1. Introduction
Russia’s vast geographical terrain and extreme seasonal changes mean that having functional domestic transport networks (seti) has always been crucial both for connecting the country internally and for promoting trade with international partners. As a country reliant on the extraction and export of natural resources such as oil, gas and coal, Russia must reliably convey these products across large swathes of territory to ensure GDP growth and economic security. This imperative presents both a problem and an opportunity for the Moscow-based political leadership.
As serious political disagreements with the West continue, Russia is attempting to position its Far Eastern region as a logistics hub that will support and exploit China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and facilitate closer links to Asia and Europe. For this agenda to succeed, an efficient transport infrastructure must be in place. However, as this paper will show, there are serious inadequacies in Russia’s existing infrastructure in the Russian Far East (RFE) and eastern parts of Siberia. While the authorities have acknowledged the problem, and have increasingly apportioned funds to address it, the challenges are structural and clearly go beyond mere budget allocation. Without more substantive progress, the country is likely to be impeded from further forging political and economic links with its Asian trade and investment partners.
Much academic attention has focused on Russia’s so-called ‘pivot to the east’; its military and political alliances with rising powers such as China; and its attempts more broadly to recruit Asian countries into coalitions against the West.1 (A deep analysis of this context is beyond the scope of this paper.) Russia’s cultivation of political and economic ties with countries such as India, Vietnam and Japan2 is long-standing, but has been given fresh impetus by the deterioration in diplomatic relations between Russia and the West. The introduction of Western sanctions in 2014 – following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military intervention in eastern Ukraine – has obliged Moscow to seek alternative trade partners, and to redirect its trade links from west to east.3 This shift has added urgency to the Kremlin’s desire to promote the economic development of the RFE to potential partners such as Japan, India and South Korea.
The Kremlin’s own focus on the RFE is not new. Successive Soviet governments expressed interest in cultivating the region and in encouraging – or forcing4 – various groups of citizens to relocate there and develop the land.5 Such efforts met with limited success. One of the greatest challenges for Moscow is that most of Russia’s human and political resources, including the Kremlin itself, are located in the west of the country. Most of the population is concentrated west of the Ural mountain range. Few roads and railways link the eastern and western parts of the country, and the vast majority of Russia’s gas pipeline infrastructure was built with a European market in mind.6 This concentration of people, resources and power in one space has meant that the RFE has for years been underfunded and underpopulated.
Russia’s ability to advertise itself as a viable transport hub and source of exports is hindered by the poor connections between its roads, railways, airports, ports and maritime infrastructure. According to the government’s official Transport Strategy, which runs to 2030, around 15 million people (10 per cent of the population) are cut off from transport networks in certain seasons, and more than 46,000 settlements in the RFE and Siberia are not connected to the broader road system.7 As this study will show, these and other weaknesses – particularly in rail, bridge and port infrastructure – have economic implications, limiting Russia’s ability to export raw materials and products or to re-orientate itself towards Asian markets.
A World Bank report in 2011 highlighted the important role that reducing ‘spatial inefficiency’ would play in boosting Russia’s economic competitiveness.8 A combination of long distances and an inhospitable climate raises transport and production costs while impeding economic development. According to the report, a further complication is the sparse distribution of Russia’s population – more so than in other ‘vast’ countries such the US, Canada, Australia and China. While more than two out of every three Australians and Canadians live in one of their country’s largest three cities, only one of every eight Russians live in Moscow, St Petersburg or Nizhny Novgorod.9 To help overcome these challenges, the authors of the World Bank report proposed that policymakers increase ‘spatial connectivity’ through significant investment in infrastructure, including in ‘roads, railways, airports, harbours, and communication systems that facilitate the movement of people, goods, services, and ideas locally, nationally, and internationally’.10
While the term ‘infrastructure’ can relate to numerous spheres of activity, from urban development to waste management, this paper confines its definition to four core sectors identified in the World Bank report – roads and bridges, railways, airports, ports – while also making reference to energy transport infrastructure. These sectors all consist of networks and systems that facilitate the movement of goods and people, both within Russia and to and from its external partners. Improvements (or a lack thereof) in this infrastructure can be viewed as broadly indicative of the level of socio-economic development and modernization.11 However, not all infrastructure development is of equal economic value: as this paper will demonstrate, the upgrading of airports and roads tends to fulfil a social function, i.e. as a means of bringing the population together. On their own, airports and roads contribute little to the expansion of trade with Asian partners.
In this paper, we consider the condition of Russia’s transport infrastructure, particularly in the RFE, and assess the prospects for improving regional connectivity within the context of Russia’s ambitions for stronger trade, economic and diplomatic links with Asian partners.
1 Bordachev, T. (2019), ‘Russia’s Turn to the East and the New Geopolitical World’, Valdai Club, 2 September 2019, http://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/turn-to-the-east-and-the-new-world-geopolitics/ (accessed 25 Jan. 2020).
2 Spanger, H.-J. (2019), ‘Russia’s Turn to the East – Seen From the West’, Valdai Club, 17 July 2019, http://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/russia-s-turn-to-the-east-seen-from-the-west/ (accessed 25 Jan. 2020).
3 Connolly, R. (2018), Russia’s Response to Sanctions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4 Gelb, M. (1995), ‘An Early Soviet Ethnic Deportation: The Far Eastern Koreans’, The Russian Review, 54(3), www.jstor.org/stable/131438 (accessed 27 May 2020).
5 This is discussed in Gaddy, C. and Hill, F. (2003), The Siberian Curse. How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
6 RIA Rating (2019), ‘Рейтинг регионов по демографии – 2019’ [Demographic ranking of regions – 2019], http://www.riarating.ru/infografika/20190423/630123908.html (accessed 20 Jan. 2020).
7 Ministry of Transport (2008), ‘Транспортная стратегия’ [Transport Strategy], https://www.mintrans.ru/ministry/targets/187/191/documents (accessed 5 Jan. 2020).
8 World Bank (2011), Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography, Washington, DC: World Bank, p. 8, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/863281468107678371/pdf/629050ESW0box30g0Economic0Geography.pdf.
9 Ibid., p. 10.
10 Ibid., p. 18.
11 Larkin, B. (2013), ‘The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 42 (2013), www.jstor.org/stable/43049305.