HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

486 I. S. KOROPECKYJThe statistics available and conceptual difficulties do not allow for aclear distinction between the share of investment allocated spatiallyaccording to purely economic criteria, on the one hand, versus politicaland military criteria, on the other. But there can be no doubt that inview of the USSR's preoccupation with defense and the expansionistcharacter of its policy, a substantially greater portion of investment hasbeen distributed according to these considerations than was the case inthe tsarist empire. Even investment projects which seem to have beenlocated for economic reasons reveal, upon closer inspection, thedecisive influence of defense and political criteria. Such huge undertakingsas the Ural-Kuznetsk Combine during the 1930s (Koropeckyj,1971, Appendix B) and the Baikal-Amur Mainline at the present time(Shabad, 1979, pp. 165, 175) are good cases in point.Specific aspects of Soviet geopolitics have been discussed extensivelyin my earlier work (Koropeckyj, 1970, pp. 267 ff.). Most of them werealready of concern to the rulers of the tsarist empire. In summary, byspatially distributing economic activity Moscow has tried to achievethe following: a shift in economic activity from the west toward theeast, territorial dispersal of industry, a build-up of regions borderingon China, establishment of economic links between the east and westof the country, exploitation of natural resources in Asiatic regions, anddevelopment of industries important for world power politics (armaments,foreign aid, space exploration) located primarily in Moscow,Leningrad, and the Baltics. The development of the Ukrainian economywas not especially attractive for any of these reasons; thus it wasnot emphasized, but kept at a tolerable level. The Ukrainian economyhas been relegated largely to being a resource base for the developmentof regions important to the achievement of the enumeratedobjectives. The geopolitical considerations have been constant forcenturies, and this explains the consistency in Moscow's policy towardthe Ukraine. This policy has remained basically unchanged, irrespectiveof the ideology of the ruling regime in the Kremlin; the logic ofgeopolitics has been equally convincing to a tsar as to a generalsecretary of the CPSU.In the future, the importance of the Ukrainian economy to theUSSR leaders may increase. Its development will then be emphasizedagain, as was the case in the second half of the nineteenth century andduring the late 1920s and early 1930s under Stalin. This could resultfrom, for example, an increase in trade between the USSR and theWest which requires expansion of productive and service facilities on