Old Industrial Regions: Identification, Kinds and Perspectives of “New Industrialization”

Abstract

About 40% of Russian regions can be referred to old industrial ones and technological advantages of most of them are being lost due to scientific-and-technological advance as well as structural changes; and structural reforms in these regions are being slowed down due to the deficiency of financial resources and irrational planning. Today old industrial regions of Russia make up a significant heterogeneous group of regions which got their industrial specialization in 1930-1950s and include mostly rearguard industries of I−IV technological waves which predominance keeps them at the stage of industrial development. Many old industrial regions obtained features of territories of concern, depressive territories; and their space localization determined their specifics: the group of the central regions can be characterized by the lack of highly-qualified specialists, low rate of renovation of productive capacities as compared to the demands of local economy, decreasing number of population, aggravating environmental problems; while old industrial regions of the Volga region can be characterized by insufficient transport and energy infrastructure, high rate of fixed assets depreciation. Today neo or reindustrialization of old industrial regions aimed at restoration of the real sector dominating role should become one of the strategically important priorities of the state regional policy. The old industrial regions of 1-4 classes have perspectives of being developed as industrial territories for which can be applied either the strategy of new industrialization (1-2 classes) or the strategy of reindustrialization (3-4 classes) that can lead in a middle-term perspective to decreasing number of industrial regions. The real perspective of old industrial regions of 5-6 classes is deindustrialization, developing service sector.