Devolution - a pet Putin project - is more about
accepting an unsavory reality than about re-defining the Russian state.
The economic disparity between rural and urban is striking. The
Economist Intelligence Unit describes this chasm thus:
"The processing industry is concentrated in the cities of Moscow, St
Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod. These larger cities have
managed the transition relatively well, as size has tended to bring
with it industrial diversity; smaller industrial centers have fared far
worse. The Soviet regime created new industrial centers such as Tomsk
and Novosibirsk, but Siberia and the Russian Far Eastern regions remain
largely unindustrialised, having traditionally served as a raw
materials and energy base. Owing to the boundless faith of Soviet
planners in the benefits of scale, one massive enterprise, or a small
group of related enterprises, often formed the basis for the entire
local economy of a substantial city or region. This factor, compounded
by the absence of unemployment benefits, makes the closure of bankrupt
enterprises a politically difficult decision.
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