Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T03:37:48.326Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Geography and Transition: Reconceptualizing Systemic Change in the Former Soviet Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Nicholas J. Lynn
Nicholas J. Lynn*
Affiliation:
The Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Systemic transition in the former USSR is an inherently spatial process. In the most general sense, marketization, privatization, and internationalization involve a reordering of the political space and the restructuring of the economic and social landscapes of the former Soviet Union (FSU). In a number of more specific ways, geography also provides a structure within which individuals and institutions operate, and it provides a series of opportunities and constraints. Geographers, then, should be able to make an important contribution to debates concerning systemic change in the FSU.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 58 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Ten Years after 1989: What Have We Learned? , Winter 1999 , pp. 824 - 840
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Gilbert, Anne, “The New Regional Geography in English and French-Speaking Countries,” Progress in Human Geography 12, no. 2 (June 1988): 208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. The emphasis on “new” is to distinguish it from “traditional” regional geography, which is often caricatured as being isolationist, descriptive, conservative, and theoretically bankrupt. For a more accurate description of the “old,” see Patterson, John, “Writing Regional Geography,” Progress in Human Geography 6, no. 1 (March 1974): 1–26 Google Scholar. On the “new” see Cooke, Paul, “The Contested Terrain of Locality Studies,” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 80, no. 1 (1989): 14–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holmen, Hans, “What's New and What's Regional in the ‘New Regional Geography'?” Geografiska Annaler 77, no. 1 (1995): 47–64 Google Scholar; Jonas, Andrew, “A New Regional Geography of Localities?” Area 20, no. 2 (1988): 101–10Google Scholar; Massey, Doreen, “Questions of Locality,” Geography 78, no. 2 (April 1993): 142–49Google Scholar; Murphy, Alex B., “Regions as Social Constructs: The Gap Between Theory and Practice,” Progress in Human Geography 15, no. 1 (March 1991): 22–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paasi, Anssi, “The Institutionalization of Regions: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Emergence of Regions and the Constitution of Regional Identity,” Fennia, no. 1 (1986): 105–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pred, Allan, Place, Practice and Structure: Social and Spatial Transformation in Southern Sweden 1750–1850 (Totowa, N.J., 1986)Google Scholar; Pudup, Marie, “Arguments within Regional Geography,” Progress in Human Geography 12, no. 3 (September 1988): 369–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrew Sayer, “The ‘New’ Regional Geography and Problems of Narrative, “Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 7, no. 3 (1989): 253–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thrift, Nigel J., “For a New Regional Geography 1,” Progress in Human Geography 14, no. 2 (June 1990): 272–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “For a New Regional Geography 2,” Progress in Human Geography 15, no. 4 (December 1991): 456–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “For a New Regional Geography 3,” Progress in Human Geography 17, no. 1 (March 1993): 92–100 Google Scholar. Michael Bradshaw also made an excellent case for widening the scope of new regional geography so that it paid attention to events in the east, specifically the FSU, as well as the developed west, see Bradshaw, Michael J., “New Regional Geography, Foreign Area Studies and Perestroika,” Area 22, no. 4 (1990): 315–22Google Scholar.

3. Pudup, “Arguments within Regional Geography,” 369.

4. Allan Pred uses the term becoming in order to draw attention to the contingency of regional configurations. See Pred, Place, Practice and Structure.

5. Gilbert, “ New Regional Geography,” 217.

6. Good examples of dynamic readings of regional history include: Massey, Doreen, Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Harvey, David, Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization (Baltimore, 1985)Google Scholar; Paasi, “Institutionalization of Regions”; and Pred, Place, Practice and Structure. For more focused forms of regional synthesis, see Thrift, Nigel J., “On the Determination of Social Action in Space and Time,” Environment and. Planning D: Society and Space 1, no. 1 (1983): 23–57 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Sayer, “'New’ Regional Geography and Problems of Narrative.” Particularly characteristic of the political economy approach is the work of the so-called Locality Studies of the 1980s in the United Kingdom. See Cooke, Paul, ed., Localities (London, 1989)Google ScholarPubMed.

8. See Fleron, Frederic J., Jr., and Hoffmann, Erik P., eds., Post-Communist Studies and Political Science: Methodology and Empirical Theory in Sovietology (Boulder, Colo., 1993)Google Scholar.

9. Fleron and Hoffmann, eds., Post-Communist Studies and Political Science; cf. Unger, Aryeh, “On the Meaning of Sovietology,” Communist and Postcommunist Studies 31, no. 1 (March 1998): 17–27 Google Scholar; Hanson, Stephen E., “Social Theory and the Post-Soviet Crisis: Sovietology and the Problem of Regime Identity,” Communist and Postcommunist Studies 28, no. 1 (March 1995): 119–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Solomon, Susan G., ed., Beyond Sovietology: Essays in Politics and History (London, 1993)Google Scholar; Marwick, Roger, “A Discipline in Transition? From Sovietology to Transitology,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 12, no. 3 (1996): 255–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Schmitter, Philippe C. with Karl, Terry Lynn, “The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go?” Slavic Review 53, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 173–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Ibid.; see also Schmitter, Philippe C., “Transitology: The Science or the Art of Democratization?” in Tulchin, Joseph S. and Romero, Bernice, eds., The Consolidation of Democracy in Latin America (Boulder, Colo., 1995), 11–44 Google Scholar.

12. Karl, Terry Lynn and Schmitter, Philippe C., “Modes of Transition in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe,” International Social Science Journal, no. 43 (May 1991): 269–84Google Scholar.

13. Cf. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Stephens, Evelyne Huber, and Stephens, John D., Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago, 1992)Google Scholar; Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar. See also Held, David, Models of Democracy (Cambridge, Eng., 1996)Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert, A Preface to Economic Democracy, 2d ed. (Stanford, 1985)Google Scholar; Potter, David et al., Democratization (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)Google Scholar.

14. Although a number of studies of the first kind have been produced by regional specialists—see, for example, Dawisha, Karen and Parrott, Bruce, eds., Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar—transitologists have focused on the second type of study—see, for example, O'Donnell, Guillermo, Schmitter, Philippe C., and Whitehead, Laurence, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore, 1986)Google Scholar—and there have been relatively few attempts at the latter, although one of the exceptions is the valuable contribution of Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, 1996)Google Scholar.

15. This issue is also commonly recognized by transitologists themselves; see Schmitter, “Transitology.”

16. These terms come from Potter et al., Democratization. See also Lijphart, Arend, “Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method,” American Political Science Review 65, no. 3 (September 1971): 682–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Cf. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Stephens, Evelyne Huber, and Stephens, John D., Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago, 1992)Google Scholar; Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar. See also Held, David, Models of Democracy (Cambridge, Eng., 1996)Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert, A Preface to Economic Democracy, 2d ed. (Stanford, 1985)Google Scholar; Potter, David et al., Democratization (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)Google Scholar.

17. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, 1991).

18. On Huntington, see Gearóid Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics (London, 1996), 240–49.

19. See the debate between Schmitter and Karl, “Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists,” and Terry Lynn Karl and Philippe C. Schmitter, “From an Iron Curtain to a Paper Curtain: Grounding Transitologists or Students of Postcommunism?“ Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 965–78; Valerie Bunce, “Should Transitologists Be Grounded?” Slavic Reviexo 54, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 111–27; and Valerie Bunce, “Paper Curtains and Paper Tigers,” Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 979–87.

20. Leslie Holmes, Post–Communism: An Introduction (Durham, N.C., 1997), 19 (emphasis in the original).

21. See Holmes, Leslie, The End of Communist Power: Anti-Corruption Campaigns and Legitimation Crisis (New York, 1993)Google Scholar.

22. See Gellner, Ernest, “Nationalism in the Vacuum,” in Motyl, Alexander J., ed., Thinking Theoretically about Soviet Nationalities: History and Comparison in the Study of the USSR (New York, 1992), 243–45Google Scholar.

23. McAuley, Mary, Russia's Politics of Uncertainly (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)Google Scholar; cf. Alexander, James, “Uncertain Conditions in the Russian Transition: The Popular Drive towards Stability in a ‘Stateless’ Environment, “Europe-Asia Studies 50, no. 3 (1998): 415–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, Archie, “The Russian Transition in Comparative and Russian Perspective,” Social Research 63, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 403–15Google Scholar.

24. See Morales, Juan Antonio and McMahon, Gary, Economic Policy and the Transition to Democracy: The Latin American Experience (New York, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. A fact recognized by both sides of the debate between Schmitter and Karl and Bunce.

26. Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place,” Marxism Today, June 1991, 26.

27. See Thrift, “For a New Regional Geography 1.”

28. Thrift, Nigel, “Taking Aim at the Heart of the Region,” in Gregory, Derek, Martin, Ron, and Smith, Graham, eds., Human Geography: Society, Space and Social Science (Minneapolis, 1994), 226 Google Scholar.

29. For more detail, see Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation; Dawisha and Parrott, eds., Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova; Ekiert, Grzegorz, “Democratization Processes in East Central Europe: A Theoretical Reconsideration,” British Journal of Political Science 21, no. 3 (July 1991): 285–313 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and also Rothschild, Joseph, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II, 2d ed. (New York, 1993)Google Scholar.

30. See McAuley, Russia's Politics of Uncertainty.

31. Smith, Graham, “Federation, Defederation and Refederation: From the Soviet Union to Russian Statehood,” in Smith, Graham, ed., Federalism: The Multiethnic Challenge (London, 1995), 157–79Google Scholar. See also Lynn, Nicholas J., “The Republics of the Russian Federation,” in Bradshaw, Michael J., ed., Geography and Transilion in the Post-Soviet Republics (Chichester, Eng., 1997), 59–72 Google Scholar.

32. See Mitchneck, Beth, “An Assessment of the Growing Local Economic Development Function of Local Authorities in Russia,” Economic Geography 71, no. 2 (April 1995): 150–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Mitchneck, “The Emergence of Local Government in Russia,” in Bradshaw, ed., Geography and Transition in the Post-Soviet Republics, 89–108; and also Friedgut, Theodore H. and Hahn, Jeffrey W., Local Power and Post-Soviet Politics (Armonk, N.Y., 1994)Google Scholar.

33. See Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy; and also Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Rueschemeyer, Marilyn, and Wittrock, Björn, eds., Participation and Democracy East and West: Comparisons and Interpretations (Armonk, N.Y., 1998)Google Scholar.

34. See Dahl, A Preface to Economic Democracy; and also Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.c

35. For example, see Lipton, David and Sachs, Jeffrey D., Creating a Market Economy in Eastern Europe: The Case for Poland (Washington, D.C., 1990)Google Scholar, and Lipton, and Sachs, , Prospects for Russia's Economic Reforms (Washington, D.C., 1992)Google Scholar; Åslund, Anders, Post-Communist Economic Revolutions: How Big a Bang? (Washington, D.C., 1992)Google Scholar.

36. For example, see Goldman, Marshall I., Lost Opportunity: Why Economic Reforms in Russia Have Not Worked (New York, 1994)Google Scholar.

37. See Elliott, John E., “Contending Perspectives on Postcommunist Transition: Strategies for Economic Transformation,” International Journal of Social Economics 22, no. 9–11 (1995): 28–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and also Lavigne, Marie, “Russia and Eastern Europe: Is Transition Over?” Journal of Comparative Economics 23, no. 1 (August 1996): 92–102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. It is important not to underplay the significant role of domestic policy formation, since it is clear that Russian reformers, for example, also developed neoliberal models themselves. However, Peter Koenig in “Is Aid to Russia Academic,” The Independent on Sunday, 5 October 1997, describes how 4.2 billion pounds has been spent on western consultants— often “cash starved” academics—for technical assistance.

39. See Pickles, John and Smith, Adrian, Theorising Transition: The Political Economy of Post-Communist Transformations (London, 1998)Google Scholar.

40. See Elliott, “Contending Perspectives on Postcommunist Transition.”

41. See Stark, David, “The Great Transformation? Social Change in Eastern Europe,” Contemporary Sociology 21, no. 3 (1992): 299–305 Google Scholar; cf. Aslund, Anders, How Russia Became a Market Economy (Washington, D.C., 1995)Google Scholar.

42. Holmes, Post-Communism. See also McAuley, Russia's Politics of Uncertainty; and Sakwa, Richard, Russian Politics and Society (London, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. Åslund, Post-Communist Economic Revolutions; Åslund, Anders and Layard, Richard, Changing the Economic System in Russia (New York, 1993)Google Scholar.

44. See Lipton and Sachs, Creating a Market Economy in Eastern Europe.

45. See Elliott, “Contending Perspectives on Post-Communist Transition,” and Elliott, , “The Sequencing of Post-Communist Transition,” International Journal of Social Economics 22, no. 9 (1995): 55–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. See Burawoy, Michael, “The End of Sovietology and the Renaissance of Modernization Theory,” Contemporary Sociology 21, no. 6 (1992): 774–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. See Crawford, Beverly and Lijphart, Arend, “Explaining Political and Economic Change in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Old Legacies, New Institutions, Hegemonic Norms, and International Pressures,” Comparative Political Studies 28, no. 2 (July 1995): 171–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. Åslund, How Russia Became a Market Economy.

49. See Sutherland, Douglas and Hanson, Philip, “Structural Change in the Economies of Russia's Regions,” Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 3 (1996): 367–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alison Stenning, “Economic Restructuring and Local Change in the Russian Federation,” in Bradshaw, ed., Geography and Transition in the Post-Soviet Republics, 145–62.

50. Burawoy, Michael, “The State and Economic Involution: Russia through a China Lens,” World Development 24, no. 6 (June 1996): 1110 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51. For example, see Goldman, Lost Opportunity.

52. Chomsky, Noam, World Orders, Old and New (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; after Chossudovsky, Michel, “Russia under IMF Rule,” Economic and Political Weekly 28, no. 15 (1993): 623–26Google Scholar.

53. For example, see Mroz, Thomas A. and Popkin, Barry M., “Poverty and the Economic Transition in the Russian Federation,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 44, no. 1 (October 1995): 1–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54. Bashkirova, Elena and Melville, Andrei, “Russian Public Opinion between Elections,” International Social Science Journal, no. 47 (December 1995): 553–65Google Scholar.

55. Kagarlitsky, Boris, The Disintegration of the Monolith (London, 1992), ix Google Scholar.

56. For political-economy perspectives, for example, see Smith, Adrian and Swain, Adam, “Critical Political-Economy Approaches to Regional Restructuring in East-Central Europe” (paper presented at the Geographies of Transformation seminar, Birmingham, England, 1995)Google Scholar. For institutionalist theories, see Clague, Christopher and Rausser, Gordon C., eds., The Emergence of Market Economies in Eastern Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)Google Scholar; Paul Aligica, “The Institutionalises Take on Transition,” Transition (March 1997): 46–49.

57. Burawoy, Michael, “The Soviet Descent into Capitalism,” American Journal of Sociology 102, no. 5 (March 1997): 1430–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burawoy, Michael and Krotov, Pavel, “The Soviet Transition from Socialism to Capitalism: Worker Control and Economic Bargaining in the Wood Industry,” American Sociological Review 57 (February 1992): 16–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burawoy, and Krotov, , “The Economic Base of Russia's Political Crisis,” New Left Review, no. 198 (March 1993): 49–70 Google Scholar.

58. Burawoy calls involution the opposite of accumulation, the process by which an economy feeds upon itself—a profound economic degeneration. See Burawoy, “State and Economic Involution.”

59. Burawoy, “The Soviet Descent into Capitalism,” 1442.

60. See Burawoy, “State and Economic Involution”; Burawoy, Michael and Krotov, Pavel, “Russian Miners Bow to the Angel of History,” Antipode 27, no. 2 (1995): 115–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61. See also Stark, “Great Transformation?”; Grabher, Gemot and Stark, David, “Organizing Diversity: Evolutionary Theory, Network Analysis and Post-Socialism,” Regional Studies 31, no. 5 (1997): 533–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grabher, Gemot and Stark, David, eds., Restructuring Networks in Post-Socialism: Legacies, Linkages and Localities (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar; Seleny, Anna, “The Long Transformation and the Point of No Return: The Socio-Political Impact of Hungarian Reforms,” in Walder, Andrew G., ed., The Political Consequences of Departures from Central Planning in Hungary and China(Stanford, 1994)Google Scholar.

62. For a range of very different examples, see Adrian Smith and Adam Swain, “Critical Political-Economy Approaches to Regional Restructuring in East-Central Europe”; Amin, Ash and Thrift, Nigel, eds., Globalization, Institutions and Regional Development in Europe (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar; Marsden, Terry, Munton, Richard, and Ward, Neil, “Agricultural Geography and the Political-Economy Approach: A Review,” Economic Geography 72, no. 3 (October 1996): 361–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitchell, Katharyne, “Flexible Circulation in the Pacific Rim: Capitalisms in Cultural Context,” Economic Geography 71, no. 3 (October 1995): 364–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Adrian, “From Convergence to Fragmentation: Uneven Regional Development, Industrial Restructuring and the ‘Transition to Capitalism’ in Slovakia,” Environment and Planning A 28, no. 3 (1996): 135–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waldinger, Roger, “The ‘Other Side’ of Embeddedness: A Case-Study of the Interplay of Economy and Ethnicity,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 18 (July 1995): 555–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63. After Zukin, Sharon and DiMaggio, Paul, “Introduction,” in Zukin, Sharon and DiMaggio, Paul, eds., Structures of Capital: The Social Organization of the Economy (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), 1–36 Google Scholar.

64. McDowell, Linda, “A Tale of Two Cities? Embedded Organizations and Embodied Workers in the City of London,” in Lee, Roger and Wills, Jane, eds., Geographies of Economies (London, 1997), 120 Google Scholar; see also McDowell, Linda, Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City (Oxford, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65. See Michael J. Bradshaw, “Introduction: Transition and Geographical Change,” in Bradshaw, ed., Geography and Transition in the Post-Soviet Republics, 1–8.

66. Stenning, “Economic Restructuring and Local Change in the Russian Federation.” See also Clarke, Simon, What About the Workers? Workers and the Transition to Capitalism in Russia (London, 1993)Google Scholar.

67. Smith, “From Convergence to Fragmentation”; Smith, Adrian, “Uneven Development and the Restructuring of the Armaments Industry in Slovakia,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 19, no. 4 (1994): 404–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smith, Adrian, Reconstnicting the Regional Economy: Industrial Transformation and Regional Development in Slovakia (Cheltenham, 1998)Google Scholar.

68. On the social and cultural construction of economic landscapes, for example, see Massey, Doreen, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge, Eng., 1994)Google Scholar. On the reordering of political space, see Taylor, Peter et al., “On the Nation-State, the Global and Social Science,” Environment and Planning A 28, no. 11 (1996): 1917–92Google Scholar.