Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2018 number

The article objective is to identify main problems related to Siberia’s economic development peculiarities in the Soviet period. The research is necessary to reveal the historical experience of Siberia’s industrial development as the rear region of the USSR rich in natural and mineral resources. The paper’s problematic field includes the phased implementation of industrial programs in the Siberian region territory. The first program was the Ural-Kuznetsk project which laid the foundations for Siberia’s industrial development in the 1930s. As the project’s implementation result, hundreds enterprises were evacuated to the region from the western part of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War. The article emphasizes the events of Siberia’s industrial modernization in the post-war period as well, when implementation of the industrial programs continued in the region. In the post-war years, all endeavors of the prewar and military periods were further developed. The state strategy aimed exclusively at increasing the industrial potential of eastern regions, including Siberia. In the 1950s-1960s, energy, mining, non-ferrous metallurgy and wood chemistry, pulp-paper and other industries developed rapidly in the region. The average annual growth rate of the gross industrial output was higher in Siberia than in the USSR as a whole. In the post-war period, the military-strategic goals of Siberia’s industrial modernization remained. Plans to create new weapons types, including nuclear ones, were realized under conditions of unfolding the «cold war». The military-defense complex of the region significantly increased in such circumstances. In Siberia during the «cold war», new enterprises were built in various branches of the military-defense industry: nuclear, rocket-space, electronic, which produced the newest weapons, including rocket and missile equipment. The author concludes that the main factor of Siberia economic development was industrial modernization, which determined the state’s attitude towards the region.