28

p Soviet Russia, in the words of the French writer Anatole France, is a land where even the impossible comes true. The world knows about the feats of labour and arms of the Soviet people. Overcoming tremendous difficulties and beating off foreign invaders, the Soviet people in a short historical period transformed their land from an economically backward country into an advanced and mighty socialist power and built a developed socialist society. The USSR, whose population comprises less than seven per cent of the world population, yields almost 20 per cent of the world industrial output, and has more than 50 per cent of 29 the industrial potential of the world socialist system of economy.

p The establishment of a highly developed socialist economy was the result of the Soviet people’s efforts to fulfil the fiveyear economic development plans. The Eighth Five-Year Plan (1966-1970) played an important role in strengthening the Soviet Union’s economic potential. The current, Ninth Five-Year Plan (1971-1975) will take the Soviet society further along the road to communism and augment the might of the USSR and the world socialist community as a whole to a still greater extent.

p Consistently strengthening its international positions, the Soviet Union has diplomatic relations with more than a hundred states on all continents, and is a member of almost 400 regional, specialised and other international organisations working in the interests of world co-operation of nations.

p The Soviet Union has equal and mutually advantageous trade relations with the majority of countries. It is one of the world’s biggest exporters of machinery and plant.

p Particularly extensive and diversified are its economic ties with the socialist countries, which account for approximately 70 per cent of its foreign trade turnover. The Soviet Union largely satisfies the import requirements of the CMEA countries in oil, coal, iron ore, timber, machinery and plant.

p Since the war the Soviet Union has rendered technical assistance to socialist countries in building, reconstructing and enlarging about 900 industrial enterprises and other projects ensuring the growth of industrial output in these countries.

p At the same time the Soviet Union’s economic and scientific and technological ties with socialist countries help it fulfil its national economic plans.

p The Soviet Union is increasing the scope of its co- operation with the developing countries. It is assisting the liberated peoples of India, Egypt and many other countries to attain economic independence and promote social progress. It is also fruitfully co-operating with many industrial capitalist states.

p The Soviet Union, the world’s biggest country, has an area of 22.4 million sq. km. From west to east it extends for 30 approximately 10,000 kilometres and from north to south, about 5,000 kilometres. It has eleven time zones. When night descends on the Baltic, a new day dawns on the Pacific coast in Primorye Territory and the Far East.

p Lying almost wholly on vast tract of land, the Soviet Union also has islands, for the most part lying in the basins of the Arctic and Pacific oceans, and which comprise a relatively small part of its territory.

p The geographic position of the Soviet Union makes it a European and Asian country. Stressing this fact Lenin said that geographically, economically and historically it is not only part of Europe, but also a part of Asia. About a quarter of its territory (5.6 million sq. km.) is in Europe, and approximately three-quarters (16.8 million sq. km.) in Asia.

p It has more than 100,000 rivers including some of the world’s longest, among them the Ob, Amur, Irtysh, Lena, Yenisei and the Volga. The Volga, the great Russian river is the country’s principal internal waterway.

p It has about 250,000 lakes, including the Caspian Sea, which is the world’s biggest lake, and Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest freshwater lake (greatest depth, 1,741 metres).

p The drainage system is supplemented by man-made storage lakes. All told there are about a score of large artificial reservoirs including the Irkutsk, Kuibyshev, Bratsk, Rybinsk, Volgograd, Tsimlyanskaya, Kakhovka and Krasnoyarsk storage lakes whose waters are confined by the dams of giant hydroelectric stations.

p The USSR has more subterranean waters than any other country. The West Siberian Artesian Basin is the world’s largest subsurface ocean. Spreading over an area ol 3,000,000 sq. km. it is bigger than the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk combined.

p The USSR is surrounded by 12 seas  [30•*  of the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific oceans. The total length of the Soviet coastline exceeds 108,000 kilometres, with numerous bays and gulfs suitable for anchorage.

p There are vast natural resources in the Soviet Union. 31 Since the establishment of Soviet power geologists have discovered over 15,000 deposits of useful minerals. The country has the world’s greatest reserves of coal (up to 9,000,000 million tons), iron (60,000 million tons), manganese (2,500 million tons), lead, nickel, molybdenum, mercury, antimony, asbestos and potassium salts. It also has enormous deposits of oil and gas. The USSR is the only country in the world which is self-sufficient in mineral raw materials.

p The potential hydropower resources of the Soviet Union exceed 11 per cent of the world total and are estimated at 2,100,000 million kwh a year. For the size of hydropower resources the USSR occupies first place in the world. Soviet rivers and lakes abound in fish.

p The world’s greatest black earth (chernozem) massif lies in the Soviet Union. With the chestnut and grey forest soils, the highly fertile chernozem soils form the basis of the country’s agricultural land fund. Given advanced farming methods podzolic soils yield good harvests.

p Forests occupy almost a third of the total territory of the country whose overall timber resources are estimated at over 80,000 million cu. m. In other words, on an average there are 3.5 hectares of forest land and more than 370 cu. m. of timber per head of population. Conifers—larch, pine and fir—make up over four-fifths of the timber reserves. The forests are inhabited by valuable fur-bearing animals.

p At the beginning of 1972 the population of the USSR was more than 246 million, which puts it in third place after China and India. Estimated losses of population in the Second World War were over 20 million. In the post-war years of 1950 to 1971 the population of the USSR increased by almost 68 million.

p The population is unevenly distributed. The average density is about 11 persons per sq. km., in the European part it is 30 per sq. km. and three and even less persons per sq. km. in the Asian part. In the industrial Moscow Region, including Moscow itself, the density of the population is about 278 persons per sq. km.

p In view of the continuing industrialisation the ratio between the size of the rural and urban population is changing in favour of the latter. By mid-1971 more than 140 million people, or 57 per cent of the total population, were living in 32 towns. The urban population is growing at a particularly rapid rate in the far north and eastern regions.

p There are over 5,500 urban-type townships, including 2,000 cities in the country; more than 220 are large cities with a population of over 100,000 each. About 7.2 million people live in Moscow. Other cities with over a million inhabitants are Leningrad, Kiev, Tashkent, Baku, Kharkov, Gorky, Novosibirsk, Kuibyshev, Minsk and Sverdlovsk. Almost as many people live in Odessa, Tbilisi, Donetsk, Chelyabinsk, Kazan and Dniepropetrovsk.

p Nearly 104 million people live in 700,000 villages.

p In 1970 there were 62 million workers. The steady growth of their numbers reflects the country’s rapid industrial development and manifests the further strengthening of the leading role of the working class.

p Collective farmers, craftsmen united in co-operatives and their families account for approximately 20 per cent of the total population, less than 17 million people being directly engaged on collective farms.

p The number of intellectual workers employed in the economy now exceeds 30 million. Occupations involving manual labour have disappeared, and the distinctions between manual and mental labour are being gradually erased.

p Socialism has immeasurably elevated and enriched the cultural level of Soviet society. A country where threequarters of the population could neither read nor write before the Revolution, is now a land of total literacy. By the beginning of 1971, as a result of the progress in public education more than three quarters of the total population had a secondary (complete or incomplete) and higher education in towns and over a half in rural areas. There are nine million students at institutions of higher learning and vocational schools. Particular attention is paid to training engineers in all fields.

p The Soviet Union has scored outstanding successes in diverse fields of science and technology. The Academy of Sciences of the USSR, its branches and republican academies, numerous research institutes and university departments have a staff of approximately a million research workers, or a quarter of the world’s total. The USSR holds leading positions in nuclear physics, mathematics, electronics, 33 radio engineering, metallurgy, rocketry, aircraft construction and a number of other branches of science and technology. Its successes in the exploration of outer space witness the inexhaustible creative abilities of Soviet scientists and designers and the skill and ability of Soviet working people.

p The national income is the main factor of the rising welfare of the people. In 1970, the national income in the USSR exceeded 266,000 million rubles, and in 1975 it will be approximately 365,000-373,000 million rubles. About 75 per cent of the national income goes to meet the material and cultural requirements of the population. The real incomes of the Soviet people are steadily mounting and so are the various grants and benefits made available to the population out of public consumption funds.

p The public consumption funds, which in 1970 totalled 64,000 million rubles will amount to 90,000 million rubles in 1975, and will further raise the standard of living. These funds are expended on providing free education and medical treatment to the entire population, stipends for students, paid holidays, sanatoria vouchers, grants, pensions and various other allowances and benefits.

p One of the greatest social gains of the Soviet Union has been the complete abolition of unemployment.

p Housing conditions have been rapidly improving since the war. The Soviet Union is tackling the housing problem on a huge scale. More than 500 million sq. m. of floor space were built during the eighth five-year plan period (1966-1970) alone. This means that an equivalent of more than 50 large cities, each with a million inhabitants, were built in the country. Most of the families receiving new housing move into separate modern apartments.

p It is the prime concern of socialist society to secure a steady rise in the standard of living.

p About 130 big and small nations inhabit the USSR, including Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians, which together make up more than three-quarters of the population, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Georgians, Azerbaijanians, Lithuanians, Moldavians, Kirghizes, Tajiks, Armenians, Turkmenians, and Estonians. All citizens of the USSR, irrespective of their nationality or race are equal in all spheres of political, economic and cultural activity.

p The socialist system has ensured the burgeoning of all 34 nations inhabiting the country, including the formerly backward peoples, and economically and culturally fused the socialist nations into a fraternal family of Soviet peoples. The Soviet Union showed in practice that socialism alone guarantees the abolition of all forms of national oppression and promotes the burgeoning of all nations and of their commonwealth. The Soviet state is the embodiment of the commonwealth of nations.

p The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a multinational federal state, formed on the basis of a union of equal Soviet socialist republics. Being a state of a new, socialist type the USSR was established on the basis of the free and voluntary union of the people of 15 socialist republics.

p The highest organ of state power is the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. It consists of two chambers: the Soviet of the Union, which represents the common interests of all people irrespective of their nationality, and the Soviet of Nationalities, which expresses the interests of each individual nation and nationality. The highest executive and administrative organ of state power is the Council of Ministers of the USSR which is the country’s government. According to the Constitution the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which has a membership of 14 million is the leading core of all organisations of the working people, both government and nongovernment.

p In the Union Republics separate nationalities have their autonomous republics, regions and areas. All have their organs of state power which guide the national economy and cultural development in their respective territories. The administrative-territorial boundaries do not divide but unite the Soviet people.

“All of us, no matter what republic we live in,” said General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev, "are Soviet patriots, children of one socialist homeland. Our native land, our home-country covers a vast area extending from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea, from the Arctic Ocean to the Pamir and the Caucasus. Everything that has been created by people’s hands on this land— magnificent cities, giant industrial complexes and rich fields, hydroelectric power stations and cultural values—is the result of common labour, our common property, the property of the Soviet people.”

35

THE ECONOMY

p The Soviet Union has a highly-developed modern industry. Small peasant farms have been replaced by large-scale, mechanised socialist agriculture. Planned socialist economy is developing at a rapid pace.

p The Soviet Union inherited an extremely backward, warravaged economy from tsarist Russia. In the period of the first five-year plans (1929-1941) the people radically transformed their country, turning her into a mighty industrial power.

p The Second World War dealt a heavy blow to the economy. The country lost about a third of her national wealth, and it required heroic efforts on the part of the entire nation to rehabilitate the economy and ensure its further development.

p Despite tremendous difficulties, the Soviet economy made steady progress after the war. Today it is characterised by a mighty upsurge and far-reaching qualitative changes in its structure.

p Owing to its high rates of industrial development the Soviet Union’s share in world industrial production is increasing with each passing year. In 1971 it accounted for almost a fifth of world industrial output compared with less than 10 per cent in 1937 and less than 3 per cent in 1917. Today the Soviet Union is the world’s biggest producer of coal, iron ore, coke, cement and prefabricated ferroconcrete units, felled and saw-timber, main line diesel and electric locomotives, woollen fabrics, granulated sugar and butter.

p The Soviet Union has the world’s largest cropped area and its harvests of wheat, potato, sugar beet, sunflower and other industrial crops are the biggest in the world. It has surpassed other countries in the volume of railway freight turnover, in the length of electric railways and also in the length of internal waterways and air communications.

p The gap between the levels of industrial production in the USSR and the USA is narrowing. While in 1950 the level of Soviet industrial production was less than 30 per cent of that of the United States, in 1970 this figure had risen over 75 per cent.

p In recent years the Soviet Union has been concentrating on the qualitative aspect of economic development. The 36 structure of industry is undergoing serious changes. Considerable progress has been attained in agriculture which is becoming a highly intensive branch of production. The system of economic management has been reorganised, and on the whole, substantial progress has been made in the direction of turning the Soviet Union into a country with the world’s most advanced and efficient economy.

p A major step in this respect will be made by the Ninth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (1971-1975). The main task of the five-year plan is to ensure a considerable rise of the people’s material and cultural level on the basis of a high rate of development of socialist production, enhancement of its efficiency, scientific and technological progress and acceleration of the growth of labour productivity.

The Directives of the Five-Year Economic Development Plan of the USSR for 1971-1975 adopted at the 24th CPSU Congress define both the main task and the principal trends and tasks in individual branches of the economy. The Ninth Five-Year Plan is an important stage in Soviet society’s further advance along the road to communism, in building its material and technical basis, and in strengthening the country’s economic and defence might.

INDUSTRY

p Characteristic of the Soviet industry is its vast scale and multi-branch structure. By the beginning of 1969 there were more than 50,000 large industrial enterprises which yielded the bulk of the Soviet industrial output. The volume of industrial production is steadily increasing. In 1970 alone industrial enterprises in the USSR manufactured 2.3 times as much as they did in the course of all the prewar fiveyear plan periods (1928-1940) and approximately 12 times as much as in 1940.

p The Soviet industry is developing rapidly in the Ninth Five-Year Plan period (1971-1975). In 1975, the volume of industrial production will increase 109-112 times above the 1928 level and more than three times compared with the 1960 figure. The industrial potential of the USSR will double in just a single decade (1965-1975).

p The Soviet industry has hundreds of branches and types of production. All are united into large branch complexes 37 (groups of branches) of which the chief are engineering, metalworking, chemical and fuel industries, power engineering, metallurgical, timber, building materials, and light and food industries.

p The fuel industry has developed into a leading branch of Soviet industrial production. In 1969, the output of all types of fuel (in terms of conventional fuel—7,000 kilocalories) exceeded 1,200 million tons or more than five times the 1940 level. To improve the country’s fuel balance special emphasis is laid on the extraction of oil and gas, the two most effective types of fuel. In 1975 they will account for 67 per cent of total output of fuel as compared with 60 per cent in 1970.

p In 1971, the Soviet Union produced 377 million tons of oil, and in 1975 its output will be about 496 million tons; the output of natural gas was 212,000 million cu. m. in 1971, and in 1975 it will be as high as 320,000 million cu. m.

p The share of coal in the Soviet fuel balance is steadily decreasing. But in absolute figures the production of coal is increasing, even if slowly. While in 1950 the Soviet Union produced 260 million tons of coal, its coal output in 1971 surpassed 641 million tons, or almost twice the combined output in Britain, the FRG and France. In 1975, the coal output will reach 695 million tons. The extraction of coking coals is increasing in Donbas, Kuzbas and Karaganda.

p The Soviet Union’s power industry is one of the mightiest in the world. Although the emphasis is on the construction of large thermal power stations of which there is a preponderance in the country, highly economical hydroelectric stations are also being built. The capacity of the world-famous Bratsk Hydroelectric Station on the Angara is more than 4,000,000 kw. The construction of the world’s biggest Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric scheme (with a planned capacity of 6,000,000 kw) has been completed, and the building of the Sayano-Shushenskoye Hydroelectric Station with an estimated capacity of 6,400,000 kw in the upper reaches of the Yenisei is proceeding apace. The completion of the experimental Kislaya Cuba Tidal Station on Kola Peninsula will inaugurate the era of the utilisation of the energy of ocean tides.

p Atomic power engineering first appeared in the USSR. In 1954 the world’s first atomic power station of 5,000 kw 38 capacity was put into operation in Obninsk near Moscow. Subsequently several larger atomic power stations were built. It is planned to build an atomic power station of 2,000,000 kw capacity. The average annual growth rate of power capacities in recent years has been from 10 to 12 million kw and the increase in the output of electricity up to 50 million kwh. In the next few years the Soviet power industry will develop twice as fast: the average annual growth of its capacities will be 20 million kw, and the output of electricity will rise by 100,000 million kwh.

p About a hundred large regional power systems comprise the single power grid of the European part of the USSR. In 1970 the aggregate capacity of its power stations surpassed 100 million kw.

p At present an inter-regional power system of Central Siberia is being created. Transmission lines will run from Siberia to the Urals and from Kazakhstan to the central areas of the USSR. In the near future the power systems of the eastern and central areas of the country will be united into a single power grid of the USSR. Its completion will signify the triumph of Lenin’s plan of the electrification of the whole country.

p The Soviet metallurgical industry, one of the principal branches of the heavy industry, has reached a high level of development. In 1975 an estimated 146 million tons of steel will be smelted in the country.

p Today the USSR occupies a leading place in the world in the production of steel, pig iron, copper, aluminium, lead, zinc, nickel and titanium. It is steadily increasing the output of light (particularly aluminium), alloy (nickel, titanium, tungsten and molybdenum) and rare metals. Specialised factories turning out materials for the electronic industry are going up. Enterprises of the non-ferrous industry are under construction in the rich eastern regions.

p The engineering industry is meeting the requirements of the economy in highly-productive machinery and is also exporting part of its output.

p Priority is given to the heavy engineering industry manufacturing equipment for the power, metallurgical, chemical, oil and coal industries. Electronic and radio engineering industries are being organised at a rapid rate. Special attention is paid to promoting the rapid development of the 39 tractor and farm machinery industry and to increasing the production capacities of the automobile industry. Very serious measures are taken to accelerate the output of equipment for the light and food industries.

p The further development of the engineering industry in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Gorky, Minsk, Riga and other cities in the European part of the USSR is accompanied by the establishment of new engineering centres in the East, in regions producing metal and consuming engineering output. In the course of the Ninth Five-Year Plan period the output of the engineering and metalworking industries will increase 1.7 times, and that of electronic computers, 2.6 times.

p From 1940 (the last pre-war year) to 1970 inclusive, the chemical industry increased production almost 27-fold. In the next five years it will rise by another 70 per cent. The output of plastics, synthetic fibres and chemical products for household purposes is increasing at a particularly rapid rate. In 1970 the output of mineral fertiliser surpassed 55 million tons, and in 1975 will amount to 90 million tons. Chemical factories are improving the quality and broadening the variety of fertiliser, providing agriculture with increasing quantities of concentrated, compound and mixed fertiliser.

p The timber, pulp and paper and woodworking industries have vast timber resources at their disposal. Some 300 million cu. m. of timber were felled in 1970. In this sphere measures are being taken to improve the production structure and ensure an all-round utilisation of timber. Major timbersawing centres—Arkhangelsk, Kotlas, Krasnoyarsk and Igarka—are gradually developing into centres of the complex utilisation of timber raw materials and the chemical and chemical-mechanical processing of timber. New powerful timber industrial complexes are being created in Siberia and the Far East.

p The gigantic scope of construction in the USSR is universally known. The building materials and the building industries have become the material and technical basis of largescale capital construction. In 1971 the Soviet Union produced 100 million tons of cement, 90 million cu. m. of prefabricated ferroconcrete units and 44,000 million bricks.

The light and food industries are developing at an 40 accelerated rate. They employ over 25 per cent of the total number of industrial workers and yield more than a quarter of the country’s industrial output.

AGRICULTURE

p Agriculture in the Soviet Union is an extensive, vitally important branch of the economy, the principal source of food for the people and agricultural raw materials for the industry.

p There are approximately 33,000 collective farms ( agricultural artels) and over 15,500 state farms in the socialist agriculture of the Soviet Union. These farms account for the bulk of agricultural produce, and the farmers’ subsidiary plots play an auxiliary role in supplying the population with food.

p Land, whfch in private hands was an instrument of exploitation of man by man, is now used in the Soviet Union to promote the development of agricultural productive forces in the interests of all people.

p Thanks to modern farm machines and expansion of the sown area, the socialist agriculture of the Soviet Union has considerably increased the output of farm and animal produce.

p Gross agricultural output was almost three times as great as in the pre-revolutionary period.

p The central task in agriculture today, as in the previous years, is to achieve a considerable increase in the output of farm and animal produce.

p Soviet industrial enterprises are supplying agriculture with large numbers of tractors, motor vehicles, grain harvester combines and other farm machinery. The scale of electrification of agriculture is steadily growing and so is the level of mechanisation of farming and animal husbandry. Mineral fertiliser is being supplied in ever greater quantities to collective and state farms.

p Land-improvement is becoming increasingly important as a factor ensuring high and stable yields of grain and other crops. Today approximately 10 million hectares of irrigated land are planted to rice, cotton and vegetables. By 1975, the total area of irrigated and drained land will be considerably 41 enlarged. According to estimates, the rice yield on these lands will increase three times and that of feed and vegetable crops from three to four times. Cotton and grain harvests will also rise considerably.

p Being the leading branch of agriculture, farming yields more than 50 per cent of the gross agricultural product in the country. Cereals are the principal crops. During the Eighth Five-Year Plan period (1966-1970) the average annual output of cereals surpassed 167 million tons, and will reach 195 million tons over the current five-year period (1971-1975).

p Sugar beet occupies an important place among the industrial crops. The annual sugar beet harvest in the Soviet Union is approximately 90 million tons, or almost as much as in 20 other European sugar-beet-producing countries taken together.

p Sunflower is the most widespread oleaginous crop. Flax, castor-oil plant, rape and a variety of essential oil-bearing plants are grown. Among other staple fibrous plants are fibre-flax and hemp. But at present cotton is the principal fibrous crop. The average annual output of raw cotton in Central Asia and other regions in the USSR is twice as great as in India.

p In animal husbandry the emphasis is on milk and meat production. Dairy farming is concentrated around big cities and in specialised regions in the north and central areas of the European part of the USSR and in Western Siberia. Some economic areas, such as the Baltic republics, specialise in raising bacon pigs. Fine-fleece sheep are bred in the North Caucasus, in the forest-steppe areas of the Ukraine and other parts of the country. The central and northern areas of the European part of the USSR have fur sheepbreeding farms, and Uzbekistan and Turkmenia specialise in raising astrakhan sheep.

The Soviet Government is paying much attention to promoting the comprehensive mechanisation, electrification and chemicalisation of agriculture and enlarging the scope of land reclamation work. Some 129,000 million rubles will be invested in agriculture during the current five years (1971-1975), accelerating the transition of agriculture to an industrial basis and strengthening the country’s food- production base.

42

TRANSPORT

p Transport is a developed branch of the economy of the USSR. The total length of overland communications is now close to 2,000,000 kilometres.

p There are all modern types of transport—railway, water, motor, pipeline and air—in the USSR. But their role in transport operations is not the same. The technical reorganisation of transport and the priority development of its new types are altering the economic effectivity and role of various types of transport in freight and passenger traffic.

p In the Soviet Union, which is a continental country, railways form the backbone of the transport system. And although other types of transport are developing at a faster pace, the railways handle about two-thirds of the total freight turnover and more than a half of the passenger traffic.

p In 1970 railway freight turnover reached 2,490,000 million ton/km. This is more than two and a half times the volume of freight turnover of railways in the United States, although the length of Soviet railways is approximately 60 per cent shorter. The USSR, which has one-tenth of the total length of railways in the world, handles about 50 per cent of the world’s rail freight.

p The Soviet Union has direct rail passenger communications with a score of European and Asian countries. In fifty years the length of railways in the USSR has almost doubled, reaching 135,000 kilometres. On an average over a thousand kilometres of railways are built annually in the country. The most intensive main lines are being converted to electric traction.

p Since the war the freight turnover handled by water transport has increased more than 14 times, including a 29-fold increase in the volume of sea-borne cargo. On the whole, however, water transport accounts for only slightly more than 20 per cent of the total freight turnover.

p Economic ties between maritime regions of the USSR (coastal shipping) are maintained by sea-borne transport which also handles overseas export and import operations. Soviet ships call at ports of more than 100 countries.

p In the past decade a large number of modern ships, including general purpose and specialised vessels equipped 43 with automatic control systems, have been added to the Soviet merchant marine.

p The river fleet services more than 144,000 kilometres of navigable internal waterways. With the construction of the Moscow, the White Sea-Baltic, the Lenin Volga-Don Shipping, and the Lenin Volga-Baltic Sea canals a single water transport system was established in the European part of the USSR. This system connects the Caspian, Azov, Black, Baltic and White seas and unites a considerable part of the main navigable river routes, most of which extend in the meridional direction. There is an increasing tendency to transport goods directly from river ports to sea ports.

p Pipeline transport is developing at a very rapid pace. From 50 to 66 per cent cheaper than rail transport, it ensures reliable and efficient delivery of oil and oil products. The Soviet Union was first to build pipelines over a metre in diameter. Currently it is building pipelines with a diameter of 2.5 metres. The average diameter of Soviet gas pipelines is 30 per cent greater than those in the United States. Soviet natural gas is piped to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria, and there are plans to pipe it also to Bulgaria and some West European countries, including the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy.

p The network of pipelines is the densest in the oil- producing areas of the Caucasus and the Volga-Urals basin. From here, just as from the oil-producing areas of Western Siberia and Western Kazakhstan, pipelines with a very high carrying capacity are being extended to oil refineries and industrial enterprises in the eastern and western parts of the country.

p The Trans-Siberian Oil Pipeline, the longest pipeline running eastwards, passes through Omsk and Krasnoyarsk to the Far East.

p The international Druzhba (Friendship) Oil Pipeline which extends for 3,000 kilometres across the Soviet Union supplies oil extracted in the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to Poland and Czechoslovakia and also to Hungary and the German Democratic Republic. Over 50 per cent of oil products in the USSR are transported by pipeline.

p Soviet motor transport annually handles about 15,000 million tons of freight, or five times the volume of freight carried by all other types of transport. But the average 44 distance of one ton of freight hauled by motor transport is approximately 15 kilometres. Therefore, motor transport accounts for a small share of the total freight turnover.

p Motor traffic between the USSR and foreign countries is expanding. Soviet lorry columns deliver perishable goods to the socialist and other countries in Europe and also to the Mongolian People’s Republic.

p There are thousands of trunk bus lines. The length of motor roads in the USSR has almost doubled since the war and today exceeds 1,500,000 kilometres, including 500,000 kilometres of hard-surfaced roads.

p Air transport handles domestic freight and passenger traffic primarily over long distances and also to foreign countries. Aeroflot planes service about 2,000 passenger lines.

p Regular air services are maintained throughout the year between Moscow, the country’s capital and principal air terminal, and the capitals of all the Union Republics, and a large number of cities and industrial centres. All told, airlines connect more than 3,500 cities and other inhabited localities. Domestic airlines total approximately 600,000 kilometres.

p Over 50 airlines link the Soviet Union with countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. The Aeroflot handles about 33 per cent of the world air freight and passenger traffic.

Soviet airlines are served by comfortable modern planes. At the close of 1968 the world’s first supersonic passenger plane, the TU-144, made its trial flight. Flying at 2,500 km per hour with 120 passengers on board the TU-144 will be used on long-distance domestic and international flights.

CHANGES IN THE ECONOMIC
MAP OF THE USSR

p Socialist industrialisation, reorganisation of agriculture and the technical reconstruction of transport in the Soviet Union were accompanied by fundamental changes in the geographic distribution of production. The objective necessity of making these changes was dictated both by the extensive scope of capital construction and the vital need to alter the geographic pattern of production inherited from tsarist Russia.

45

p When the Soviet Union was established the country’s industry was unevenly distributed and there was a sharp difference in the levels of economic development between the central and outlying regions. The rapid development of the economy and culture in all republics and areas gradually narrowed the gap between their economic levels and led to the formation of a rational territorial structure of the economy.

p The economy of the national republics and the country’s eastern regions is developing at a rapid pace. Today the eastern regions, including the Urals, manufacture about a third of the national industrial output. In the aggregate industrial output, the share of some key industrial items is higher in the eastern regions than it is in the country as a whole.

p A considerable part of the national centralised capital investments is channelled into the eastern regions to augment their economic potential. Working in the rigid climatic and geographic conditions of the northern and eastern regions, Soviet people are putting up industrial enterprises, developing vast natural resources, and building workers’ townships and cities.

The building of enterprises of labour-intensive branches of industry and the technical reconstruction of operating enterprises is continuing in the European part of the country which has great production capacities and large labour resources.

ECONOMIC REGIONS

p The steady growth of the productive forces, increasing specialisation and further all-round development of the economy are reflected in the country’s economic regionalisation. To facilitate national economic planning the USSR has been divided into 18 major economic regions.

p There are ten economic regions in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). It is the largest republic of the Soviet Union and possesses the biggest industrial and agricultural potential. Its industrial output rose 10.6 times from 1940 to 1970. The RSFSR accounts for over 50 per cent of the country’s population, and for two-thirds of her industrial and about a half of her agricultural output.

46

p The RSFSR renders all-round assistance to the Union Republics in their economic and cultural development. It plays a leading role in furthering the Soviet Union’s economic, scientific, technical and cultural co-operation with socialist and other countries.

p For size of territory, population and economic potential each of these ten regions can be compared with many foreign countries. For example, the population of the Urals is twice as large as that of Sweden, the number of inhabitants in the North Caucasus Region is approximately the same as in Czechoslovakia, and the population of the Central Region is only slightly smaller than that of Poland.

p The Central Economic Region is the mainstay of the country’s industrial and defensive potential and the chief centre of her science and culture. The capital of the Soviet Union, Moscow, a modern city with more than 7,000,000 inhabitants is situated here. In size of population it ranks third among capital cities after Tokyo and London. Being the capital of a world power, Moscow is a major international economic and cultural centre.

p It is also the country’s biggest communications hub and industrial centre; it manufactures several times more goods than was produced in the whole of Russia before the Revolution. Moscow’s industrial complex consists of heavy engineering (chiefly machine-building and metalworking), chemical, light and food industries whose output is utilised both in the city itself, in other parts of the country and also abroad.

p Moscow is one of the world’s greatest scientific and cultural centres. Approximately 200,000 specialists staff its scientific institutions, higher educational establishments and other organisations. Over 600,000 students, including tens of thousands of foreigners, are enrolled at its institutions of higher learning of which there are several dozen. Thousands of students and post-graduates from more than 70 countries study at Moscow University alone.

p The Patrice Lumumba Friendship University offering training primarily to young people from Asian, African and Latin American countries has developed into a major educational centre. It has a student body of over 4,000 future engineers, agronomists, physicians, physicists, chemists, mathematicians and also specialists in the humanities. In 47 addition to their basic professions also many of them acquire a second speciality, that of translators from the Russian.

p Moscow has some of the world’s greatest theatres, museums and libraries, among them the Bolshoi Theatre and the Art Theatre, the Lenin Library, the Lenin Museum, the Museum of the Revolution, the Polytechnical Museum, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the Tretyakov Picture Gallery.

p It is rapidly building up its housing resources, improving its municipal economy, highways, streets, squares and parks. Moscow creates a tremendous impression, noted the American public dignitary Cyrus Eaton who visited the Soviet capital at the close of 1969, it is a great city which has made colossal progress in many fields.

p The principal industries of the Central-Chernozem Region are iron-ore mining, iron and steel, chemical and engineering. Agriculture specialises in the production of grain, meat, milk, sunflower and sugar beet.

p Situated in the Central-Chernozem Region the mining complex of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly (KMA), the world’s biggest iron-ore deposit, is developing into an iron-ore base for the iron and steel industries of Tula, Lipetsk and Donbas, and also for the iron and steel industries of Poland, the German Democratic Republic and other socialist countries. It is planned to put up a giant iron and steel complex in the KMA.

p The Volga-Vyatka Region together with Gorky (1,200,000 inhabitants) is a large industrial area on the Volga with developed automobile, shipbuilding, electrical engineering, instrument-making and other branches of the engineering industry. Industrial production is advancing rapidly in Kirov, Cheboksary, Saransk and other cities in the region. There is a very promising outlook for the chemical and wood-working industries, which draw upon the large timber resources of the left bank of the Volga.

p The Northwestern Region accounts for 10 per cent of the aggregate output of the Soviet machine-building industry; it also has large-scale wood-working, chemical and mining industries. Leningrad (over 4,000,000 inhabitants), the second largest city after Moscow and an important industrial and communications centre, is situated in the Region. Its 48 industrial enterprises make sea-going ships, powerful steam and water turbines, intricate radio equipment, precision instruments, automatic machine-tools, chemical products, consumer articles and foodstuffs. Goods manufactured in Leningrad are also exported to many countries. Leningrad is one of the world’s greatest scientific and cultural centres.

p Chemical raw materials (apatites) and metal ores are mined in Kola Peninsula which also has developed aluminium and nickel, and timber (Arkhangelsk and Kotlas) and fishing (Murmansk) industries. The further industrial development of the Northwest is connected with the expansion of the metallurgical base (Cherepovets) and the enlargement of the fuel and power base.

p Important measures are being taken to increase the production of grain, meat, milk and other agricultural products.

p The Volga Region is the country’s chief source of oil and yields large quantities of natural gas. It has a highly developed petrochemical industry. Engineering, light, food and other industries are concentrated in Kuibyshev, Kazan, Volgograd, Saratov, Penza, Sterlitamak and Astrakhan. The giant Volzhsky Automobile Plant has been built and put into operation in Togliatti, and the world’s biggest Kama Lorry Plant is under construction nearby. The Volga area produces large quantities of commodity grain and also meat and mustard and other products. The region’s power base consists of thermal power plants and the Kuibyshev, Saratov and Volgograd hydroelectric stations.

p Two towns on the Volga are closely connected with Lenin’s name. They are Ulyanovsk and Kazan. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) was born in Ulyanovsk (Simbirsk) on April 22, 1870 into the family of Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, a director of public schools, and spent his childhood and school years in this town. Later Lenin studied at Kazan University.

p Since then Ulyanovsk has changed beyond recognition. Today it is a town of engineering industry and light industry workers, railwaymen and river transport workers. The Lenin Memorial Complex, which is attracting numerous visitors from all parts of the USSR and also foreign guests, was completed in 1970, the Lenin centenary year.

p The North Caucasus Region specialises in oil and gas extraction and is also a major centre of the iron and steel 49 and non-ferrous industries, coal mining and engineering. Its principal industrial centres are Rostov on the Don, Krasnodar, Taganrog, Novorossiisk, Stavropol, Nalchik, Orjonikidze, Grozny and Makhachkala. The climatic and soil conditions in the region are favourable for horticulture and viticulture, and the cultivation of wheat, corn, sunflower and sugar beet. The North Caucasus is famed for its finefleece sheep and also for its health resorts.

p ’The Urals Region is the industrial bulwark of the USSR. Its centre is Sverdlovsk, the site of the world-famous Urals Heavy Engineering Works.

p The Region also includes Perm with its shipbuilding, petrochemical and pulp and paper industry, Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, a national major iron and steel centre, and many other important cities. In the south of the Urals work is in progress on Europe’s largest deposit of natural gas.

p The Kuzbas (Kuznetsk Basin) is the chief industrial centre of the West-Siberian Region. There are large industrial cities in Kuzbas: Novokuznetsk (ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, heavy engineering, coal mining) and Kemerovo (coal, coal chemistry and engineering). Novosibirsk (about 1,200,000 inhabitants) is the biggest engineering centre east of the Urals. The Novosibirsk Akademgorodok, the site of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, is a major scientific centre.

p There are other large cities in West Siberia, among them Omsk, Barnaul and Tomsk.

p The Tyumen and Tomsk regions occupy a special place in the economy of Western Siberia. The country’s richest, even unique deposits of oil and gas have recently been discovered on their territories. Currently roads, railways, main pipelines and modern towns are being rapidly built, and much attention is being devoted to developing agriculture which will supply the new, powerful industrial complex of Siberia with food.

p ’The East Siberian Region has fabulous coal and hydropower resources and vast deposits of ferrous and non- ferrous metals. Taking shape within its boundaries is the new Angara-Yenisei Industrial Complex with Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk as its centres. The industry of Bratsk and Angarsk and of the old Siberian towns, including Ulan-Ude and Chita, is likewise developing.

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p A memorial complex was completed in the Lenin Centenary year in the village of Shushenskoye where Lenin lived in exile in tsarist times. The complex includes the Lenin House Museum and other memorable places. Next to the old village of Shushenskoye stands a modern township of the same name. The Sayano-Shushenskoye Hydroelectric Station, the biggest in the country, now under construction in the upper reaches of the Yenisei, will be a majestic monument to Lenin.

p Occupying a vast territory extending from Yakutia to Kamchatka and from Chukotka to the Primorye, the Far Eastern Region is rich in coal, iron ore, gold, diamonds, complex ores and other useful minerals. It has vast resources of valuable timber in the Far Eastern taiga, fish in its rivers and the seas of the Pacific Ocean which washes its shores, and fertile soils in its southern areas.

p The region’s industrial centres are the rapidly growing cities of Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The industries of Yakutsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Magadan, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Vladivostok are also developing at a rapid rate.

p There are three economic regions of nation-wide importance in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Soviet Ukraine sustained enormous losses during the Second World War and the nazi occupation. The direct material losses which the nazi occupation inflicted on the Ukraine comprised over 75 per cent of the total losses sustained by all the countries (barring the Soviet Union) of the anti-Hitler coalition.

p It seemed that it would take the Ukraine decades to do away with the dire consequences of the war. But thanks to the assistance of the Russian and other fraternal Soviet peoples, the Ukraine rehabilitated her economy in five years and then vastly increased her economic potential.

p The Ukraine accounts for approximately 50 per cent of the pig iron and iron ore produced in the USSR, more than 40 per cent of the steel, over 33 per cent of the coal and natural gas, almost 50 per cent of the equipment for the metallurgical and over 33 per cent of equipment for the chemical industries, a considerable portion of tractors, excavators and other products of the engineering industry and 51 numerous items of the chemical and food industries. It is difficult to overestimate Ukraine’s importance as a foodproducing area. Besides producing millions of tons of grain, the Ukraine accounts for 33 per cent of the vegetables, 40 per cent of sunflower, more than 60 per cent of the sugar beet cultivated in the Soviet Union and also for 20 per cent of its animal products. Industrial production in the Ukraine rose 8.3 times from 1940 to 1970.

p The Ukraine’s economic potential will continue to grow in the current five-year period. In 1975 she will be producing 200,000 million kwh of electric power, 215 million tons of coal, 33-38 million tons of rolled ferrous metals and vast amounts of other items. The annual grain production will reach 40 million tons.

p The industrial foundation of the Donets-Dnieper Economic Region consists of coal (Donbas), iron ore (Krivoi Rog) and manganese ore (Nikopol) extraction, ferrous metallurgy (Donbas, Dnieper and Azov Sea areas), power engineering and the chemical industry. Heavy engineering plants are concentrated in Kharkov, Donetsk, Kramatorsk, Zaporozhye, Dniepropetrovsk and Zhdanov. Kharkov (more than 1,200,000 inhabitants) is a major centre of the heavy engineering, chemical, light and food industries. Grain, sunflower and sugar beet are the chief products of the region’s highly intensive agriculture.

p The economic core of the Southwest Region is made up of the engineering, chemical and light industries and the country’s biggest sugar industry. Kiev (about 1,700,000 inhabitants), the capital of the Ukraine and one of the loveliest Soviet cities, has developed into a major industrial centre and the republic’s leading scientific and cultural centre.

p Lvov is the chief industrial centre and communications hub of Western Ukraine. Cherkassy, Zhitomir and Vinnitsa are developing into centres of the engineering, chemical and food industries. Food industry enterprises are going up in many small and medium-size towns of the Ukraine.

p Modern industry and intensive agriculture (grain, fruits, grapes) are the foundation of the economy of the Southern Region. The biggest shipbuilding yards and engineering and food industry enterprises are situated in Odessa, Nikolayev and Kherson. Ships from many countries call at the Odessa and Ilyichevsk sea ports.

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p The Baltic Economic Region embraces the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Union republics and the Kaliningrad Region on the Baltic Sea coast. Having overcome the dire consequences of the war and the nazi occupation, the Baltic republics have made great strides in all spheres of economic and cultural life.

p Formerly a backward agrarian area, Lithuania has become an advanced industrial republic. Today her industrial output is 31 times greater than in 1940. Lithuania is a large-scale producer of machine tools (10 per cent of Soviet-made metal-cutting lathes are manufactured in Lithuania) and is developing her electric engineering, radio engineering, electronic, chemical and oil industries. Vilnius, the capital, is the republic’s principal industrial centre. Another major industrial centre is Kaunas, and the ice-free port of Klaipeda has large shipyards. Industry is developing in other cities.

p The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic occupies an important place in the family of Baltic republics and in the Soviet Union as a whole. In 1970 its industrial output surpassed the 1940 level by 27 times. Besides the fishing and food industries, its economy now embraces radio engineering, electronic, instrument-making, chemical and other branches of industry.

p Riga, the capital, is Latvia’s biggest Baltic port, industrial and cultural centre and communications hub. Its university and other institutions of higher learning train qualified personnel for various branches of production, science and culture. Latvia has 3.5 times as many students per thousand of population as there are in the FRG, three times as many as in Britain and two times as many as in France or Sweden.

p The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic has become an industrially advanced republic in the years since the establishment of Soviet power. Its chief economic branches are engineering, woodworking, paper, chemical, food and textile industries. From 1940 to 1970 industrial production in Estonia rose 28 times. Tallinn, the capital, is a Baltic port and centre of Estonian culture.

p The economy of Kaliningrad Region in the west of the RSFSR is rapidly advancing. Kaliningrad is a large industrial centre, a Baltic port and an Atlantic fishing base.

p The Transcaucasian Economic Region embraces the Georgian, Azerbaijan and Armenian Soviet Socialist republics.

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p Georgia, with her ore-mining, metallurgical, engineering and food industries, occupies a prominent place in the Soviet economy. In 1970, her industrial output was 8.4 times higher than in 1940. The volume of industrial production will increase almost 50 per cent in the next five years (1971-1975). Ancient Tbilisi, the capital, is the republic’s main seat of industry and culture.

p Azerbaijan is called a republic of oil and cotton. Its industrial structure consists of such interconnected branches as oil and gas extraction, oil refining and petrochemistry, and the manufacture of pipes and plant for the oil industry. Cotton and animal products are processed at light and food industry enterprises. In 1970 the volume of industrial production in Azerbaijan surpassed the 1940 level by 5.5 times. During the fifty years of Soviet power, the volume of industrial output in Azerbaijan increased 70-fold. Oil production rose 7 times. In 1970 Azerbaijan’s oilfields yielded their 1,000 millionth ton of oil. The republic’s economy will make further progress in the Ninth FiveYear Plan period.

p The capital Baku (nearly 1,300,000 inhabitants) is the biggest city in Azerbaijan and in the whole of Transcaucasia. It is an important centre of oil and other industries, and the seat of culture and science of socialist Azerbaijan.

p Small both in area and population, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic has made great headway in cultural and economic development. Pre-revolutionary Armenia was a backward, long-suffering land. Soviet power freed the Armenian people from oppression and ensured for them a free life in the friendly family of equal Soviet nations.

p Armenia today has a thriving industry which includes such branches as engineering, instrument-making, electronic and radio engineering. It has a developed non-ferrous metallurgy, particularly the copper-molybdenum and aluminium industries, and rubber, chemical, food and light industries. The republic’s power base consists of hydroelectric stations on the Razdan and other mountain rivers. In 1970 Armenia’s industrial output was 21 times higher than in 1940. Since the establishment of Soviet power, the industrial output in Armenia increased 180-fold, and her industrial production will rise by more than 50 per cent in the current five-year period. Her 54 agriculture specialises in the cultivation of cotton, grapes, vegetables and tobacco.

p In 1968 her capital Yerevan observed the 2750th anniversary of its foundation. It is a major industrial and cultural centre of Armenia and the USSR as a whole.

p Lying in the zone of vast deserts, great mountains and fertile valleys, the Union Republics of Central Asia— Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan and Turkmenia—have common natural and historical features. They have a multibranch economy and together comprise the Central Asian Economic Region. A land of great ancient culture, feudal Central Asia was a backward colonial country before the revolution. After the establishment of Soviet power the Central Asian peoples within the span of a single generation advanced from feudalism to socialism and national equality. They did away with economic and cultural backwardness and created a flourishing socialist economy and culture.

p The Central Asian Economic Region produces more than 90 per cent of the country’s output of raw cotton. As regards the total cotton harvest which in 1970 amounted to 6 million tons, Soviet Central Asia has surpassed the United States, and overtaken Burma, India, Pakistan and Iran taken together. The combined cotton harvest of all African countries that cultivate this valuable crop is but 50 per cent of the aggregate cotton output of the Central Asian republics. They also produce more cotton than is grown in Latin America.

p In view of their manifestly cotton-growing specialisation the economy of the Central Asian republics includes cotton-processing branches (ginneries, oil mills), production of cotton fabrics, cotton-picking combines, textile machinery, mineral fertiliser for cotton plantations, and cement and concrete units for irrigation structures. The Region is now producing considerable quantities of natural gas, oil, and ores of non-ferrous and rare metals, about 35 per cent of the country’s wool and about 70 per cent of the raw silk, and also a large number of karakul skins and other items used both at home and exported to many countries.

p The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic which yields 67 per cent of the country’s cotton output is economically the most developed area of Central Asia. In the period from 1940 to 1970 industrial output in Uzbekistan increased nine times. In 1970, the Uzbek Republic alone took in 4,700,000 tons of 55 raw cotton, and will increase its production to five million tons in 1975. Today the republic accounts for 80 per cent of the total industrial output of the Central Asian Economic Region.

p Tashkent (about 1,500,000 inhabitants), capital of Uzbekistan, is the biggest industrial centre of Central Asia. Rebuilt by the whole country following a disastrous earthquake, Tashkent is now a better and a more modern city than it has ever been. It is the seat of the Lenin Central Asian State University, the first university to be established in the Soviet Eastern republics, the republican Academy of Sciences with its more than a score of research institutions and other scientific and cultural organisations.

p Over 300 large industrial enterprises have been built since the establishment of Soviet power in Kirghizia, a land of fertile pastures and vast mineral wealth. Her industrial output rose 19 times in the period from 1940 to 1970. The Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic has diversified mining and manufacturing industries, grain and animal farms. It produces more machine-tools than Kazakhstan, and is one of the biggest producers of antimony and mercury in the USSR. The capital, Frunze, is the principal industrial and cultural centre.

p Situated high in the Pamir Mountains, the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic is rich in coal, oil, lead, zinc, bismuth, tungsten, gold and other precious metals. It has developed engineering, electrical engineering, light and food industries. Industrial output in the republic increased almost 10 times between 1940 and 1970. Tajikistan’s rapidly advancing agriculture yields 11 per cent of the total Soviet cotton harvest. Other branches of agriculture are stock-breeding, viticulture, horticulture and sericulture. Formerly a small mountain village, Dushanbe is now the capital, a modern city and Tajikistan’s industrial and cultural centre.

p The Turkmenian Soviet Socialist Republic is famous for its karakul sheep, sericulture and carpets. But the principal branches of the economy are the oil, gas, chemical and engineering industries. It is a leading oil-producing area, ranking third after the RSFSR and Azerbaijan. From 1940 to 1970 its industrial output increased nearly seven times. Ashkhabad, the capital, is a communications hub and the republican seat of culture and science. Completely rebuilt 56 following the 1948 earthquake, Ashkhabad is one of the most beautiful cities in Central Asia. Krasnovodsk, a Caspian port which has a ferry service with Baku, is the centre of the Turkmenian oil industry.

p Prior to the revolution Kazakhstan was a land of nomad stock-breeding with scattered farming and occasional mines. As a result of the socialist industrialisation industrial output in Kazakhstan increased almost 19 times in the period from 1940-1970. Today the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic is an important economic area which holds a firm third place after the Russian Federation and the Ukraine for volume of industrial output.

p Non-ferrous and ferrous metallurgy, coal mining ( Karaganda) and oil extraction (Mangyshlak, Emba) are the core of Kazakhstan’s socialist economy. Other growing industries are: engineering, chemical, light and food. In 1975, Kazakhstan will produce five million tons of rolled ferrous metals, 30 million tons of oil, 94 million tons of coal, and large quantities of other items.

p The development of large tracts of virgin land in the 1960s enhanced Kazakhstan’s importance as a major grain producing area. Sheep-breeding and meat and milk production occupy a prominent place in the republic’s economy.

p Alma-Ata, capital of Kazakhstan, is an important industrial, scientific and cultural centre of the republic.

p The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic is a large economic region. Before the revolution the economy of Byelorussia was in a state of stagnation owing to her geographic position between the competing industrial areas of Moscow, Petrograd (now Leningrad) and Warsaw. In Soviet times her proximity to the industrial centres of the Soviet Union has been utilised to promote the all-round development of her socialist economy. By 1940 the volume of industrial output in the republic had increased 700 per cent compared with the 1913 level.

p The nazi invasion and the damage sustained in the Great Patriotic War threw the republic’s economy back to the 1913 level. Out of its 9,000,000 inhabitants, more than two million were killed and about 500,000 were driven to slave labour in nazi Germany.

p With the assistance and the support of fraternal Soviet republics, Byelorussia healed her war wounds within a short 57 space of time and swiftly rehabilitated her economy. In 1970 industrial output in the republic was 12.5 times higher than in 1940. Byelorussian manufactured goods are delivered to all the Union Republics and exported to more than 80 foreign countries.

p The most important branches of Byelorussia’s industrial complex are industries manufacturing tractors, motorcycles and motor scooters, metal-cutting machine-tools, heavy lorries, radio and TV sets, mineral fertiliser and synthetic fibres.

p In addition to a powerful industry, the republic has a highly-developed agriculture specialising in the production of potatoes and flax. Byelorussia is also a major producer of meat and animal products.

p About 500,000 specialists with a higher and secondary specialised education are employed in the republic’s economy.

p Of the cities which had been razed in the war and then restored, Minsk, the capital of the republic, deserves special mention. Today it has just under a million inhabitants, almost four times as many as before the war. It is one of the country’s largest industrial and cultural centres famed not only for its industrial enterprises but also for its architectural ensembles, theatres and museums.

p Situated along the southwest border of the USSR, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic has a mild and generous climate thanks to which it has become a major fruit and vine-growing area. Besides food and light industries, the republic has a diversified engineering industry manufacturing electric motors, transformers, tractors, domestic refrigerators, washing machines and other items. In 1970 the republic’s industrial output was 2.5 times greater than in 1940.

p Moldavia, where before the revolution the majority of the adult population could neither read nor write, is now a republic of total literacy. Kishinev, the capital, is its principal seat of science, culture and industry.

The constituent republics and economic regions of the USSR have a great diversity of economic and cultural features. Within the framework of a single state plan 58 determining the principal economic development trends with consideration for local conditions, all these parts of the Soviet Union are solving the practical tasks of their economic and cultural growth. The joint efforts of the republics and economic regions are augmenting the economic potential of the Soviet Union and raising the material welfare of each citizen.