/author/ponars-eurasia/
    Policy Briefs | BEAR Network-PONARS Eurasia Conference
  • PONARS Eurasia
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/author/ponars-eurasia/
    The Collapse of the Soviet Union | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy
  • PONARS Eurasia
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/author/ponars-eurasia/
    Labor Migration in Russia | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy
Previous Article
  • In the News | Hовости
  • Point & Counterpoint

Independent Municipal Deputies: The New Face of Russian Politics

  • June 7, 2018
  • PONARS Eurasia
View
Next Article
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Point & Counterpoint

The Russian Orthodox Church’s Conquest of the History Market

  • June 7, 2018
  • Marlene Laruelle
View
You May Also Like
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем
  • Territorial Conflict

Dominating Ukraine’s Sky

  • Volodymyr Dubovyk
  • March 5, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Russian Anti-War Protests and the State’s Response

  • Lauren McCarthy
  • March 4, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Путин и Лукашенко

  • Konstantin Sonin
  • August 29, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Отравление оппозиционеров в России превратилось в регулярную практику

  • Vladimir Gelman
  • August 22, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Авторитарные режимы не вечны: О ситуации в Белоруссии

  • Vladimir Gelman
  • August 14, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

В Беларуси пока что все идет по российскому сценарию

  • Olexiy Haran
  • August 12, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Опасная игра Лукашенко

  • Pavel Baev
  • August 11, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Власть справилась

  • Sergei Medvedev
  • August 10, 2020
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
  • Membership
  • Policy Memos
  • Recommended
  • Events
Powered by narva.io

Permissions & Citation Guidelines

Input your search keywords and press Enter.