| Regionalism has deep roots in Russian history. For over a century before the revolution, regional economic interests competed for control of national markets. Because of the poverty of the peasantry and the concomitant weakness of domestic demand, the regions relied on the state for the investment and demand necessary to build the local economy. Peter the Great founded Urals industry in the early eighteenth century to support his military campaigns against Sweden. Ukrainian industry emerged in the industrialization program of Sergei Witte in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the 1920s, the regions (oblasti, kraia and respubliki) of the Soviet Union competed fiercely for the investment and demand promised in the first five year plan.;The expression of regional interests had a defining impact on the evolution of the Soviet system. Because of the complexity of decision-making, particularly in the context of a planned economy, the center relied on the participation and initiative of the regions. The regions were not mere conduits of central policy. At various times, the both exceeded and resisted central directives. The interaction of the center and regions is the focus of this study, which is based on the example of the Urals oblast'. In the process of employing, accommodating, limiting and attacking the expression of regional interests, many of the key transformative events of Soviet history were shaped: high-tempo industrialization, the collectivization of agriculture, the rise of Stalin, the growth of the Gulag, the emergence of the command-administrative system, the explosion of political terror in the late 1930s. Regionalism has been influencing decision-making up to the present day. As such, the study provides historical background for the recent movement to create a "Urals republic," a movement which has been at the leading edge of the regions' attempts to redefine the structure of the federal state in contemporary Russia. |
