The Locational Dynamics of Soviet Industry∗

Shift analytical techniques reveal two distinctive patterns of change in the location of industrial employment on a microregional scale in the USSR between 1940 and 1965. The major eastward shifts of industry between 1940 and 1955 resulted mainly from the effects of the war rather than planned development. The largest net increments between 1955 and 1965 were on the western border and in southern European Russia, with more modest increases in western Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia. Negative shifts predominated in the zone from Leningrad and Moscow through the Urals. Despite professed socialist goals of balanced economic growth in regional development and subsidization of national minorities, microregional employment inequalities still persist.