Just a short comment:
> Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 16:47:46 -0600 (NSK)
> From: "Nikolai S. Rozov" <ROZOV@cnit.nsu.ru>
> to confuse Moscow and Russia is a much bigger mistake than to equalize NYC
> with USA. Just today i returned from Moscow, now it has almost all
> features of blossoming European capital, including vast middle class, all
> kinds of advanced services, high-level consumption, etc. Moscow really
> belongs to a dynamic semi-periphery even with many signs of a core.
>
> On the contrary almost all provincial Russia (except maybe Nijnii
> Novgorod) is still a stagnation
> area of destroying military production and kolkhoses, with only one vital
> branch - getting raw materials.
This seems to be true, but:
1. One should not forget that Moscow
agglomeration with its 15 000 000 inhabitants accounts for 10% of the
Russia population and more than 50 % of the tax revenues the Russian
budget gets (most of which is distributed to the regions through
subventions). Again most of the Moscow population is imployed in
industry (due to some known reasons the percent of the industrial
workers in Moscow is the highest among the world capitals).
2. If we add to Moscow the other "core" areas - and this is not just
Nizhniy, but also StPetersburg, Saratov, Tolyatti &c, if we take into
consideration that just these areas are the most populous in Russia,
we shall find out that though the Russian "core" accounts perhaps for
less than 5% of its territory, it accounts for about 50% of its
population and about 80-90 % percent of its competetive industrial
output and tax revenues with which the periphery is fed through
massive subventions. One nice thing for the city-dwellers in the
present-day Russia is that the villagers cannot say any more "We are
feeding you" - it is rather the other way round, the Russian
villages are living now to a considerable extent on the imported
food, supplied by the cities with the export revenues (incidentally, Russia
does not only export oil and gas - it is also the largest
exporter of e.g. steel and fertilizers, and 50% of all the electonic
watchs and 25% of calculators are made with Russian microchips,
whereas most of the cars sold in the former Soviet republics are
produced in Russia &c).
Yours,
Andrey (Moscow, Russia)