Ethnic Considerations in Russia

Ethnic Considerations in Russia: Russian allies or geopolitical loneliness


British geographer David Hooson’s ‘A new Soviet Heartland? (Hooson, 1964) was the intellectual origin of the Soviet Heartland, now the Russian Heartland. The idea is now highlighted, in particular the impact that recent economic, demographic, and political changes are having on Russia’s occupation of its national territory. In his analysis Hooson sought to map the Soviet Union’s eastward expansion as a counter to what he saw as the monumental vagueness that was found in Soviet and Western commentary on the Soviet Union’s Eastern regions. In the concluding section he noted the most fundamental of all the elements of national power is sheer location on the globe, which is relative to the other parts of the world and its significance changes as they change, and therefore has to be constantly reassessed (Hooson, 1964, p. 117). Sir Mackinder’s theory endowed Russia with a particular geopolitical role and his final assessment of the Soviet Heartland in 1943 was: the heartland is the greatest natural fortress on earth, for the first time in history it is manned by a garrison sufficient in number and quality. At the time of these analysis, the late 60s and 70s saw the crash development of the west Siberian oil and gas fields and the construction of a series of huge hydroelectric power stations and associated heavy industrial centres along the Angara-Yenisey river system. The 80s saw the construction of the Baykal-Amur Mainline, a railway aimed at making accessible those marginal regions of Mackinder Lenaland. There is certain irony in the fact that the population of the Soviet Union’s eastern regions peaked just as the Soviet empire collapsed. In fact, rather than strengthening the economy, the rising costs of Siberian resource development were a major cause of the economic slowdown in the Soviet Union during the 1980 (Aganbeguan, 1988). Contextually, some authors have suggested updating the Mackinder formula in the following way: “who controls the heartland possesses an efficient means to command world politics, by maintaining the geopolitical balance and the balance of power in the world.”

This is a summary to assess the geographic consequences of Russia’s recent economic, political, and demographic transformation, during 1989 - 2002, for the effective occupation of its national territory. However, rather than focusing on state power, there has been a concern for how the critical points of the Russian state, despite its current desire to recentralize, is creating political, economic, and social tensions within the country. Clearly, politics in post communist societies is in large measure a politics of identity. As ideas seem constantly to be crippled by the weight of references to points elsewhere - the Russian past - leading to rejection of what may be of significance for the solution of practical problems. Public opinion was given little hold on the formation of leading ideas in Russian society. There appeared to be deep divisions and uncertainties about the desirable course of affairs. A study of the structure of political beliefs, using research material gathered in the period from April to May 1992, revealed how strong doubts concerning economic and political reform were existed among ordinary Russians.(1) The average score on these reform aims was about 5 (for economic reform) or 6 (for political reform) on a scale from 0 to 10 with 10 being complete agreement. A substantial difference was revealed between the answers from mass and elite respondents. The political elite more positively embraces ideas of political and economic reform (scoring on average one point higher) than does the public. Democratic principles, however, are more equally and positively appraised by both groups (with scores well over 7).

This also goes for nationalistic attitudes which often prove to endanger democratic practices! National identity, the question of what and who is Russian, has never found a straightforward answer. That more than one early variant of national consciousness has been distinguished is symptomatic for the fissures in Russia’s socio-political structure. One interpretation of identity focused on the political ideology of the state, another was based on popular ethno-religious identity, and a third originated among the intelligentsia.(2) the intelligentsia tried various solutions to the problem of Russian identity without referring either to the autocratic regime or to Orthodox religion. This movement often sought the idea of Pan-Slavism or Russian cultural chauvinism. It can be traced back to the expeditions of geographers to the Amur river in the 1840s to bring civilisation to Asia.

The geographical (geopolitical) setting of the Russian state seems to pose problems of identity. These doubts were repressed at the time of the Soviet Union, when the empire was kept together by military might and an inward-looking orientation. The terms East and West at that time only referred to the ideological struggle of the Cold War. But since the take off of Perestroika they have gradually come to denote a geopolitical confrontation between western Europe and the Far East in which Russia becomes either a part or a mediator. Those who continue to believe in Russia’s great power status have problem of choice or priority. As Leonid Abalkin has stated: The geopolitical position of Russia makes a multi-directional orientation of its foreign policy and its inclusion in all enclaves of world society an objective necessity. Any attempt to put at the head of the list its relations with one side or group of countries is contrary to its state and national interest.

None of the visions is limited to the territory which is currently called the Russian Federation. Even Solzhenitsyn favoured a Great Russian solution. The common denominator of all nationalist discourse seems to be the attribution of a non-Western identity to Russia and the avowal of the unity of the Eurasian territory, an area which more or less corresponds with pre-revolutionary empire, but which does not necessarily correspond with a unitary state. The implications of this geopolitical vision vary a lot among different opinion-leaders with a nationalistic outlook(3). At one extreme of the continuum we find those who sympathize with democratic reform but who nonetheless think that Russia still needs to exercise its authority in the ‘near abroad‘; at the other we find those who advocate the downright restoration of the former Soviet Union or who even think about more awesome imperial versions. The New Thinking paradigms of 80s suggested that military power, geopolitical expansionism and empire-building are outdated forms of international conduct; that status and power in international affairs are determined by economic efficiency and human resources; and that interest have to be promoted through multilateral approaches and participation in international institutions. Russian after all, would never be reduced to a really small territory, it would remain the dominant member by far in any conceivable Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

The legacy of Russia’s ethno-territorial federal structure which is part of the Soviet inheritance that reified primordial ethnic identities as permanent and unchangeable, has left Russia with little choice but to adopt federal structure that replicated the soviet ethno territorial system. Russia is a multi ethnic country where significant numbers believe self determination rights are collectively engendered by ethno cultural features. In this context a strong civic identity would serve to legitimize the political authority of the state leadership and the country’s borders. In its absence, a substantial part of the body politic may perceive an alternative identity conception as a more legitimate vehicle of self determination. In Britain, ethnic Welshness, Englishness, and Scottishness are all politicized to a degree, but a clear hierarchy defers the ethnic to the civic, and places civic Britishness above all three. In Russia, by contrast, the civic ideal is barely accepted by the state leadership, let alone the population, and a huge number of different identity conceptions, each related to different territorial configurations, jostle for hierarchical supremacy, implicitly (or explicitly in Chechnya) challenging the legitimacy of both political authority and territorial borders.
Identity conceptions in Russia operate at a variety of spatial scales; they can be primarily civic, ethnic, or regional but all have an integral territorial dimension. Some of those identity arenas inhabit a space larger than the state, be they anti national for instance, global, supra-national (Orthodox, Islamic, or Soviet), or trans-national (Eastern-Slavic, pan-Mongolian, or Eurasian). Others settle within the boundaries of the state (sub-national), and may be intra-regional (Siberian or North Caucasian), singularly regional (Tatarstani or Muscovite), or sub regional (Cherkess or Lezgin). Many of these identity conceptions crosscut one another and, to varying degrees, the boundaries of the Russian civic conception.

During the first decade after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, geopolitics in Russia was almost monopolized by the national patriots and left wing activists. The neo-Eurasian school has created most concern in the media, had strongly criticized the process of economic and cultural globalization and view the general adoption of liberal democratic procedures and principles in Russia as imposed by west. The neo-Eurasianists remain a small group of intellectuals and have little chance to promote themselves into an influential social movement, because, first, it is impossible to mobilize the Russian population on the basis of huge utopian projects, as was the case in the late 1920s and to lesser extent after World War II. In May 1998, about two-thirds of the all-Russian Centre of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) respondents to a national survey declared that their family affairs were closer to them than the health of the country.

Currently there is the feeling that stability in Central Asia, which is possibly threatened by Muslim fundamentalism, is a common interest of both Russia and China. For the Caucasian region, Russian interference entails much more than the reaction to imaginary security threats. Russia’s alleged involvement in the Azerbaijan’s President Election (1993) when building a pipeline in collaboration with Turkey was apparent, Russian support for the secession of Abkhazai from Georgia, and the dramatic repression of the Chechnya revolt suggest that the most sensitive geopolitical nerves are indeed to be found in this region (4). In any case, Russian geopolitics seems to be blending with the changing international reality, the emergence of Asia and Europe as separate economic entities, and Russia’s economic dependency on the global economy, as well as with Russia’s internal east ward shift.

The potential strength of ethnic identities in Russia had previously raised concerns that the federation might collapse in a manner similar to the Soviet Union, and have reinforced the perception that ethnicity provides the crucial identity challenge to a Russian civic national idea. Indeed the threat to state cohesion and stability that non-Russian ethnic groups appear to pose undoubtedly played some role in the decentralized asymmetric federalism that developed under Yel’tsin. Constitutional asymmetry granted additional rights to the republics to determine their own form of state power (mostly elected but authoritarian presidents), adopt their own constitutions and laws, and so on, while a series of bilateral agreements further reinforced and codified this formal asymmetry and granted concessions in areas such as self-government, tax and export contributions, natural resource ownership, selection of judiciary and procuracy, the stationing of conscripts, republican “citizenship,” and cultural-linguistic rights.

Ethnic Russians make up nearly 18 percent of the population of the near abroad. The types of national and ethnic self identification among Russians mostly depends on the localization, the age and the origin of their groups. In most of Ukraine and Transdniestria (a part of Moldova with a predominantly Russian speaking population which proclaimed its independence in 1990), Russians’ identity is complicated, ambiguous and eroded, in the Baltic countries, west Ukraine and most of Moldova their identity is marked by a certain inferiority complex; in Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan and central Asia it is based on a high self estimation. The identity of Russians who resettled from Russia to the countries of the far abroad is not shaped yet. They feel by intuition the need for the restoration by Russia of the role of a great power, which could raise their status, the respect of local dwellers and diminish th necessity in the creation of a true diasporas. An analysis of six waves of Russian emigration allows us to come to the conclusion that a high educational and intellectual level was the main feature of Russian communities abroad. It was typical of emigration during the first years after the 1917 revolution. The quality of human capital from Russia was as a rule supported by the contemporary brain drain.

The religious factor becomes more relevant for the geopolitical situation of Russia. A particular place in the formation of the Russian political space belongs to the Russian Orthodox church ROC, which plays a very important role in the Orthodox world. The ROC remains a spiritual and institutional force still uniting Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Besides, in many states of the near abroad especially in the Baltic countries and in Central Asia, parishes of the ROC assume the functions of a kind of ethno cultural centre consolidating a considerable part of the Russian population. The ROC is an international social institution and acquires a more and more active role on the political scene in Russia and in other CIS countries as well as outside her borders. Islam is the second religion of Russia by number of believers. Today, the Muslim factor is always present both in domestic and foreign policy. It is difficult to estimate it exactly, because it is often supposed that all members of traditionally Muslim ethnic groups living in Russia are Muslim believers. Anyway, the ratio of Muslim groups in t he total population of Russia is constantly growing. It is necessary to take into account huge ethno cultural and regional differences inside the Muslim community, which consists of 40 ethnic groups speaking various languages and having different cultures. In the late 80s, Russia took the way of religious revival. Despite the importance of its real consequences, a clear system of relations between the state and Churches has not yet been created. The position of the ROC in Russian politics is not strictly defined, as well as a possible role for religion in the formation of the new Russian national political ideology.

All things being equal, it appeared that ethnicity, and more specifically republican status, could be used to win certain privileges and rights. However, the reality was of all things unequal, from economic capacities and resources, religious-cultural traditions, and ethnic and other demographics, to geographical location and elite relations. Among all these factors of asymmetry, institutionalized constitutional status based on ethnic self-determination was but one bargaining tool. Moreover asymmetry abounded, not just between the republics and oblasts, but among the republics themselves. The fact that all republics were not party to bilateral treaties indicated that ethnicity alone was not the only issue. Rather economic factors figured heavily in Russian federal asymmetry and less impoverished regions, especially those possessing substantial natural resources, were able to win more concessions from the federal government. In particular, Tatastan, Baskortostan, and Sakha (Yakutia), all identified as resource regions each were able to use their economic strength to negotiate advantages denied to others.

To assess how the distribution of economic activity was affected means comparing statistics generated by the Soviet planned economy of early 90s with those now being produced to measure Russia’s market economy. There are also concerns about the role of the shadow economy, the distorting effect of domestic prices in comparison to world prices, and the impact of certain tax management schemes, such as transfer pricing. Finally, the high inflation environment of the 90s further requires the use of value based time series data, making it more sensible to use physical measures such as employment and actual volumes of goods produced, although the latter is problematic in the service sector.

Between 1990 and 98, the years of the financial crisis, Russia’s industrial production fell by more than 50%; and its GDP fell to about 60 % of its peak in 1989 (Maurseth, 2003 p.1167). However since 1998 the economy has staged an impressive rebound. In the five years between 98 and the end of 2003 the economy grew by 38%, and unemployment has fallen from 18% in 98 to around 8% (OECD, 2004; World Bank 2004). Direct foreign investments which is the most important for its revival, are distributed by territory extrely unevenly. Western European countries are the main investors, and the share of the countries involved with highest investment were Germany, US, France, and UK - with respectively 34.3, 15.5, 15.0 and 12.7 percent.

Regions benefiting from a market oriented recovery, manufacturing, particularly in the food processing industries have emerged as new centres of growth in European Russia, while the resource sector remains the engine of recovery. Official data suggest that the industrial economy has declined and Russia’s service economy has expanded. More specifically, industry’s share of GNP (in 2000 prices) fell by 38.6% in 1990 to 32.5% in 2001 (Dynkin 2002, p.54), while the share of employment in industry decreased from 30.3 % in 1990 to 22.5% in 2002 (World Bank, 2004, pp 76-77). Conversely, employment in market services increased 16.7% in 1990 to 26.6% in 2002. The World Bank (2004) reassessed the value of Russia’s resource production, and as a result the share of industry in GDP in 2003 increased to 41%, while the share of services declined to 46 percent. Consequently the manufacturing economy has experienced limited recovery, while the resource economy experienced less significant decline and recently has exhibited appreciable growth. This differential performance has important geographical consequences, witnessing significant changes in the distribution of population. The clear imbalance between territory and population indicates the core accounting for 30.2 % of Russian territory, but 73.8% of economic activity in 2001. The northern and eastern differentiation in terms of GRP per capita points to the increased significance of the resource sector, which dominates those regions, as well as their relatively sparse population. Perhaps of greater significance are the lower levels of economic activity that dominate Russia’s southern borders and the European core region. The southern borders have been the destination of migrants from the bordering post Soviet states and these regions are among the poorest in Russia. The same can be said for the southern regions of the Volga, Urals, and Siberian districts. The dominance of the European regions is due to the overwhelming economic significance of Moscow and the contribution of major industrial city regions, such as St Petersburg, Samara, and Yekaterinburg, while the economic recovery has been mostly achieved by resource production in populated northern and eastern regions. Hooson identified the core of the soviet state as being in the south of European Russia, he observed a tendency for t his to extend latitudinally eastwards from the Volga into central asia and Siberia. This volga Baikal zone, which he whimsically thought might be either a coffin shaped or a crib shaped axis, possessed considerable natural resources was rapidly urbanising and was held together by the line of the trans-Siberian railway. By the 1960s it had become a powerful magnet for soviet economic development, and as a consequence the centre of gravity of the soviet union had moved decisively eastwards. Hooson saw the volga Baikal zone as having the marks of a real continental stronghold.

A significant share of GRP is coming from natural resource-based such as oil, gas, metals, gold and diamonds. In 2003 oil and gas alone accounted for 54% of Russia’s exports by value together with other resources up to 67% (OECD, 2002, p. 35). In 2003, 37% of government revenues originated from hydrocarbons (World Bank, 2004, p.8).

Putin has prioritized stability and control over freedom and democracy, in particular where the latter could allow the revival of anti-Russian ethno-nationalism. Authoritarianism seems to be a lesser evil than ethno-nationalism, from the perspective of stability at least. Allowing stable authoritarian elites - most notably in Kalmykia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, and Bashkortostan (Hahn, 2003, p. 116) - to retain power, served Putin’s goal of stability well. The existence of well-established authoritarian leaderships, loyal to Putin, in potentially volatile ethnic republics, arguably went some substantial way toward containing the potential political impact of any ethno-centric backlash to Putin’s recentralizing efforts and his assault on republican sovereignty. The Southern Federal District with external borders and majority ethnic populations, tend to be the poorest in Russian, such that in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kalmykia more than 60% live below the subsistence level (Ross and Sakwa, 1999). Add to this that the North Caucasus republics face critical issues arising from the Chechen conflict such as weapons proliferation, terrorism, and refugees. However, because these republics are not the most vocal, Putin has been able to allocate resources and favours to them using a nuanced approach, under the cover of fiscal redistribution, equalization, and poverty alleviation to maintain stability and cohesion without explicitly appearing to privilege ethnicity or Islam.

In Tatarstan it is a broadly civic identity that seeks to avoid alienating the many ethnic peoples of the republic, while at the same time being built around markers that relate most closely to Tatar ethnicity, culture, language, and history. Perhaps because it is able to use Moscow as the ‘other,’ therefore better able to unify all its citizens at a regional level. Ethnic Tatar may view the region as homeland to Tatars dispersed throughout the Russian Federation and even beyond, or may see Kazan as a special historical centre not just for ethnic Tatars or residents of Tatarstan but those in the entire Volga-Ural region, including peoples of Tatar, Bashkir, Russian, Chuvash, Mordovian and Udmurt ethnicity. Another emergent regional identity is apparent in Dagestan. As home to more than 30 ethno-linguistic groups, a myriad of potentially conflicting ethnic identity conceptions compete and yet Dagestan remains united administratively and in its relation to the centre. It is noted that the very intricacy of Dagestan’s ethnic structure has inhibited radicalism and encouraged the de-ethnification of politics. There is an increasing tendency in Dagestan, and perhaps in other North Caucasian republics, to present themselves monolithically in their dealings with the federal centre effectively subordinating ethnic, ideological, and political differences to the region in opposition to the national (Ware and Kisriev, 2001, p. 117). For many Dagestani citizens the most immediate threat to Dagestani security lies with Chechnya. This ties the poverty stricken region in addition to the material and economic incentives to Russian Federation.
Outside the republics, some of the most vocal support for regional autonomy has come from the Far East, particularly for its isolation from the centre, in terms of distance and living conditions. A broad Siberian regional identity has long existed, exhibiting a sense of otherness from the rest of Russia (Huges, 1994, p. 1147) and based not only on economic motivations but on Siberian cultural distinctiveness.

Russia is a huge country with very low and very uneven population densities. Population decline in excess of 10 % was recorded in 23 regions, often in source regions for large-scale out migration, such as in Siberia, the Far East, and the European North. Internally the dominant migratory trend has been the much noted migration from northern and eastern Russia westward and southward. Except for Chinese flows into the far east, internal and external, both legal and illegal, in-migrants tend to head for the same destination regions, most notably to major urban centres in European Russia, which seem to afford the best living conditions and employment opportunities. It is estimated that as many as half of all migrants have settled in Moscow. Many external in-migrants from the CIS states have also settled along Russia’s southern tier, bordering key departure states such as Kazakhstan and those in Transcaucasia (Heleniak, 1997, p.90). Such movements have had a significant impact on the ethnic composition of the population such regions.
Fertility rates exhibit pronounced regional variation as well, although they are now less significant than in the 60s and 70s, when they ranged from an average of 1.4 children per woman in Moscow to 4.9 children in Dagestan. However, as the number of women aged 29-29 declines, especially from 2007 onwards, regional disparities may be increasingly important in determining population growth differentials, as certain regions experience sharper fertility declines than others.

Data relating to nationality composition from the 2002 census do point to two concurrent and significant trends. First, faster growth rates among ethnic especially Islamic groups, natural population decline in many traditionally Russian regions, out migration from the ethnic republics by ethnic Russians, as well as ethnic reidentification are all contributing to an increase in the concentration of ethnic groups in their home republics; this is causing some degree of un-mixing of Russia’s peoples, reinforcing the correlation between region and ethnicity. Of Russia’s 21 ethnic republic, all but five have since 1989 have registered a decline in the percentage of the population self identifying its nationality as Russian. Such changes may alter regional political or labour balance while increasing homogenization of Russians and non-Russians within different regions could leave increasingly concentrated ethnic minorities feeling disenfranchised from a national political stage dominated by a Russian ethno centric elite. There is already, for example, a major lack of central representation for the largest non-Russian groups and for the Muslim population in general (some 14 million citizens).

Conversely, in some of Russia’s most populous and economically powerful southern European regions, demographic changes are producing increasingly multi cultural populations - most obviously, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which have both experienced a decline of between 4 and 5 % in the share of Russians relative to non-Russians. This is potentially beneficial for the development of more inclusive identity conceptions.

As a result of t he complex interaction of the economic, political and demographic dimensions there is a challenge namely Russia’s fragile borderlands. In 1991 around 27 of Russia’s regions suddenly became international frontiers of the Russian Federation. Russia now has the world’s longest land border of 14,509km and in total 35 of its regions share a frontier with 14 foreign states. The problem is not so much the extent of the border, although that is undoubtedly a challenge, but the fact that many of those border regions are demographically stressed and economically underdeveloped. This is particularly true of the southern border regions in the Southern, Volga, Urals, Siberian, and Far East districts; these regions also include the majority of Russia’s ethnic republics. Thus, the greatest threat to Russia’s territorial integrity does not come from the landlocked and resource rich republics such as Tatarstan, , Bashkortostan and Sakha, but from the impoverished republics of the Southern Federal district. The fact that Russia’s borderlands comprise some of the country’s poorest regions does not bode well for the establishment of an effective border regime and has obvious implications for Russia’s neighbours.

The Russian heartland of the 21st century lies on the map between the high and growing walls of its western and more populous eastern neighbours. Although the Soviet Union had ranked third in population, Russia now drops lower to eight in 2003, ninth in 2004. International forecasts for Russia are more optimistic than domestic ones. The former tend to anticipate around 118-129 million by 2050, whereas the median estimate domestically has been only 98 million in 2050. Russian Federation have passed their peaks of gigantism. For a long time Russia’s weight depended primarily on territory as the bearer of natural resources. Today, economics and technology have become more important. At present, it is the size of the economy which equals power, with a fairly limited correlation to the size of territory in terms of power. There are hopes for economic recovery and post-Soviet integration of the CIS or Eurasian Economic Community. Russia needs both a resource based and knowledge intensive economy. The heartland’s climate, location, and resource distribution have made it what it is, while at the same time the dispersal of its population in an ocean of land has resulted in the concentration of both the population and advanced economic activity closer to the archipelagos of large but widely dispersed cities. In today’s Russia, major urban centres appear to some as foreign implants; they constitute the country’s spatial elite, just as the upper class forms the social elite that resides within them.

For Russia’s nearest neighbours on the west, the European orientation does not at all necessarily contradict enjoying equal rights, mutually profitable and even friendly relations with Russia. However, a number of popular scenarios of ht edevelopment of the geopolitical situation in Europe are based on the assumption that by no means will Russia struggle for restoration of her direct political and military control over former soviet republics and central European countries. In other words, the bipolar world of the time of the cold war has been replaced by a hierarchical military political structure with the centre in Brussels and concentric strategic circles envelopes around it. Such a development would put the new independent states of central and eastern Europe in face of a wrong alternative: either civilized Europe, or the backward Asian East. The objective of Russian foreign policy appears to ensure favourable external conditions for solving internal economic and social problems and participation in the creation of the new geopolitical world order.


(1) A.H.Miller, V.L.Hesli and W.M.Reisinger, ‘Comparing citizen and elite belief systems in post Soviet Russia and Ukraine’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 1995, vol.59, pp. 1-40
(2) Keppeler, A. ‘Some remarks on Russian national identities, Ethnic groups, 1993, vol. 10, pp. 147-155. ‘The people, the intelligentsia and Russian political culture’, Political Studies, 1993, vol. 41, pp. 93-106
(3) Adomeit, H., ‘Russia as a great power in world affairs: images and reality’, International Affairs, 1995, vol. 71, pp. 5
(4) Blank, S., Russia’s real drive to the south, Orbis, vol. 39, pp. 369-86

References:
- Mackinder, H.J., 1943, The round world and the winning of the peace; Foreign Affairs, 21: 595-605
- Hooson, D. M.; A New Soviet Heatland?, Geographical Journal, 128: 19-29, 1962
- Hooson, D. M.; The Soviet Union; A systematic Regional Geography, London: Univ of London Press Ltd, 1966
- Aganbegyan, A. G., The Challenge: The economics of Perestroika. London, UK: Hutchinson, 1988
- Bradshaw, M. J. and A. I. Treyvish, Russia’s Regionsin the Triple Transition, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2000
- Bradshaw, M., and Prendergrast, J., The Russian Heartland Revisited, Eurasian Geography and Economics; Eurasian Geography and Economics Journal, Vol. 46, No 2, 2005
- Hill, F., Energy Empire: Oil, Gas and Russia’s Revival; London, The Foreign Policy Centre, 2004
- Maurseth, P.B., Divergence and Dispersion in the Russian Economy, Euroep-Asia Studies, 2003
- Dynkin, A., Does Russia Have a chance in the Global economy? Pro et kontra, 2002
- Hooson, D. M., the middle Volga - an emerging focal region in the Soviet Union, Geographical Journal, 126; 1960
- Treivish, A., A New Russian Hearland: The demographic and economic dimension; Eurasian Geography and Economics Journal, Vol. 46, No 2, 2005

- Independent Institute for Social Policy, inequality and poverty in Russia in Transition (www.socpol.ru/eng/research_projects/pdf/proj10a.pdf, 2002
- Zuercher, C., Multi culturalism and the Ethno-political Order in post Soviet Russia; Russian Politics and Law 38, 2000
- Economic and Social Research Council, ESRC, UK, www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk
- Dijkink, G., National Identity and Geopolitical Visions; Routledge publishing, 1996 (Q577)
- Braden, K.E.(Seattle Pacific Univ), and Shelley, F.M., (Southwest Texas State Univ), Engaging Geopolitics; Pearson Education Limited (Q573)