Article
Сельские регионы российского Севера: что в будущем?
This reader contains a collection of scientific works, speeches given at various conferences, Internet-based articles and other works thematically related tothe Ugory project carried out by the Society of Professional Sociologists (SoPSo). Such issues as the current state of rural communities in the Near North of Russia, the protection of the natural environment and cultural heritage, the natural reproduction of capital, the prospects of migration of the urban'creative class' to the countryside and its subsequent work in a remote access are discussed in this reader. The collection of scholarly works has aninterdisciplinary character and brings together social scientists, economists, social geographers, specialists in the field of public administration, as well asevolutionary biologists and ecologists. In the articles of this reader, the prospects of development of the Near North of Russia, especially the Kostroma region, are explicitly outlined. The reader is intended for scientists in related disciplines, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the residents of the Middle North of Russiawho are interested in the future of their region.
This article defines the framework for identifying social and economic challenges that the timber industry currently faces in the regions of Northern European Russia. The analysis of identified problems on a regional and local scale for the case of Kostroma oblast is presented. The main institutional shifts during the
1990s–2000s are discussed, along with economic problems of regional timber industry systems and their social implications, as well as how companies and rural communities of Kostroma oblast have adapted to the challenges of the ongoing economic recession in 2009.
Nikita Pokrovsky's team is conducting a research in the Russian region of Kostroma, with a population of 800,000. Its main agricultural products are dairy, flax, rye, and timber (70 percent of its territory is virgin forest). Pokrovsky noted that the Soviet era chemical plants in Kostroma went out of business, leaving Kostroma's environment as the region's main asset. The conclusion of the research team was that the process of "cellular globalization" is subtly but inexorably changing the region's population despite its seeming isolation from the global trading system. Cellular globalization refers to the emergence of internalized changes within the individual attributable to the effects of globalization. Pokrovsky notes that almost every family in the region's rural areas has relatives in the regional capital of Kostroma, Moscow, or St. Petersburg, and that extended network is carrying the influences of globalization back to the Russian heartland. This process is slowly changing traditional rural attitudes towards wealth-more rural residents are placing greater importance on wealth than in the past, according to the group's research. Another result is a narrowing of accepted community interest in individuals. According to Pokrovsky, this takes the form of an erosion of social mores and respect for law, a reduction in accepted cultural demands limiting individual behavior, increased moral relativity, and a lack of respect for history and tradition. There is an overall marked increase in consumerism and interest in the virtual world of celebrity and mass media at the expense of traditional social values. The effects of globalization will not be limited to the internal lives of the residents of Kostroma, predicted Pokrovsky. The era of diverse, small-scale agriculture within the region that support networks of rural villages is over. Likewise, the Soviet era of thickly concentrated infrastructure in Kostroma, such as the Soviet chemical plants, is past. Pokrovsky suggested that new urban-rural aggregations would come to support each other in the formation of new communities. The economic basis of these communities will include niche agriculture (such as tourism or organic agriculture), regulated hunting and fishing resorts, and local handicrafts.
We address the external effects on public sector efficiency measures acquired using Data Envelopment Analysis. We use the health care system in Russian regions in 2011 to evaluate modern approaches to accounting for external effects. We propose a promising method of correcting DEA efficiency measures. Despite the multiple advantages DEA offers, the usage of this approach carries with it a number of methodological difficulties. Accounting for multiple factors of efficiency calls for more complex methods, among which the most promising are DMU clustering and calculating local production possibility frontiers. Using regression models for estimate correction requires further study due to possible systematic errors during estimation. A mixture of data correction and DMU clustering together with multi-stage DEA seems most promising at the moment. Analyzing several stages of transforming society’s resources into social welfare will allow for picking out the weak points in a state agency’s work.