HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

MOSCOW-UKRAINE ECONOMIC RELATIONS 487the littoral of the Black and Azov seas (Shabad, 1977). But since suchdevelopments are heavily contingent on politics, they cannot bepredicted with any degree of accuracy.ConclusionAbout 3 percent of the national income produced in the Ukraine wastransferred to other regions of the tsarist empire during the halfcenturypreceding the Revolution. This loss increased to between10 and 20 percent after the Revolution. More generally, the regionalpolicy that existed under capitalism before 1917 continued largelyunchanged under the Soviet system. Under both regimes, it wasguided by the geopolitical demands of the state as perceived andacted upon by the state leadership. This finding seems to confirm theprediction by Max Weber (1968, pp. 919-20), made before theemergence of the first socialist state, as well as the conclusion reachedrecently by Weisskopf (1974, p. 70) on theoretical grounds, that thereshould be no difference in defense economics between a capitalistand a socialist state. Furthermore, the smaller drain on the Ukraine'seconomy before 1917 relative to that after the Revolution suggeststhat a region can better defend its own economic interests versusthose of the central authorities under a capitalist than under asocialist system of government. Obviously, these generalizations arevalid only if one assumes that the Soviet system constitutes a type ofsocialism.At various times during the last one hundred years, Moscow'sleadership fostered the development of the Ukrainian economy,particularly its heavy industry. Some Ukrainian regions, mostly thosewith conditions favorable for heavy industry, benefited from thispolicy, and are now among the most advanced in the USSR. Thereare probably other economic benefits (non-economic advantages ordisadvantages are outside the scope of this discussion) which theUkraine has enjoyed as a result of being a part of Russia/USSR.Those which come readily to mind are economies of scale, opportunityfor migration to Asiatic territories, and the relative certainty ofthe supply of some key products (oil, timber). Yet it seems safe toassume that, disregarding all other possible economic disadvantages,including the basic one of inability to make its own economic decisions,the Ukraine has been, on the whole, more harmed by thecontinuous outflow of national income than helped by possible bene-