Coal, Oil, and Iron Ore: Industrial Planning and Formation of Concepts of Urals in the Economic Thought of USSR (1920s — 1930s)

Abstract

The article examines the formation of ideas about the industrial geography of the Urals in the work of Soviet planners, economists and administrators of the 1920—1930s. The authors demonstrate that a number of early projects of economic development from the 1920s was promoting the administrative-territorial isolation, relying mostly on the industrial core of the region that emerged before the revolution, while allowing moderate cooperation with other regions. However, by the beginning of the 1930s, these projects were replaced by the concept of the Ural-Kuznetsk Combinate, which called for the integration of the Urals and Western Siberia and for a forced tempo of industrial construction. The consequence of the gigantism of such an ambitious concept was its territorial erosion, since local economists were using Ural-Kuzbass as a conceptual framework to propose and justify competing projects of forced industrial development of their respective districts. The paper shows different models of this erosion: 1) the emergence of new centers of power within Ural-Kuzbass on the basis of intensive industrial development with the subsequent formation of new administrative units (Chelyabinsk); 2) the inclusion of new territories as a result of ongoing geological discoveries followed by the emergence of novel industrial identity of these areas (Orsk); 3) withdrawal from Ural-Kuzbass in case of regions which were chosen to focus upon the industries which were marginal for the Combinate (Bashkiria). The authors make a conclusion about the key role of the concept of the Ural-Kuzbass in the development of the industrial identity of territories that were not previously considered as “Ural mining area”, and about the importance of economic factors in the formation of new ideas about the structure of the USSR which in turn influenced the administrative-territorial reforms of the country.