Soviet Population Redistribution: Reassessing the Myth of the Siberian Curse

Essentially everything regarding the Russian economy and politics is traditionally explained by the qualities brought about by the country’s immense territory and severe climate. These inherited characteristics nurture a vast range of disadvantages for the Russian economy, including higher transportation costs, lower agricultural productivity, and higher energy consumption. The objective of this paper is to re-examine the trend of the average temperatures weighted by populations within territorial entities which at different times comprised the territory of imperial Russia or the Soviet Union. This metric, called temperature per capita (TPC), underpinned F. Hill and C. Gaddy’s 2003 argument about the cost of the cold being one of the decisive determinants of the irrationality of Soviet (and post-Soviet Russian) regional planning. This work employs a novel design which differs from that of Hill and Gaddy in two principal ways: it embraces a broader geographical scope (the entire pre-Soviet Russian Empire and the Soviet Union) and a wider chronological window (from the late 19th century to the end of the Soviet era). This approach allows the authors to examine the historical trends of TPC within three geographical loci: the Russian Empire/Soviet Union, non-Russia, and modern Russia. The study demonstrates that the declines in TPC were not persistent either chronologically or geographically. Overall, the declines were most pronounced between 1939 and 1959 and were essentially confined to the territory of the modern Russian Federation.Our findings call into question Hill and Gaddy's claim that the Soviet command-administrative system ushered in and perpetuated the “economy of cold” and may inspire further research on the economic effects of the Soviet planning system.