Many studies have documented the existence of spatial socioeconomic inequalities in developing nations, as well as developed, Western nations with market economies. Such spatial inequalities generally have been ascribed to deficiencies in the political, social, and economic systems prevailing in these states. Some writers have implied that under Marxist forms of socialism such inequalities would not occur and that territorial or spatial justice would prevail instead. This paper reviews evidence in recent literature bearing on the question of spatial equality and inequality in the socialist countries of the USSR and northeastern Europe, all of which profess an ideological commitment to the goal of eliminating spatial inequality. Judged from various perspectives-regional contrasts, urban-rural and urban-urban comparisons, and intraurban distinctionsthe socialist states studied exhibit marked spatial inequalities. The persistence of these inequalities can be explained in terms of the priority placed on efficiency or military security as opposed to equity in industrial location decisions, the favoring of investment in "productive sectors" rather than social infrastructure, a desire to defer urbanization costs as reflected in constraints on urban growth, the growing scale requirements of service and human welfare facilities, and the continuation of substantial differences in income for various occupation groups.What is "equitable distribution"? . . . Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "equitable" distribution? Karl Marx.We must keep in mind the diflerence between a socialist social structure in its "pure form", so to speak, and the actual social structure of a concrete socialist organism. 0. I. Shkaratan.If it's bad in Moscow, it's worse in the provinces. N. S . Khrushchev. SSUES of social and economic inequality,
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Clark University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic Geography. Internal migration as revealed in the Soviet Census of 1970 is heavily biased toward urban areas and certain economically and environmentally attractive regions such as the Central Industrial Region and the Ukrainian South. The earlier heavy migrant flows into Kazakhstan and the Central Asian Republics have reversed to the point where net out-migration is now characteristic of the region. The eastern regions of the country, the Siberias and the Far East, are involved heavily in migrant flows-West Siberia continues to experience negative migrant balances while East Siberia and theFar East enjoy small, but important, positive balances. The USSR is divided into two types of regions, economically developed and less developedagrarian, and it is shown that the former type attracted migrants because of living conditions whereas the latter were net losers of migrants. Inmigration to the less developed, agrarian regions, however, is related to regional wage differentials. The results of the analysis raise a number of questions concerning the effectiveness of Soviet policies to direct migration flows within the country.
This paper discusses the formal characteristics of spatial diffusion of demographic change from a center into a region. A procedure proposed for testing hypotheses concerning its empirical occurrence is applied to ascertaining occurrence and modalities of spatial diffusion of demographic change in two regions of the USSR centered at Moscow and Leningrad. Evidences of diffusion of fertility declines were found in both regions, of death rate declines in the Leningrad but not in the Moscow region, and of increases in divorce rates in the Moscow but not in the Leningrad region.large body of literature on spatial diffu-A sion, particularly the diffusion of innovations, investigates the mechanism of spatial spread of various kinds of phen0mena.l For geographers the most noteworthy works are the empirical and theoretical studies of the Swedish school led by Hagerstrande2 In Hagerstrand's formulation, the adoption of innovations results from a learning or persuasion process. A stream of messages emitted by adopters overcomes the "resistance to change" of potential adopters and turns them
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