Problems of the sociodemographic development of Siberia

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the present state, dynamics, and prospects of the sociodemographic development of the Siberian region of Russia. The higher rates of a decrease in the population in this region at the beginning of the XX and the end of the XXI centuries are recognized as compared with the whole coun try. The insufficient demographic potential of Siberia for the creation of a developed economical pattern and demographic safety is described. The inefficient and lame federal socio economic and demographic politics conducted in Siberia are shown. Crisis control options are considered. We justify an agenda providing for the development of special investment facilities in Siberia, a balanced migration policy, and the development of mutually beneficial cooperation with neighboring states.

Moscow’s Great Power Dilemmas: The Role of Asiatic Russia in Russia-China Relations

“…For the Russian leadership and leading scholars, the main elements of what makes a country a great power are, especially, hard power elements (Leshchenko 2010;Shakleyina 2012). The Russian leadership follows a more realist approach in which great powers are countries that have material power and the ability to project it (Ziegler 2012).…”

“…Nevertheless, the economic liberalisation in the 1990s had a negative impact on Asiatic Russia: subsidies from the government were drastically reduced and most of the incentives to live in the region were cut (Leshchenko 2010). The transition from a Soviet, centrally planned economy to a market economy had a negative impact on Siberia.…”

“…The huge and growing imbalance between a vast resource-rich territory and the size of the population worries many in Russia. For economic and geopolitical reasons, the population decline contradicts Russian interests (Leshchenko 2010), especially in the RFE as the region is far and poorly connected to Russia's European core and uncomfortably close to the fast, dynamic Northeast Asian countries which lack some of the resources the region has in abundance. "In broader geopolitical terms, Moscow's authority continues to rest mainly on its political-military presence in the RFE-its industrial financial footprint in that part of the world is essentially insignificant" (Lee 2012).…”

“…The crises in Siberia following the demise of the USSR reversed the four-hundred-year trend of eastward migration from European Russia started by the takeover of the Khanate of Sibir by Yermak. This, in the context of the ongoing shift of the world's economic and political centre from Europe to Asia and especially in the context of the rising China, provokes serious concerns within the Russian elite that in the long term the country could begin to effectively lose economic control and sovereignty over its eastern resourcerich and vast territories (Leshchenko 2010).…”