When people, especially foreigners, think of one-sixth of the world's land mass, they overwhelmingly tend to focus on Moscow, extrapolating the specifics of one of Europe's largest and most expensive metropolises on to the rest of the country. Or we brush away the regions with a series of glum stereotypes from the Western press. On the face of it, it turns out we really don't know Russia - its regions - nearly as well as we should.
Potatoes, for instance. "Potatoes have grown in demand as people make more money," says Ryazan regional governor Oleg Kovalev, who met with journalists to talk about his province's most recent developments on Monday. "People have stopped growing them in their back yards and started buying them." So prized are the potatoes that market venders in Moscow often sell their produce under the Ryazan label even if the potatoes are from somewhere else.
Indeed, everything from agriculture to retail investment was the subject of a series of talks with regional heads that started last week at RIA Novosti. As the global financial crisis gained momentum in Russia, questions regarding the rapid development the regions have grown all the more pressing.
Amid rising prices for grain and food that became apparent months before the global crisis hit Russia, the predominantly agrarian province of Ryazan, which neighbors the Moscow Region to the southeast, bears a special burden. According to Kovalev, the region boasted a record harvest in 2008, producing 1.8 million tons of grain, well above anything it has seen in the last 15 years. Moreover, the area of the harvest was twice as large as 15 years ago, Kovalev said. As for potatoes, Ryazan harvested 38.5 metric tons per hectare over 2008. Asked how this affected prices for bread, Kovalev admitted that they had actually risen, but explained that in the region they were not particularly high to begin with.
Investments have grown as well in 2008, with 31 billion rubles ($1.1 billion), over 30 percent growth since 2007. Real incomes have grown by 16.5 percent, with the average monthly income currently standing at 12,000 rubles (about $433). "We still have a lot to do in getting the salaries out of the shadows," Kovalev said, referring to the widespread practice of declaring a nominal salary and paying the rest in cash. "Unemployment has not yet affected the region, but there is some concern as a few poor performing enterprises were forced to shut down."
Transportation infrastructure was among the top priorities for Kovalev's government. "Without good roads, it's impossible to talk about developing tourism and business," he said. He outlined a number of plans for easing traffic in the region's capital, Ryazan, but admitted that the population has yet to feel the effects of policies aimed at improving the region's roads.
If getting from one place to another was still a problem for a Central Russian province, imagine the trouble for remote regions, like South Siberia's Republic of Tyva, which borders Mongolia to the south. "I had to drive 400 kilometers just to get to the airport," Tyva Prime Minister Sholban Kara-Oola said at a meeting with journalists last Thursday. For Russia's youngest subject (the Soviets annexed it in 1944 and China has never officially recognized Russia's claim), building roads, railroads and airports was paramount to drawing tourists to an area Kara-Oola described as "pure, untouched nature and natural resources."
"We have the entire table of the elements in our region," he said.
But interest in the region is also strategic - that is why, crisis or no crisis, the Kyzyl-Kuragina railroad is top priority. The 98 billion ruble ($3.5 billion) project will span nearly 600 kilometers, connecting Tyva with the Trans-Siberian Railroad via the Krasnoyarsk region north of the republic. The project is so vital, Kara-Oola said, that the federal government has set aside an additional 800 million rubles ($28.9 million) just to correct plans for the railroad.
As a pristine resort that rivals the neighboring Irkutsk Region with its Lake Baikal, Tyva has all the potential to become a hub for "extreme sports," the prime minister said. But first, it has to build some railroads and airports.
By Anna Arutunyan
