Grigory Ioffe

From Spatial Continuity to Fragmentation: The Case of Russian Farming

Abstract The continuous zone of settlement long considered a defining feature of Europe, is undergoing spatial framentation along its eastern periphery. Massive areas of rural depopulation have emerged in many regions of European Russia, including its heartland. As a result of farmland abandonment, no fewer than 20 million hectares of arable land are already deserted in European Russia, and more will be left behind in the foreseeable future. The ongoing spatial fragmentation results in two diverging structures, identified on the basis of a unique district-structured database: an emerging archipelago of commercial farming, and the so-called black holes, the likely loci of soon-to-be-abandoned land. While land abandonment is by no means a uniquely Russian phenomenon, one of its preconditions in Russia is that farmland was extended beyond environmentally reasonable limits. The rural depopulation naturally leads to the contraction of farmland. Because land that is likely to be retained under cultivation is a better match to peoples actual ability to cultivate it, fewer resources are going to be wasted, and the overall efficiency of Russias agriculture is likely to rise as a result.

Understanding Belarus: Belarussian identity

In the first of this three-part series of articles the linguistic situation in Belarus was analysed. The research questions that inform this second article are: 1) What kind of ethnic identity evolved in Belarus that makes most Belarusians insensitive to ‘their own’ national symbols and attached to those embodying their kinship with neighbouring countries? 2) What is the status of the Belarusian national movement when viewed through the prism of the most reputable theories of ethnic nationalism? My attempt to respond to these questions stems from my field observations and familiarity with scholarly studies and other material. Anthony David Smiths classic volume on ethnic origins of nations and Miroslav Hrochs perceptive book on national movements in Europes ‘small nations’ are of special importance. A quintessential piece on Belarusian identity is Yanka Kupalas play ‘Tuteishiya’; written in 1922 and published in 1924, it was banned by the Soviet authorities primarily because Russian expansionism in regard to Belarus was painted by Kupala as a mirror image of Polish expansionism. The play is every bit as topical today as in the 1920s.

Land Abandonment in Russia

Field observations in two regions of European Russia (Kostroma and Samara oblasts) in summer 2010, reinforced by satellite imagery, provide a basis for a team of U.S. and Russian geographers to investigate ongoing changes in agricultural land use since the early 1990s. The authors highlight the contrasting situations in Kostroma (northern European Russia), where agriculture is limited and in retreat beyond relatively small scale operations in suburbia, and Samara (southern European Russia), where agricultural activity appears to be sustainable, albeit on a somewhat less extensive spatial scale than in the past. The comparison suggests that the change from central planning to unregulated market has not been popular, and that crop farming in both regions has better prospects than animal husbandry. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O130, P320, Q150, R140. 1 table, 17 figures, 21 references.

Understanding Belarus: questions of language

BELARUS IS LOCATED in the geographical centre of Europe, it suffered the highest death toll in World War II relative to its pre-war population, and it was one of the co-founders of the United Nations. Yet Belarus enjoys perhaps the lowest name recognition of all Europe’s countries. Belarus is also the home and/or ancestral land of many eminent personalities such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Erwin Berlin, Marc Chagall, Fedor Dostoevsky, Felix Dzierzynski, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Simon Kuznets, Adam Mickiewicz, Stanislaw Moniuszko, David Sarnow, Igor Stravinsky, Lev Vygotsky and four prime ministers of the state of Israel (Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Itzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres). Yet none of these people ever identified themselves as a Belarusian, and none of them publicly expressed an opinion about the Belarusian national cause. Modern Belarus baffles Western observers as no other post-Soviet state. The republic’s economy is arguably in poor shape: barter reigns supreme in domestic transactions, and international investment is scarce. Yet the state has a strong manufacturing base, which seems to have largely recovered in the late 1990s. Belarus, which has been politically isolated in Europe, is governed by a man who comes across to many as an autocratic buffoon. However, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the country’s leader, was re-elected in a landslide in September 2001; and neither Western observers nor domestic opposition question his popularity at home. Belarus suffers from a demographic crisis exacerbated by the Chernobyl disaster, which affected one-quarter of the entire land area. Yet Belarus is the only post-Soviet nation that receives more migrants from every other post-Soviet country than it loses. Though it is located in the middle of Europe and enjoys advantageous transport and cultural–historical links with both the East and the West, it has the most one-sided orientation of all of Europe’s nations. Ethnic Belarusians have a solid majority, and there is no organised Russian community at odds with them. However, most Belarusians have adopted Russian as their primary language and remain unworried about the loss of identity likely to follow. Moreover, the rank and file seem to support enthusiastically some sort of supranational commonwealth with Russia.

Trans-border Exchange between Russia and China: The Case of Blagoveshchensk and Heihe

Two Russian-trained geographers investigate the multiple and largely informal and illicit forms of exchange between two provincial cities of roughly similar size located on opposite banks of the Amur River, namely Blagoveshchensk, in Russias Far East, and Heihe, in neighboring northeast China. The study is based on interviews and field observations from 2002 to 2009 in Blagoveshchensk, as well as official statistics from the relevant Russian and Chinese provincial governments. Particular attention is focused on the activities and treatment of Chinese guest workers comprising a material component of the labor force in Amur Oblast (e.g., in construction and agriculture), unregistered Chinese entrepreneurs in retailing and catering, and trans-border logging operations of Chinese timber/wood products companies. Also covered are the activities of visiting Russian nationals in Heihe and the extralegal activities of Russian entrepreneurs and bureaucrats. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F20, J61, O17, O18. 5 figures, 1 table, 50 references.

The Downsizing of Russian Agriculture 1

The hand of Adam Smith, which has already clutched the Russian peasant by his throat, will soon squeeze the life out of him (unnamed member of Russia’s Council of the Federation). 2 THIS ARTICLE ARGUES THAT the change Russian agriculture has experienced since 1991 is closer to Sturm und Drang wild market enforcement or suspension of rules than to reform. The Russian state shed its former regulative and supportive role at a time when its financial resources dried up, and it did so abruptly. Some law-making activities were initiated but they made little difference. Since 1999 the Russian state’s fiscal condition has been improving, so the state is staging a comeback to the agrarian scene. But its interventions, though justifiable and similar to other national governments’ impact on agriculture, are essentially anti-market. In the meantime, Russian commercial agriculture has been downscaled in terms of inputs and output alike. Livestock numbers and farmland have been particularly hard hit, and the ongoing agricultural recovery is more structurally and spatially selective than ever before. In the Non-Chernozem Zone of European Russia, for example, a spatially contiguous belt of agricultural colonisation has given way to an archipelago-like pattern. This article examines some acquired (socio-demographic) and inborn (environmental) constraints Russian farming faces and questions whether retaining of large swaths of farmland in Russia is compatible with a liberal economic order. The article begins with an examination of trends in three modes of farming operations. I then turn to the Russian state’s re-entering the agrarian scene — after being conspicuously absent for almost a decade — in an effort to rein in the improprieties of the wild market. Vertical integration of farms and food processors is examined, as it has spawned most if not all agricultural success stories since 1999. Human capital in rural Russia is then interpreted as a limiting factor of agricultural modernisation. Aside from the publications of students of Russian agriculture, three other sources routinely inform the author about its current condition: Russian government statistics, Russian media reports and field trips. All three sources have become more limited and fragmented, and arguably less accurate, than before 1992. After the demise of central planning regions have taken diverging tacks, and so whatever has been observed by this author and his collaborators in selected regions such as Moscow, Novgorod, the Chuvash Republic, Ryazan’ and Stavropol does not equate to a coherent picture of

Population under duress: the geodemography of post-Soviet Russia.

Preface Overview * Age Structures of the Former Soviet Republics Victoria A. Velkoff. * The Demographic Situation in Post-Soviet Russia Victor Perevedentsev. Basic Demographic Processes * Fertility and Nuptiality in Russia: Problems and Prospects Sergey Zakharov. * Russian Mortality: Past Negative Trends and Recent Improvements Anatoly Vishnevsky and Vladimir Shkolnikov. * The Geodemography of Infant Mortality in the Soviet Union, 1950-1990 Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver. Migration and Conflict * Recent Migration Trends in Russia Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya. * Chinese Demographic Expansion into Russia: Myth or Inevitability? Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya. * Potential Migration of Russian Speaking Population from Central Asia to Russia Galina Vitkovskaya. * The Causes and Demographic-Social Consequences of Inter-Ethnic and Regional Conflicts in the Post-Soviet Union Vladimir Mukomel and Emil Payin. Urban and Rural Processes * Turning Points and Trends in Russias Urbanization Olga Medvedkov and Yuri Medvedkov. * Rural Population Change and Agriculture Grigory Ioffe and Tatyana Nefedova. * Conclusion

Immigration to Russia: Inevitability and Prospective Inflows

A U.S.-based geographer joins a senior Russian demographer in an effort to explore the potential flows of immigrants to Russia (principally from the Commonwealth of Independent States and to a lesser extent from China) to stem the countrys recent population decline and compensate for looming decreases in the countrys working-age inhabitants. More specifically, they examine the demand for immigration to Russia and assess the likelihood of three possible scenarios (high, medium, and low) to meet that demand by 2026. Particular attention is paid to the likely interplay of immigration and domestic migration in terms of its effects on the future distribution of migrants among Russias federal districts. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F220, J110, J210, J610. 6 figures, 4 tables, 33 references.

Use of Landsat and MODIS data to remotely estimate Russia’s sown area

The intensity of crop management is one of the most important management decisions that affect soil carbon stocks in croplands. In this study, we use satellite data at two spatial resolutions (30 m Landsat and 500 m MODIS) and field observations to determine arable lands in a portion of the Russian grain belt. Once arable lands are established, we map cropping intensity between 2002 and 2009 to get a better understanding of the activity occurring on arable lands. Our arable land estimates compare favourably with the 2006 All-Russia Agricultural Census. We also compare three global data sets that quantify croplands against the census data. Finally, we show that our cropping intensity map compares very well to the available regional statistical data. We reveal that areas in the southern regions of Russia are successfully cropped during fewer years than more centrally located areas.

Debating Belarus: An Economy in Comparative Perspective

A U.S.-based geographer and Belarusian political scientist assess the current economic crisis in Belarus. Although the countrys financial situation is serious in the short term, they argue that analysis of basic social and economic indicators provides some evidence of underlying strength and stability, recently bolstered by a number of trade agreements concluded with Russia in late 2011. The authors argue that the most natural and meaningful basis for ascertaining the health of the countrys economy is to compare it with those of its two Slavic neighbors, Russia and Ukraine. That comparison reveals that although Belarus ranks lower on most indices of economic reform, it has outperformed them during the post-Soviet period in several important categories (GDP growth, income equality, agricultural productivity, expenditures on education and health care, life expectancy, and per capita agricultural output) and occupied an intermediate position (below Russia but above Ukraine) in others (e.g., GDP per capita, wages and pensions, and labor productivity). The papers final section discusses the nature of the relationship between Belarus and Russia (dependence vs. complementarity) and that between the Lukashenka regime and the Belarusian people.