Spatial Dimensions of Gorbachev's Economic Strategy

Emerging regional implications of the Gorbachev economic policy are outlined through examination of guidelines of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan and geography's role in it, and the cancellation and slowdown, respectively, of north-south water transfer schemes and BAM-AYaM railroad construction efforts. Fusion of growth pole concepts with tenets of dialectical materialism provides a theoretical justification for concentration of investment and R&D activity in the European USSR, although relative underdevelopment of Soviet innovation diffusion theory leaves a meager framework for guiding the subsequent dissemination of new equipment and technologies. Impacts of the new Enterprise Law of June 30, 1987 are not yet clear.