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RUSSIA AND THE NEAR ABROAD

Chapter 5

Objectives

This chapter should enable you to:

Appreciate the environmental obstacles to development in vast areas of the world’s largest country and nearby nations

Learn the significant milestones in the historical and geographic development of Russia and the Soviet Union, some of them accompanied by unimaginable loss of life

Objectives (cont’d.)

Recognize the differences between command and free-market economies and the post-Soviet difficulties in shifting from one to the other

Understand the reasons for the reversal of Russia’s progress through the demographic transition

Come to know the geopolitical and ethnic forces threatening the unity of Russia and pitting various groups and countries within and outside the region against one another

Objectives (cont’d.)

Understand Russia’s motivations in seizing Ukrainian territory and the country’s prospective interventions in other neighboring states

Appreciate the importance of fossil fuels in Russia’s economy, and how overdependence on natural resources poses risks to the country’s development

Introduction to the Region

Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

Economic association with Russia and 11 of the former Soviet states

Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania joined the EU in 2004

Fluidity in delineating region

Trends toward political fragmentation and decentralization

Russia and the Near Abroad

Figure 5.2 Political geography of Russia and the Near Abroad.

Area and Population

Largest world region

Area of 8.5 million square miles

Regional population of 240 million

Average population density of 32 per square mile

Rates of population change

1.8% growth rate among Islamic Central Asian countries

0.4% loss in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus

Population

Figure 5.3 (a) Population distribution and (b) population pie chart of Russia and the Near Abroad.

Physical Geography and Human Adaptations

Factors affecting this immense region:

Cold temperatures

Infertile soils

Marshy terrain

Aridity

Ruggedness

The Roles of the Climates and Vegetation

Extreme continental climate

Severe winter cold but warm/hot summers

Short growing seasons (average 150 days of frost-free season)

Aridity and drought (less than 20 inches average annual precipitation)

Unlikely Sources of Global Warming in Russia’s Frozen Wilderness

Permafrost

Permanently frozen ground that makes construction difficult

Spodosols

Acidic, not productive

Major sink of carbon

If permafrost melts, carbon dioxide, and methane will be added to the atmosphere

Steppes and Good Soils

Humid continental climate lies south of the subarctic climate

Black-earth belt – steppe

Most important area of crop and livestock development in the region

South of the humid continental climate zone

Mollisols – very productive soil type

Abundant humus in the topsoil

Land Use

Figure 5.6 Land use in Russia and the Near Abroad.

The Role of Rivers

Rivers formed natural passageways

Trade, conquest, and colonization

Helped Russians advance from the Urals to the Pacific in less than a century

Volga-Don Canal

Major link in the inland waterway system

Connected the White Sea & Baltic Sea in the north with the Black Sea & Caspian Sea in the south

The Role of Topography

Plains

Ural Mountains

Separate Europe from Asia

Average elevation of less than 2,000 feet

West Siberian Plain

One of the flattest areas on earth

Waterlogged country underlain by permafrost

Tremendous flooding

The Role of Topography (cont’d.)

Central Siberian Plateau

Between Yenisey and Lena Rivers (1,000 to 1,500 ft)

Mountainous southern rim of region

Caucasus, Pamir, Tian Shan mountains

Cultural and Historical Geographies – A Babel of Languages

Complex cultural and linguistic mosaic

More than 100 languages spoken

Main language families

Indo-European

Altaic

Uralic

Proto-Asiatic

Languages

Figure 5.14 Languages of Russia and the Near Abroad. The Soviet Union had challenges trying to hold together such a large collection of ethnic groups. The Russian Federation is facing similar difficulties.

Vikings, Byzantines, and Tatars

Vikings

Slavic tribes came under the influence of Viking adventurers known as Rus or Varangians

Rise of Kiev beginning in the 9th century

Kievan Rus’

Close contact with Constantinople

Accepted Christian faith from Byzantines

Orthodox Christianity became a fixture of Russian life

Moscow becomes the “Third Rome”

Vikings, Byzantines, and Tatars (cont’d.)

Tatars

Mongols

In 1237, Batu Khan brought all Russian principalities except Novgorod under Tatar rule

“Golden Horde”

Decline of Tatar power in the 15th century

The Empire of the Russians

The Russian Empire

15th century to the 20th century

Muscovy

Expansion under the Tsars

Ivan the Great (reigned 1462-1505)

Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584)

Peter the Great (1682-1725)

Catherine the Great (1762-1796)

The Empire of the Russians (contd.)

Eastward expansion of Russian Empire

Cossack expeditions to the Pacific in 1639

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Russian tsars annexed the Amur region, the Caucasus, and Turkestan

Soviet policy of Russificiation

Effort to implant Russian culture in non-Russian regions and to make non-Russians more like Russians

Policy was generally a failure

Russia & the Soviet Union: Tempered by Revolution & War

Triumphs over powerful invaders

Keys to success

Environmental rigors that invaders faced

Overwhelming distances

Defenders’ love of their homeland

Willing to lose great numbers of soldiers in combat

“Scorched Earth” strategy to protect the motherland

Revolution and War

Russian Revolution of 1917

Protest against sacrifice of Russian forces during WWI

Overthrew Nicholas II, last of the Romanov tsars

Bolshevik Revolution

Led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924)

Bolshevik faction of Communist Party seized control

Establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922

Revolution and War (cont’d.)

World War II

USSR allied with France and Britain vs. Germany

Relocation of Soviet industries eastward

20 million Soviet lives lost; considerable damage

Economic Geography - The Communist Economic System

Marxism

Application of economic and social ideas of German philosopher Karl Marx

Command economy

Five-year economic plans under Stalin

Gosplan (Committee for State Planning)

Agriculture and industry

Virgin and idle lands (increase production of grain)

Hero projects (construction of dams, railways, plants, etc.)

Economic Roots of the Second Russian Revolution

Reform policies of Gorbachev

Glasnost – openness

Perestroika – restructuring

Second Russian Revolution

Demands for new freedoms and greater autonomy

Rise of Boris Yeltsin, champion of reformers’ cause

Soviet Union was voted out of existence and replaced by 15 independent countries

Russia’s Road to Misdevelopment

“Misdeveloped Country”

Yeltsin’s “Economic Shock Therapy”

Rapid transition from command economy to capitalism

Widening gap between rich and poor

Russia’s GDP plummeted, shrinking by half in the 1990s

Agricultural and industrial production fell dramatically

Largest fall in production for any industrialized country in peacetime

Russia’s Road to Misdevelopment (cont’d.)

Underground economy: Russia’s new economic geography

Russia became a kleptocracy, with rampant corruption

Organized crime became pervasive

Widespread bartering resulted from declining value of the ruble

Putinomics

Export Russia’s natural resources to flood Russia with wealth

Profits rolled into manufacturing and high-tech industries

Energy 2/3 of the value of Russia’s exports

23% of the world’s proven natural gas reserves

Second largest coal reserves

Problems

Sustain production of few natural resources; need diversification

Neglected knowledge economy; brain drains

Geopolitical Issues

Three concentric spheres of geopolitical concern

Within the Russian Federation (unity of Russia itself)

Russia’s relationships with its Near Abroad

Russia’s relationships with the rest of the world

Geopolitics Within the Russian Federation

Complex political categories

26 autonomies

Regional demands threaten unity

Geopolitical significance has to do with resources

Oil and gas

Coal deposits

Diamonds

Autonomies of Russia

Figure 5.22 The autonomies of Russia, and the boundaries of the federal districts created in 2000.

Geopolitics in the Near Abroad

Collective Security Treaty Organization

To replace Warsaw Pact

Free trade agreements

Partnership for Peace

Increase stability; diminish threats to peace; build strengthened security relationships

Budapest Memorandum

Russia and U.S. agreed to respect Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty

Russia’s Moves on Ukraine: Context and Pretext

Ukraine is ethnically divided

West-leaning population of ethnic Ukrainians in the west

Russia-leaning population ethnic Russians in the east

Renationalization of energy resources

Ukraine depends on Russia for 2/3 energy

Orange Revolution

President Yushchenko cut natural gas supplies to Ukraine

Breakout!

Ukraine on shatter belt

Fractured east-west relations

Did not join the EU

Creation of states:

Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR)

Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)

Minsk Protocol September 2014

Ukraine 2015

Figure 5.28 Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, and anti- Ukrainian separatists have proclaimed their own independent states along Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia.

The Frozen Hot Spots of Russia’s Near Abroad

Frozen conflict

Any prolonged ethno-political conflict that falls short of all-out war

Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations

Moldova

Georgia

Nagorno-Karabakh

The Far Abroad

International relations

Peaceful succession to the Cold War

Russia became a member of the Group of Eight (G-8) in 1997

Energy issues: oil/natural gas

Weapons proliferation issues

Russia’s assistance to nuclear/would-be nuclear weapons powers

Reduction of nuclear arsenals

Threat of “loose nukes”

Central Asia: Geopolitics Astride the Silk Road

Modern rivalries between historical enemies Turkey and Russia

Pan-Turkism – uniting Turkish peoples

Threat of civil wars

Islamic movements

Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Central-Asian confederacy

Regional Issues and Landscapes

Peoples and resources of the core land

Slavic

Resources distributed unevenly

The Fertile Triangle

AKA “Agricultural Triangle” and “Slavic Core”

Functional hub of the region

Contains 75% of region’s people and an even larger share of its cities

Notes on Ukraine

Second most-prominent country in the world, after Russia

Ukraine’s capital of Kiev, on the Dnieper River

High economic cost of independence

Heavy industrial production

Increasing mortality; falling birth rates

Chernobyl, the Type-Site of Nuclear Disaster

1986 nuclear power station explosion

North of Kiev, Ukraine

Rendered parts of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia incapable of safe agricultural production

There is still an 18-mile exclusion zone

Aftermath: 100,000 to 200,000 people severely affected

Ukraine decommissioning all of its Chernobyl-type nuclear plants

Farming the Fertile Triangle

Most of the Fertile Triangle is within Russia

Russia still faces difficulties in transforming state-run into free-market farming

Russia has been slow to privatize farming

Russia remains a net food importer

Global-scale production of wheat, barley, oats, rye, potatoes, sugar beets, flax, sunflower seeds, cotton, milk, butter, and mutton

Russia’s Eastern and Northern Lands

Lake Baikal

Deepest body of freshwater in the world

More than 1 mile deep in places

Contains one-fifth of the world’s unfrozen freshwater

Oldest lake in the world at 30 million years of age

Contains 1,800 endemic plant and animal species

Russia’s Eastern and Northern Lands (cont’d.)

Russia’s Far East

Russia’s mountainous Pacific edge

Mostly thinly populated wilderness

Economy driven by ports, fisheries, and forest industries

Most people live along two transportation arteries

The Trans-Siberian Railroad

The lower Amur River

Russia’s Far East

Island of Sakhalin

Geopolitics involving Russia and Japan over its control

Important for its off-shore petroleum and natural gas

Contains about 1 percent of global oil reserves

Russia’s Eastern and Northern Lands (cont’d.)

The Wild North

Subregion lying north and east of the Fertile Triangle, and west of the Pacific coast

Taiga (coniferous forest) and tundra

Northern sea route

Waterway developed by the Soviets to provide a connection with the Pacific via the Arctic Ocean

Ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk

Navigation possible for about 4 months per year with the help of icebreakers

The Caucasus

Caucasian isthmus – important north-south passageway

Dozens of ethnic groups have migrated into this region

Mostly small ethnic populations confined to mountain areas

Different nationalities have maintained their ethnic characteristics and cultural traditions (e.g., language, religion, etc.)

The Caucasus (cont’d.)

Figure 5.40 The Caucasus, rich in cultures.

The Armenian Genocide

History of animosity between Armenians and Azeri Turks

Armenian genocide resulted in deaths of around 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1918

Twice as many Armenians live outside Armenia than live in it

Armenian-Azeri dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh enclave

Turkey and Armenia established diplomatic relations in 2009

Central Asia

Aral Sea

With exception of the Irtysh, all other streams drain into enclosed lakes and seas, or gradually lose water and disappear

Historically, peoples in this region were pastoral nomads

Most people today live in heavily irrigated valleys

Irrigation is essential for farming

Causing water shortages in some areas