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MOSCOW-UKRAINE ECONOMIC RELATIONS 483Caucasian and Central Asian republics (various issues of Narkhoz).With respect to population welfare, in 1965 the RSFSR was fourth inpersonal income, third in retail sales and services, fifth in budgetexpenditures on health, education, and culture, and sixth in urbanhousing space, all on a per capita basis (Schroeder, 1973, p. 188,Table 7.10). This relatively high standing of the RSFSR incorporatesthe preeminence in standard of living of such showcase cities asMoscow and Leningrad. As a result, the relative poverty in someethnic Russian regions (Central Black Soil, Volga, North Caucasus) isobscured in the data for the RSFSR as a whole (e.g., Schroeder, 1973,pp. 170, 172; Mil'ner and Gilinskaia, 1975, pp. 58, 59). These regionssupplied many migrants to the developing republics, who left primarilyfor economic reasons, for example, during the 1960s (Ball and Demko,1978, pp. 101, 106).The allocation of a relatively high share of investment to the RSFSR(Table 2, p. 492) should not be regarded as a favoring of ethnicRussians by the central planners. The European RSFSR, with apopulation accounting for 43.3 percent of the USSR's total in 1970,received a proportional share, 44.0 percent, of the total investment inthe USSR during the period between 1960 and 1975. The remainingshare of the RSFSR's investment, equal to about one quarter of itstotal or 15.9 percent of the USSR's investment, was spent on thedevelopment of this republic's Asiatic regions (West and East Siberiaand Far East), which had about one-fifth of the Russian republic's or10.6 percent of the USSR's population (various issues of Narkhoz).But improvement in the standard of living in the eastern regions wasmost likely not the main objective for this favorable investment policy.As will be argued below, the policy seems to have been motivated bydefense and political considerations.At present, almost every fifth person residing in the Ukraine is anethnic Russian. Therefore, by taking an above average share of theincome produced in the Ukraine for its own needs Moscow discriminatesagainst 10 million ethnic Russians. On the other hand, "Thedrain of funds from the Ukraine does not go exclusively to theexpansion of Soviet military power. It also goes to the build-up thathas taken place in Central Asia. In that region it is not only Russian(and Ukrainian) immigrants who benefited from new medical andeducation services, but the native peasantry as well" (Wiles, 1977,p. 311). In other words, if the nationality problem were an importantfactor in national income transfers, it would hardly make sense for the