Historical Experience of the Modernization of Russian Society and Space

Abstract

The article is based on a broad treatment of modernization as a development based on innovations and unlimited by the New Age. The historical experience of the country has been studied from two aspects: modernization of society in space and modernization of the socioeconomic space itself. The article considers waves of expansions and contractions (in a word, pulsation) of this space, the ratio of modernization and westernization, the features of a giant country with catch-up development, historical pendulums of innovations and reforms, as well as the perception of the Russian space in the context of modernization. As a result, an attempt was made to derive some cognitive lessons of history in this context, but not instructive, not panacean. The first lesson says that modernization is not an end in itself, but an important tool for solving problems of development, and this applies not only to Russia. The second argues that the main problems of modernizing a country stem not from its size, but the friction of space, the lack of means to overcome it, or a clear and bright perspective. The third, in essence, warns against cultural and any other determinism (reductionism) in assessing the possibilities of and barriers to innovation, as well as its rigid opposition to tradition. The fourth states the variability of the modernization space: it pulsates, with alternating periods of sprawl and shrinkage, differentiation and integration. The fifth lesson is related to regionalism as a kind of social diversity, an antonym for centralism, not a synonym for separatism: it is better to reckon with it than to fight, limiting the scope of the search for modernization options. The sixth lesson boils down to the fact that limited knowledge of spatial development requires continuation of the scientific search for its patterns. Finally, the most acute, in the author’s opinion, challenges to Russia’s spatial development in the 21st century are formulated, among which the inherited, nearly perpetual, and new or growing ones are identified.

BASIC CONCEPTS, JUDGEMENTS, AND COGNITIVE PROBLEMS

Modernization has long been the subject of scientific analysis and discussion. First, let us briefly note the main milestones of this line of thinking and the contradictions inherent to it.

Its forerunners were such titans as O. Comte, G. Spencer, K. Marx, and M. Weber. In the 1950s, after a hiatus eloquently marked by world wars and the collapse of colonial systems, what is commonly thought of as modernization theory arose. T. Parsons, W. Rostow, D. Apter (1965), M. Levy, D. Lerner (1958), S. Black (1966) and other authors, most often American, addressed it with respect to underdeveloped countries, prescribing industrialization for the renewal of traditional societies, possibly under the influence of the Soviet experience. A.G. Frank (1975), I. Wallerstein (1979), R. Prebisch (1981), and other critics noted the flaws in the theory, along with the persistence dependence and backwardness of the world periphery. Closer to the 21st century, the renaissance arrived in the form of neo- or postmodernization trends. That was during the collapse of the USSR, the next stage of Russia’s “apprenticeship” and the growth of globalism. Modernization was fixed in Russian science, then in government documents as a strategic task.

The brief but rather turbulent history of this scientific concept and political course has revealed at least four fundamental problems.

(1) The narrow historical interpretation of modernization as a transition from an agrarian-feudal society to an industrial-capitalist society limits its scope to the New Age (modern era) since the 16th century in Europe and later in other countries and regions. However, this half-century-old version is too tight. The very term dates back to the early Christian era, when the opposition of modernus–anticus differentiated it from paganism. The phenomenon itself is even older. The narrow approach also cuts off postindustrial shifts, the understanding of which, in turn, is different. Terms with the prefix post (here, most likely, postmodern) have little content. Let us ask, e.g., what will happen next: postpostmodern, postpostpostmodern? Modernization is important for leading countries that are no longer agrarian: they seem to have no one to catch up to but have to fight for leadership. Problems are resolved by a broad interpretation of modernization as development based on innovation, on new models; if we consider that development should be precisely and only in this way, then this is generally a synonym for modernization. Its events will be social shifts, reforms, and revolutions of different times (Krasil’shchikov, 1998, p. 9; etc.).

(2) Ideas about modernization are closer to universalist (unilinear and globally staged) views of development than to uniqueist (cyclic theory of civilizations). Their pros and cons are known. The first approach simplifies development by seeing local trails as segments of the same path; its prescriptions treat an abstract disease, not a specific patient, sometimes crippling him. Uniqueism slips towards isolationism up to the German Sonderweg, even Nazism, to rejection of innovations, modernizations, and any universal schemes. Theorists of the 1950s–1960s believed that modernization permeates the entire depth of society, affecting everything in it, which is hardly the case. Technology, economics, politics, and culture are not equal in this respect: there are more common measures and criteria for tools of labor and war than for arts and languages. There have been attempts to combine approaches (Fedotova, 1997; Poberezhnikov, 2002; etc.). This has been suggested by the innovation wave scheme: at birth, innovations are unique; wide diffusion makes them typical, while the displacement stage makes them rare again. In this case, certain stages may predominate in space (Baburin, 2002). According to L.N. Gumilev (2001), young ethnic groups are more innovative than isolated relics.

(3) Episodes of innovative development, whether it be the renewal of a mine or an entire country, have a specific, but always spatiotemporally relative content. New technologies, especially social, sometimes swee** away obsolete ones, bring new risks. In a new round of development, what was once radicalism becomes conservatism.¹ What is new and necessary in one place is seen as obsolete and superfluous in another, while some third place is not ripe for it. Any instance of location and spatial development is the result of meeting or not meeting the demand of activity for resources and conditions with their offer of “places.”² Locational collisions vary. The choice of a country and region for some object is meaningless when there is no suitable site there. The subjective side of the matter is reflected by the well-known phrase Not in my backyard (NIMBY). If an object is desired, NIMBY turns into the hospitable Yes (YIMBY). For existing objects, a conflict between local detriment and a global effect is possible. Or the opposite could occur, where the object, vital to this place, is not needed by external markets and owners. Politicians, making modernization their slogan, often forget about this relativity and traps of catch-up development, for example, when the use of obsolete innovations leads to “running in place,” stop** or disrupting modernization, in general, to a vicious circle.

(4) Modernizations and individual innovations, like all migratory phenomena, depend on networks that affect their mobility, accessibility, perception, and acceptance or rejection. A special role is played by information flows, the entire cognitive sphere. For we act according to our ideas about the world, which include both reliable facts and myths, delusions, and prejudices, the energy of which is comparable to that of precise knowledge. Alexander the Great would not have dreamed of conquering all of Asia if he had imagined its true size. Columbus would not have set sail, knowing that from Spain to Japan it was not 5000 km, as P. Toscanelli’s map promised, but four times farther, even through the Panama Canal dug in the 20th century. Eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated the size of the Earth 17 centuries before Columbus, but he was either forgotten or not believed. The history of errors is instructive. And in our “omniscient” time, the world and views about it do not always change in tandem, although cognitive development resources are already recognized as paramount.

Let us now consider the initial tenets. First, we take a broad historical approach, equating modernization to any innovative development. Second, let us try to avoid the extremes of universalism and uniqueism. They complement each other like Yin and Yang, earth and sky, winter and summer. Is the modern the modern in Africa too? Yes and no. It is the same and not the same as in China, America, and Russia. The variety of modernizations and modernities themselves excludes any determinism (it is the same with arguments about the end of history). Third, having recognized the relativity of modernizations of different scale, we will still take them seriously. These are not just constructs and inventions, as they are sometimes considered, but the real, successful or not very, historical practice of many countries, including Russia. Fourth, let us take into account that ideas (and illusions) have their own power, which moves people no less actively than objective, material forces.

The prior issues are not exhausted on this, because modernization in the title is not alone. Historical experience, society, and space also require preliminary interpretation.

Experience is not only the history of the modernization of Russia (Rus’, Muscovy, the Russian Empire, the USSR) as such. Behind the word “experience” is the echo of “lesson.” It is difficult to claim a full-fledged explanation of history, not to mention the learning of lessons, especially for nonprofessional historians. There are no such claims. We are talking about one aspect of experience: spatial. And the lessons, if any, are hardly instructive and quite operational. More than likely, they are informative and not always unambiguous.

Of course, it is not worth imparting a special or new, “n plus 1” interpretation to society and space. It is easier to choose versions that are adequate to the task of identifying the relationships in the society–space–modernization triangle. And where there is space, there is time, which physicists and philosophers are well aware of. The triangle can be arranged in two ways, on which the type and properties of the space depend. They are as follows.

(1) Modernization of society and its parts (spheres) in geographic space, the metrics of which are set by natural parameters, starting with the cosmic. For society and its development, it plays the role of Euclidean–Newtonian space, an independent variable in classical mechanics, and in our case, the receptacle and environment of social processes, the carrier of their resources, incentives, and barriers, external to society in a sense.

(2) Modernization of a multidimensional economic–political–sociocultural space.³ This is a kind of the Descartes–Leibniz–Einstein space, formed by the process itself, its agents, course and results. Unlike the Newtonian box, it is able to bend relative to the also nonplanar and impermanent natural geo-space; it can split, merge, and pulsate (contract and expand).

The space of the first kind is more applicable. It puts the humanist on the earthly basis of development, from which people cannot “soar” too far. The second model is more complicated, but more tempting: it promises freedom of search and scientific breakthroughs. The problem lies in the metrics. The classical scholars are different. J. Thünen’s ring-shaped agricultural landscape is unlike the industrial Standort of A. Weber, derived from similar assumptions. W. Christaller’s grids, A. Lösch’s market areas, F. Perroux’s growth poles, and T. Hägerstrand’s innovation diffusion schemes format space in their own way (Fundamental’nye …, 2013, p. 192). Distances are compressed by the modernization of transport and communications, depending on their type, route, speed, tariff, and, hence, stratum of consumers. It is difficult to say without hesitation whether dense, developed, “nodal” space (as well as event-rich time) expands or narrows compared to rarefied space (calm time). And to what extent is this just a second reality, a phenomenon of mass perception. Geographers tend to believe that dense, contacting, and mobile environments produce and absorb innovations better (Baburin, 2002). However, modernization there is opposed by the powerful inertia of spatial structures, carriers of inherited paths of development.

We will operate by the best of common sense and according to the context with both combinations: modernization in and of space, especially since such a distinction is redundant for many specific cases. The development of innovations and spaces is clearly interconnected, but the links are subject to clarification. Let us agree not to go as far from the earthly foundation as G. Simmel, P. Bourdieu, K. Levine, E. Hall, M. Foucault, and V. Nalimov, whose social, psychological, or semantic spaces (environments) are more often metaphors, far from the geosphere. Meanwhile, many of its properties are directly related to the fate of modernizations, including Russian.

GAINING SPACE IN RUSSIA’S MODERNIZING ADVANCES AND FAILURES

Much has been written about the successes and hardships of the Russia’s territorial growth and the development of its “ocean of land” (a metaphor for Eurasianists, starting with P.N. Savitsky). The expansion of the Russian ecumene proceeded in different ways, by either forceful appropriation or gradual peaceful penetration. In the 19th century it has often been called colonization, but it is not quite identical to Western colonialism. The taiga wilds and expanses of the steppes, where settlers were not held back by foreign civilizations and states, are like the forests and prairies of North America, which are rarely considered colonies, despite bloody battles with its natives. Everyone there met with two typical challenges, according to A.J. Toynbee (1934): harsh nature and new lands. Although there were answers, the vast territory of the modern Russian Federation often turned out to be a modernization periphery.

The south–north development gradient has been typical of Eurasia since the Paleolithic. In times of climate change, people moved “back and forth,” south and north (Velichko, 1997), with new tools, types of dwellings, and domestications, starting with the dog. According to P.M. Dolukhanov (1979), the density of hunters and gatherers grew from 0.02–0.03 people/km² in the tundra and taiga to 0.07 in mixed forests and 0.17 in forest–steppes. In the arid steppe, it again fell to 0.08 people/km². Neolithic modernization increased it in its centers to 10 people/km², which is now acknowledged as the lower threshold for large-scale agriculture in Russia (Nefedova, 2003). For the most part, communities were pastoral. Asia Minor served as the main source of innovation; the Balkans and the Caucasus served as translators (Fig. 1). The transition from bronze to iron dragged on in northern Eurasia until the first centuries of the new era and had serious consequences. Iron was more widespread than tin and copper. Having “untethered” the nomadic tribes from the rare centers of bronze metallurgy, it influenced the eddies of great migrations. At the same time, Iranian peoples (Scythians, Sarmatians) yielded the steppes to the Turks, who became neighbors to the Slavs.

Fig. 1.

Distribution of “primary” innovations of agrarian period. Сompiled from: (Baburin, 2002, p. 159).

Rus’ received its main modernization impulses from other directions. Its fate was predetermined by two macroinnovations: the creation of the state in the 9th century and the adoption of Christianity by the 11 century. The first, according to chronicle legends, came with the Varangians from the Baltic Northwest, and the second, from Byzantium in the south. In both events, the transition “from the Varangians to the Greeks” and military power played a significant role. The latter is important in the context of modernization, as pointed out by A. Akhiezer, I. Klyamkin, and I. Yakovenko (2005, pp. 25, 79, 159).

The early states, created by fire and sword, were successful if they protected the country from strife and external threats, including by expanding borders. War hastens technical progress and economic and cultural appropriation. The numbers of conquerors and conquered and their levels of development are essential. The roots of Rurik’s Rus’ have been debated for centuries. Its small and not very “advanced” detachments mixed with Slavic and Finno-Ugric peoples quite rapidly, leaving them a ruling family, a number of names, and skills.⁴ Exacted tribute, etc., did not please local tribes (hence the legendary rebellion by Vadim and the murder of Igor by the Drevlyans), but a co-rule of cities by princes and veche councils softed the yoke along with the benefits of Greek–Varangian trade, in which up to one-third of the population was engaged.

War is bloody, sometimes it sweeps away cities and entire countries, like Khazaria in the 10th century, when Svyatoslav with the Pechenegs and Guzes destroyed its capital Itil so utterly that he “closed” Eastern innovations for Rus’ and opened the steppes to the no less dangerous Polovtsy. However, in the long line of skirmishes and raids, this is an exception. They yielded no less cultural benefits than material ones, and military victory facilitated their assimilation, saving national dignity during its risky time of studying abroad under Peter the Great (Solovyov, 1989, p. 501).

War is expensive; it may not yield any returns or may even devalue the costs, turning into an internal catastrophe. Thus, the nobles, dejected by comparison of Russia with Europe, became Decembrists after the Napoleonic wars; the wars of 1905 and 1914 led to revolutions; Afghanistan accelerated the collapse of the USSR. However, a military campaign for innovation is one of the options for catch-up development typical of countries frequently at war.

Even the christening of Rus’ could not avoid it. Basileus Vasily II married his sister Anna to Prince Vladimir on the condition he convert to Christianity and give aid with his army in the Byzantine turmoil. This helped, but the Greeks dragged out the wedding. Then Vladimir took Korsun-Chersonese from them, the place where they had brought Anna and where he himself was baptized before he baptized Kiev. So faith was “taken by force,” although it brought a flood of Greek missionaries, scribes, and architects into Rus’. On the outskirts, paganism held on for a long time, but conversion to Christianity took place and played a huge role in the cultural development of the land.

Having saddled the Greek–Varangian axis with a ridge of market towns (Gardarike, the country of cities among the Scandinavians, who considered Holmgard–Novgorod to be the main one for a long time), Rus’ more or less successfully repelled threats from the west, south and east, itself moving north, northeast in pursuit for the key export commodity, furs. The Rurikids ruled the country as a clan; the Kievan throne was usually inherited by the oldest of them, with his eldest son planted in Novgorod. The position of the two cities on waterways and boundaries of natural zones is distinguished by mirror symmetry. However, the rivers fanned out wider near Kiev, it was closer to the Greeks (the postantiquity south–north gradient still worked), and the contact between forest and steppe yielded more benefits in the exchange (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

Symmetry of positions of Kiev and Novgorod on waterways and zonal boundaries. Cartoid sketch map.

The first princes, wrote our historians, lived like wandering comets without villages and arable land, engaging in war and trade. In the 12th–13th centuries, when agriculture became stronger, the network of towns grew and domains began to be “privatized” and divided. The settling of princes in the estates led to strife, condemned in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” The path from the Varangians to the Greeks fell into disrepair, but the Volga–Oka interfluve grew. In 1169, Andrei Bogolyubsky, the first Great Russian, according to V.O. Klyuchevsky, after his army had captured Kiev, established his brother there, while he himself remained in Vladimir. This capital in the divided and later Mongol-ruled Rus’, was only symbolic. The Metropolitan moved there from devastated Kiev in 1299, and in 1325, to Moscow (Klyuchevsky, 1993, Lection 18).

Five historical all-Russian capitals make up the Kiev–Vladimir–St. Petersburg triangle (Fig. 3),⁵ with a total area of 450 000 km², the size of Sweden. The length of the sides was up to 1000 km, not so much for a country that by the 11th century occupied over 1300 km². The base of the triangle lies on the Greek–Varangian axis, 30° E. The Kiev–Vladimir side indicates the direction of the old axis of development of forest Russia, which eventually became (since the 17th century) the longest. The third side is part of the new axis and the northwest–southeast link: “From the Germans to the Tatars and Persians.” The intersection of the axes near Moscow helped its rise, and the position on the third axis (farther than timid Ryazan from the Wild Field, with its nomads, and closer to obstinate Tver) suggested to the Moscovian princes the change in policy towards the Horde that made them the tsars later.

Fig. 3.

Historical capitals of Rus’–Russia–USSR–Russian Federation, their transfers, and capital triangle.

The four main stages of the country’s history represent the four series of its expansions, followed by crisis-related failures (Fig. 4). The first failure under the Horde led to the “divorce” of the three successor nations of Ancient Rus’; its traces are still palpable. The periods of expansion are closely related to modernization. What about failure stages, e.g., modernization in the Horde style? There were innovations, and considerable ones: the skills of waging war; silversmithing (silver back then was imported); cash flow and the word dengi (money), along with a number of others; the yam (station) postal service—that of the Chingisids was the best in the world (by the way, this helped to modernize the space).

Fig. 4.

Four waves of state expansion, its axes, and extreme dimensions. Compiled from historical maps and other materials; routes of innovations and “campaigns” for them are shown after (Baburin, 2002) with additions.

The harsh Asian lessons that Moscow learned resulted in the second unification of the country by the Russian autocracy. The veche customs of pre-Mongol Rus’ became its victims, but Asia opened up to China and India, to which Afanasy Nikitin traveled “over the three seas” in the 15th century. With the marriage of Ivan III to Zoe-Sophia Palaiologina, the Western vector of modernization also became more active in Moscow. From Rome, where the families of Byzantine rulers fled from the Turks, came builders, books, and the heraldic double-headed eagle—a symbol of imperial heritage. However, the Pope’s dream of bringing Muscovy into the church collapsed. It remained Orthodox and in 1478 annexed the Republic of Novgorod, and in 1510, Pskov, where the elder Philotheus drew up the famous religious and geopolitical (imperial “for growth”) project of the Third Rome. Under Ivan IV, Russia undertook long-distance campaigns for lands, seas, resources, and innovations.

In Moscow, a center of modernization matured with manufactories (for cannons and minting, I. Fedorov printing press), merchants and doctors of the German Sloboda. The heads of the sovereign eagle faced both east and west, but the east with the ruins of the Horde was easier. The Livonian vector was also correctly chosen. The Baltic bays were the sea windows closest to Moscow. In Europe of the New Age, the North already outpaced the South (the gradient was inverted), yesterday’s Hanseats were weaker than the Turks, and the northern route to the ocean was more accessible than the southern. Peter the Great, having taken Azov 140 years later, nevertheless turned to the Baltic.

A long war with the West in the 16th century still led Muscovy to defeat, the oprichnina, the death of the Rurik dynasty, rebellions, and invasions. The majestic Third Rome idea buckled under the weight of ambition and lack of ammunition. Even before the Troubles, the peasants fled to the outskirts, but the desolation of the country’s core greatly advanced their enslavement (Semyonov-Tian-Shansky, 1892, etc.). This does not negate the success of the reconquest of the southern steppes and the campaign in Siberia (see more about it below).

Peter the Great, combining technical modernization with the westernization of the elite, forced the country to “drink Western pills in one gulp” and accelerated the movement of the “massive body of Russia.”⁶ In his time, signs of the New Age were seen, although they did not fit with serfdom, especially under the empresses, when the fashion for luxury seized the nobles. They pulled agrarian rent from estates with merciless forced labor, up to six days a week. Having broken through the windows to Europe, Russia was taking more and more grain there (as before its Western neighbors, where the “second edition” of serfdom took place). The Western market was the gentleman in the center and the monster on the periphery. And the domestic market since the 15th century cracked the industrial northern and agrarian southern zones of the economic space.

The great reforms of the 1860s multiplied industrial-capitalist centers without eliminating internal contrasts and technical dependence on the West. Nevertheless, a Europeanized Russia has achieved striking geopolitical results with a size of 22 mln km². All the powers of that time considered expansion to be a normal means of development, although it led to complete division of the land and wars for its redistribution up to the First World War, which broke the Russian Empire.

The troubles at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the 17th century, were complicated by foreign intervention. The Reds held the bridgehead with the capitals, and the contour of Soviet Russia in the ring of the Civil War fronts was stretched along the two above-mentioned state axes. Changing the base of the world (Le monde va changer de base), as they sang in the “Internationale,” the first anthem of the RSFSR and the USSR, the country rushed to catch up with the West. A.G. Vishnevsky (1998), resorting to an oxymoron, called this modernization conservative. It took place not without the help of the West, which during the years of the Great Depression was ready to sell equipment and the labor of engineers to anyone. In the mid-20th century, the USSR expanded its territory, overgrown by a belt of allies. In the 1960s, cosmic and nuclear progress gave the impression that catch-up development had become outstrip**. The West, meanwhile, was moving forward, into the postindustrial world, and the USSR collapsed on its threshold. The recovery-related rise of the 2000s was not completed by 2020, as well as this cycle in general.

Clearly, the pieces of each decay accumulated something like the energy of a compressed spring. Straightening, it again expanded the boundaries, until a new breakdown. The country pulsated in space. The difference between “minimum” and “maximum” Russia is enormous (see Fig. 4). The first includes areas with the longest Russian rule, up to 1000 years without episodes of occupation, but with centuries under princes loyal to the Mongols. All the lands that were ever under Russian rule are 50 times larger. Historically, the key minimum Russia lies at the edge of maximum Russia, far from its geographical center.

JUMP TO THE PACIFIC: MOTIVES AND CONSEQUENCES

The Siberian campaign, a bright chapter in Russia’s history, determined its size and place on the world map. For more than half a century, explorers covered 4500 km, counted straight from Cherdyn to Okhotsk, founded 56 years earlier than St. Petersburg, and in time, from the death of Yermak to the exit of Moskvitin to the Sea of Okhotsk. The journey of Europeans across Canada began at the same time, was no less long and also through harsh land, lacking enough rivers to accompany movement, and took 3.5 times longer. Economically, this is due to the role of both, now the most extensive, countries in the global fur market (Savchenko, 2013; Savchenko and Treivish, 2014).

The Russians visited territories beyond the Urals before, and by the 17th century, when furs were taken through Arkhangelsk to Europe, they moved there decisively. In 1601, at the mouth of the Taz River (already on the threshold of Eastern Siberia), the Mangazeya fur trading post appeared, and in 1608, French-Canadian Quebec (Savchenko and Treivish, 2017, Fig. 1). In 30 years, the Russian explorers reached the Lena River, and the American pioneers came to the Great Lakes. By the 18th century, Russians got to Kamchatka, whereas Canada was only discovered up to its middle. I.Yu. Moskvitin stood on the Pacific Ocean’s coast in 1639. A. Mackenzie reached it in 1793, when Russian merchant companies were already operating in Alaska. J. Cook explored the Pacific Ocean’s coast of Canada back in the late 1770s. However, he, like J. Vancouver in the 1790s, used the advice and information of Russian hunters.

Russia was helped by the bridgehead adjacent to the new area, not overseas, and the travel skills of the Novgorodians, Pomors, and Cossacks. Their main goal was sable; in Canada, it was beaver. These bioresources were scattered over the land, hence the spatial scale of development. The restored sable population in Siberia is 1–2 individuals per 1000 ha of suitable taiga (Monakhov, 2006; etc.). Once hundreds of thousands of skins a year were taken there, three-quarters of which went abroad. This gave the treasury one-third the revenues, until resources became scarce. In the 18th century, fur exports supported the marine animal hunting at Alaska.

The Russia’s movement to the northeast was facilitated by the geopolitical “vacuum” up to China, Japan, the European colonies in America, and public-private partnerships. The tsar’s people set up forts, took tribute in fur; hunters and merchants conducted exploration, hunting, and exchange with the local tribes. Communications ran over water and land. In the early 17th century, kochi boats of the Pomors went to Mangazeya by sea, but by 1620, the authorities forbade this, fearing it would bring foreigners to Siberia. Paths remain through the Urals, rivers, interbasin portages, and a short cabotage between the mouths of Siberian rivers. Simple reliable tools and firearms unfamiliar to the natives also ensured the explorers’ success.

The race for furs is certainly not a campaign for innovation. However, its craft multiplied the capital that fed the modernization of Russia. It addition to furs, there was also sailcloth, rope, and other maritime goods (even before Peter’s fleet). People came from Arkhangelsk, Veliky Ustyug, and Kargopol (the birthplace of the first ruler of Russian America, A.A. Baranov). The maritime era brought Russia fame for a number of discoveries, the skills of almost round-the-world sea travels to Kamchatka and America and the exchange of furs for Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain. The Russian–American Company made Novoarkhangelsk (Sitka) the trade leader in the region, surpassing Spanish San Francisco. The Fort Ross colony arose in northern California. In 1815, Russia even raised its flag over Honolulu. However, these events remained historical episodes: it was too late to dream about sea power in the 19th century.

For Siberia and Alaska, Russian innovations still meant spatial and social modernization, albeit relative and dubious when and where it was introduced without demand by the natives. Some, up to Russian Orthodoxy, are intact in places in America a century and a half after the sale of Alaska in 1867.⁷ Russia’s presence there and in East Asia has long been selective and local. They did not attach much importance to it in St. Petersburg, seeing the country as a tellurocracy. Meanwhile, the French and British frequented the Far East, although La Perouse and Broughton made a mistake with Sakhalin, considering it a peninsula and the mouth of the Amur River inaccessible from the sea. In 1689, the Russians left the Amur River under the Nerchinsk Treaty with China. Their return and advance further south from the mid-19th century was a page already of that era, when there were almost no no-man’s lands left and the world was redolent of a recarving.

Russia often had bad luck with exclaves, including those near the Pacific. After Alaska, Kwantung, the Chinese Eastern Railway zone, and southern Sakhalin were lost. However, the vastness of Siberia, which the country enlarged in the 16th–19th centuries, remained its reliable rear. Waves of resource development washed over it: mineral mining, agricultural, forestry, oil and gas, also not quite modernization, but with export significance. And it ensured Russia’s transcontinental, interoceanic position and geopolitical potential for maneuvering between Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and North America, though complicated by asymmetric internal development. In the 16th century, up to 200 000 people lived beyond the Urals, 1.5–2% of Russians. By the 18th century, the population there doubled (3%), while in a hundred years it exceeded 1 mln; (4%), now it has 29 mln (20%), but already fewer compared to 1990 (32 mln, 22% of inhabitants of the RSFSR). The center of the country’s area moved away from that of the population, the density remained low, and its contrasts increased (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.

Population density of large parts of Russian state and centroids of its territory and population. Compiled using materials from (Veinberg, 1913). Note: Hereinafter, in the figures the borders of Russia are considered in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation adopted by popular vote on December 12, 1993, with amendments approved during the All-Russian vote on July 1, 2020.

The contrast in the population between Russia and China often spurs a desire to urgently offset it. However, even by miraculously doubling the population of regions neighboring China (which earlier took 40 years in the USSR), it is possible to reduce the cross-border difference from about 1 : 30 to 1 : 15. To equalize the density with the northern provinces of its neighbor, Russia needs 500 million migrants, all of foreign Europe. It is easier to foster them in China and Asia as a whole. Clearly, the issue must be resolved by foreign, defense, and migration policy and modernization, which is important for all regions, socially rarefied and denser ones.⁸

Modernization is opposed by the inertia of spatial structures as carriers of inherited development (path dependence). However, the geopolitical challenges of the 21st century cannot be ignored. Russia’s rapid “turn to the East” is not an easy task with its asymmetry and lack of modernization bases in the east. The energy factor of strengthening the middle Volga–Ural and eastern macrozones was studied by the Institute for Energy Research under the project Spatial-Structural Development of the Energy Industry in Russia of the Program of the Russian Academy of Sciences (A.A. Makarov and others). Calculations with reference to the forecasts of the Ministry of Economic Development showed that it is possible to arrest the drop in the East’s contribution to GDP—16% according to the conservative version—if its share in primary energy production is increased to 25%, and in consumption, up to 23%, and infrastructure and production are upgraded. This will allow Russia to maintain sixth or seventh place in the global economy.

It is possible to grow urban nodes of modernization based on “blurred central places” (Shuper, 2014; Shuper and Em, 2013). Two eastern clusters, while less consolidated than urban agglomerations, on the upper Angara and in southern Primorye have more than 1 mln inhabitants each. Their activation requires not so much administrative as communication cohesion and the development of high-speed transport. However, this will not eliminate the gap between Chita and Svobodny, where over a distance of 1500 km there is not even an average city (to the west and east of here, typical distances between such cities are two to four times less).

Everyone knows that Russia is vast, but does not always remember in terms of what and by how much. Russia’s territory is 1.7–1.8 times larger than that of Canada, China, the United States, i.e., 7–7.5 mln km²—almost the entire of Australia or 2.5 times the size of Yakutia. Russia is first even without its sparsely populated northeast, although there is no reason to give it up (Fig. 6). Its European and Asian parts are also larger than any country in both parts of the world. In terms of GDP at PPP, Russia is sixth and lags behind the leaders by five to six times, while the difference between the USA, China, and the EU (if we consider it as a country) is small. Russia’s population is ninth in the world, 9.5 times fewer than in China or in India (the USA has a quarter of the China’s population).

Fig. 6.

Largest countries and their global shares based on three indicators, 2014.

Thus, territory is what retains Russia’s place among the few giant countries. And to be such a giant is not easier than being a small country (Treivish, 2009; Zimin, 2003). Here is a short list, presented in blocks, of the typical properties of a giant country that presumably make them great in all respects.

Geographic: multidistricting, an abundance of natural resources and efforts to develop them, and practically inevitable unevenness. Socioethnocultural: diversity, heterogeneity, social contrasts, wide, but more formal than in small countries, infosocial field, reduced solidarity. Economic: a capacious market and craving for autarky, which are rare among dwarf countries, structural completeness of the economy (in Canada and Russia, with a smaller population and raw material exports, it is less pronounced) and, as a result, inertia of development, which hinders modernization. Political: influence in the world, responsibility for it, but at the same time expansionism in various forms and bloated bureaucracy, power structures. Psychological: the habit of measuring everyone by one’s own yardstick, disliked by smaller nations, a tendency to megalomania, but sometimes to a “baby” persecution mania, a multilevel identity: from local to civilizational.

The giants sense great strength and great risks, including regional and political. However, they are different. Thus, in Russia and China, there are many ethnic autonomies. The same countries and the EU as a whole are distinguished from the USA and Canada by an abundance of neighbors and complexity of relations with them. All giants by some token are somewhat small, which hurts their pride. If we take not the entire area, but the area comfortable for habitation and development due to natural conditions, de facto populated (denser than 1 person/km²) or used in agriculture, then the rating of countries will change (Treivish, 2022). Russia will occupy third to fifth place in it, depending on the list of countries, the indicator, and quality of the data. In Russia and China, but not among other giants, some of the lands not the best for this were inhabited. That is how history happened, “dragging” people to the north and east of Russia, where, in addition, due to the climate and topography, nature at the same latitudes is more severe than in Europe.

Our “antiliberal” nature (Gladkii, 2006) was debated at the beginning of the 21st century. Sensational books were devoted to the topic (Hill and Gaddy 2003; Parshev, 2001). The authors found the spaces of Russia unsuitable for life because of the cold and therefore uncompetitive. A.P. Parshev proposed that Russia should isolate itself from the global market, while F. Hill and K. Gaddy advised it to shrink in its warm southwest corner. Without going into details, let us note the controversial economic assessments of the climate and its contrasts (how is it better, e.g., in the North Atlantic, where it is chilly and damp year round?). Winter frosts make Russia and its major cities cold (Fig. 7). On the other hand, the summer is warmer and easier for agriculture in the high latitudes of Eurasia. Their settlement, older and more numerous than in North America, is explained not only by forced migrations.

Fig. 7.

Population of Canada and Russia by temperature zones, categories of settlements, and their “coldest” large cities (over 0.5 mln inhabitants) at beginning of 21st century.

Geographical determinism (or nihilism) is no better or worse than the technical, political, economic, or cultural variants. Russia cannot change its location, climate, and time. These change themselves, but one should not rely on, say, global warming, which promises no less trouble than benefits. The Russians can rely instead on their alliance with the habitual nature. As well, large parts of Russia are populated more evenly than in other northern giants, and not so much along the West–East axis (after all, Russia has no powerful pole on the eastern facade), but along latitudes. In sociopolitical terms, other internal axes are more important: the ethnocultural “Russian core–national outskirts” and the most ubiquitous “center–periphery.” These are also the types of innovation routes on which they meet their obstacles (Treivish, 2009; Zubarevich, 2010; etc.). It would be wrong to attribute the size of space as such to the latter.

MODERNIZATION AND WESTERNIZATION

Critics of universalism often point to the substitution of concepts when modernization is confused with Westernization (Europeanization) or globalization that recommends copying the West in everything, including culture, where it is painful and not always useful for innovative socioeconomic development. Stimulating diversity will rather lead to success than complete unification. The diversity of the ecumene owes, first of all, to the abundance of cultures and their blends with innovations.

Science did not immediately recognize this. After Max Weber, who discovered the “spirit of capitalism” in the Protestant ethic of northern Europeans, it has long been considered its main cultural base. Half a century ago, modernization theorists found it impossible without mastering the values of this base, skeptical about cultures like the Islam, rejecting “implantation” (Black, 1966; Eisenstadt, 1964; Lerner, 1958). Meanwhile, capitalism won the world, demonstrating the ability of symbiosis with different cultures and religions, which was finally noticed (Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, 1993; Grondona, 1999; Harrison, 2014) and devalued the idea of a common path that always has something particular.

Success did not depend on ideals (dogmas) as such, but on the social positions and qualities of their adherents.⁹ This can be seen from the role played during “people’s” early industrial development of Russia by peasant capitalists, among which there were many Old Believers. The asceticism, diligence, and enterprise of these people, as of Pomor and Cossack pathfinders, are similar to the Lutheran, although they were not religious innovators and did not oppose industry (in the sense of activity and zeal) to the corrupt papal indulgence. However, excommunication from the mainstream church and the study of Scripture in the community and family are similar. Literacy, cohesion, and mobilization inherent to the persecuted are what distinguished the schismatics. This was enough for traces of them to remain in many old industrial centers, which in the 19th century became hotbeds of modernization in Russia.

It is difficult to foresee how and when a particular cultural property of the community will help it modernize. Sometimes the demonstration effect of the success of a close culture, such as Japan, is important for the new “tigers and dragons” from among the “rice civilizations” of Asia. Anyway, history should have a geographical choice, including within a large country. Otherwise, modernizations remain outside and from above, which speed it up at the cost of stratification of society and space, especially along the center–periphery axis. The centers are also the residences of power-wielding modernizers. Waves of innovations come from or through them and may not reach the periphery, bogged down on “byways.” And the spatial contrasts and gaps so familiar to Russia are fraught with disruption of modernization at the country level.

S. Huntington, analyzing the catch-up development of some countries in The Clash of Civilizations (1996), noted the different ratios between the technical and economic modernization and cultural and political Westernization. These are the rejection or acceptance of both, techno-reformism without Westernization of culture (Japanese) or Westernization without modernization (Fig. 8). Leaving the example of Egypt on the author’s conscience, let us note his version of a wave with fascination with foreign experience followed by disappointment in it. Russia, about which Huntington simply forgot, has gone through several waves, for centuries either imitating the West, or being at war with it, and therefore changing courses and tacks.

Fig. 8.

Modernization and Westernization of non-Western countries after S. Huntington.

The fits and starts of its modernization were often accompanied by violence. “Pulled on its hind legs” (as Pushkin said about the Petrine era), Russia broke with its cultural traditions. Later M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin advised the then “effective managers” to introduce enlightenment with moderation, avoiding bloodshed as far as possible. At the eve of the 21st century, this was echoed by V.V. Il’in: the end of our modernization initiatives is the silence of a town that has just been occupied by the enemy. A.S. Panarin spoke even more harshly about modernizers: they devastate and disfigure their native landscape, then complain about the disgrace of “this country.” The same authors believed that Westernization in its pure form does not threaten us (Il’in et al., 1996, pp. 9, 199; Panarin, 1999, p. 73). At the same time, history shows that a sharp rebuff to external trends leads to a break with or erosion of modernization, which brings with it not only evil.

The study of Russia’s space, society and civilization in the projects of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Atlas ..., 2016; Problemy …, 2013) showed that its formation has not been completed. From now on, it could be based on a combination of key universal human values—the life and dignity of a person, nonviolence—with Russian ones, among which family and order dominate. It was laid down in the concept of humanitarian modernization by N.I. Lapin and colleagues, who proposed a general scheme of values for the civilizational choice of Russia (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9.

Pentagram of fundamental values of civilizational choice of Russia (vector of real humanism) after N.I. Lapin. Plain type, values that distinguish civilized way of life in general; italics, values that dominate minds of Russians.

The macrotype of civilization has been debated for a long time: sometimes Russia is Europe, sometimes Asia, sometimes connecting-transitional, and sometimes a uniquely lonely Eurasia. The tone ranges from very lofty to contemptuous “Aziope” (despite the rise of Asia, especially East Asia). Of course, Europe and Asia are heterogeneous. Russia represents its own Eastern Europe, and own Asia, similar to Front Asia in some place, or to Central in other. Both easily move from Westernization to “Easternization” and vice versa. Still, Europeanization prevailed, although 500 years ago, half of the Russian Plain east of the Kharkov–Perm line was ethnographic Asia (Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, 1892). On the wave of industrial modernization of the USSR, V.P. Kataev in his novel chronicle Time, Forward! (1932) wrote: “Never again will we be Asia. Never, never, never!” Being Asia seemed insulting and unpromising.

What is the proportion of European and Asian cultures in Russia? Easing the task, let us group the et-hnicities and religions according to census data. The European group is formed by Indo-European Christians and Western Finno-Ugric peoples. The Asian group is Iranian- and Turkic-speaking Muslims and Buddhists with Altaic or Sino-Tibetan languages. All members of the Caucasian family and Ural-speaking ethnicities settled east of the Russian wedge that once split them, Christian Turks, Roma, Jews, etc. go into a heterogenous mixed group (e.g., a mixture of traditional cults and Orthodoxy, accepted at different times and to different extents). People from other parts of the world do not affect the share of the main groups. In the USSR and RSFSR, it has changed little since 1897 (Table 1). However, Kazakhstan became a Eurasian country, but it did not remain one, returning to the Asian structure of the population: the proportion of “Europeans” decreased there.¹⁰

Table 1.   Ratios of three ethnoreligious macrogroups in Russian Empire, USSR, Russian Federation, and Kazakhstan, % of country’s populations

Regions are classified as European or Asian if the share of one group in their population is above two-thirds. Any other is considered mixed. There is an increase in regions of the latter type, as well as the proportion of the mixed population, including in the post-Soviet period. Actually, only one region was recognized as Asian in 2010: Tyva, which was not part of Russia in 1897 (Fig. 10). The figure shows approximately the same areas of mixed composition: northeastern, south Siberian, where the Akmola region, predominantly Kazakh, but with a center in Omsk, was replaced by the Republic of Altai, Volga–Ural and Caucasian regions, where the proportion of Europeans is the lowest (in Ingushetia, no more than 1%). Therefore, in European Russia, the farther south, the more east in terms of culture.

Fig. 10.

Ethnoreligious Europe and Asia in modern Russia and adjacent lands (without islands that do not constitute separate regions; in 1897, after provinces and other main units of administrative-territorial division with centers within Russia as of 2010).

Since the 1990s, a number of minorities, being grouped in their “titular” regions, caused the “indigenization” of ethnic structures while preserving the Russian belt across the country (Streletskiy, 2012; etc.). In the course of history, it absorbed natives of the western outskirts. Within it, with the collapse of the USSR, cultural stratification along the center–periphery axis and between regions, including those with subethnic hues, intensified. This is the side of ethnocultural diversity, which, together with other factors, led to the collapse of empires, and later federations: the USSR, SFRY, and Czechoslovakia. The point is not only that some of their heirs now are wealthy and others just survive, forgetting about modernization. Large geopolitical “floes” drifting in different directions often leave gaps in between such as unrecognized states and ongoing conflicts. They also destabilize the ice floes themselves, whose views on these problematic areas are different, even diametrically opposed. Russia, with a more than three-quarter share of the country-forming ethnic group, is still stronger than the Russian Empire or the USSR, in which this share was 40–50%. It is not higher even in a number of Russian republics and districts, including the vastest.

“SQUARE WHEEL” OF CATCH-UP MODERNIZATION

Skeptical researchers of Russian modernizations called these catch-up, mobilization, impetuous, fragmentary, superficial, and incomplete (Rossiiskaya …, 2008; etc.). There is some truth in these definitions, and it is necessary to understand, without unnecessary emotions, which one it is and why it thus occurs.

If our development remained catch-up, not ahead of the curve, but not so sluggish that the gap between those who were in the lead and Russia as a chaser sharply increased, then this means that the country (a) initially lagged behind and (b) tried to catch up with the lag, although it did not quite eliminate it. The question immediately arises as to the extent of the lag. Its criteria should be indicative of epochs, but not the most particular. The key innovations of the European Middle Ages can be considered the spread of world religions, as well as feudal systems of social and land relations. With a vatiety of nuances, they have a basis that allows for a comparative chronology. It demonstrates that on these grounds Rus’ very much lagged behind Western Europe (first southern and southeastern, then northern), namely for about half a millennium.

Christianity was 400–600 years late, as in Scandinavia, but coming in ahead of Lithuanian and Finnish lands and Slavic Pomerania by 300–400 years (Fig. 11). This institution has survived centuries of various tests, not to mention cases of secondary Islamization and atheism at a later time. Other macroinnovations have a different fate.

Fig. 11.

Spread of Christianity in Europe. Compiled by combining different historical maps.

The rise and flourishing stage of pronounced forms of personal and land dependence were separated by an even greater interval. Constantine the Great in 332 “forever” attached the Roman tenant coloni to the ground. The barbarians who attacked Rome did so with their serf slaves. In the south, the serfdom reached its peak in the 9th–10th centuries; in England, Germany, two centuries later; it barely affected Scandinavia, and since the 12th–13th centuries it was dying off. In the east of Europe, plowmen did not fully feel it until the 16th century (Fig. 12a). And then its serf version did not go away gradually, but was repealed by radical reforms, under which Russia experienced accelerated catch-up development. A communal three-field system with fallow in the west of Europe (not in the south due to its natural conditions) was carried out from the 7th–9th centuries and reached its zenith by the 14th century. In the north of Kievan Rus’, it was established 600–700 years later than in its south and in the middle of Europe, then it expanded and lasted in the main populated zone until the 1930s. The displacement phase was also steeper and lagged less behind the western one (Fig. 12b).

Fig. 12.

Spread of (a) serfdom, (b) three-field farming system in Europe and Russia: generalized schemes.

The reasons for such a difference are often seen in the dominance of the state and “Asianism,” etc. However, in Asia (India, China), feudalism, according to classical ideas, arose earlier and lived longer than in Europe, while in Russia it was late both at the beginning and at the end. It was removed “from above,” by imposing catch-up development on the country, fraught with relapses of the not yet dissipated system.

Industrial time runs faster than agricultural time. Its metric is reflected by the system of technical and economic cycles: industrial revolutions once a century, N.D. Kondratiev’s waves (cycles) every half-century and shorter S. Kuznets, K. Zhuglar, and J. Kitchin waves, and each larger one combines two smaller ones. The gap between leaders and outsiders is much more moderate. The machine industry came to Russia by one Kondratiev wave later than to England and the lag remained until the 1930s–1950s, when it decreased, but, as it turned out, not completely (Geografiya …, 2004, pp. 53–60, 419–442 , 502–514; Treivish, 2009; etc.).

The history and geography of the USSR in structural and economic terms is the history and geography of industrialization as a guarantee of the survival for the “besieged fortress.” Two scenarios were discussed: market and mobilization. One was defended by the economists Kondratiev, Yurovsky, Chayanov and party members Bukharin and Rykov; the other, by Strumilin, Voznesensky, Trotsky, and Stalin himself. His words that we are 50–100 years behind advanced countries and must run this distance in ten years “or we will be crushed,” indicate that the leader knew the works of the economists he repressed and even guessed the time until the new world war (although he missed Hitler’s attack on the USSR).

State planning initially relied on the old areas, but then gave them less and less money. However, even in 1950 they provided two-third of the output, more than in 1925 (Treivish, 2022), despite strengthening of the strategic rear on the Volga, the Urals, and beyond. The change of industries and consolidation of enterprises led to the growth of compact industrial centers rather than areas typical of old Russia. The development of new lands, the creation of cities “from scratch” in those years were exaggerated (Mints, 1974). Analysis of the practice disproved the myths about even distribution and a sharp shift of the industry to the east. Its contribution to production did not exceed 20% due to low prices for raw materials and fuel (see (Treivish, 2022) for more details).

After Stalin, the question arose again about the consumer or mobilization development model. After 15 years of hesitation, the second was again chosen, for the sake of military-technical parity with NATO. Brezhnev’s USSR was aided by the 1970s global energy crisis: petrodollars were used to buy grain abroad, and megaprograms for the Baikal–Amur Mainline and the Non-Chernozem zone were adopted based on them. However, the Cold War prevented the import of the latest technology. By 1985, the country was hundreds of times inferior to the United States in terms of the number of large computers, not to mention personal ones. And oil prices, meanwhile, have ceased to rise.

The economy of the late USSR was an industrial colossus on a weak agricultural foundation under a weak service roof. The edifice was shattered by social shifts since an unpretentious peasant was replaced by a wage worker whose demand for goods and services could not be covered by a scarce market. The Soviet modernization of space was controversial: the growth of cities in different parts of the country expanded its area, but few of them were ready for a new postindustrial shift. The space of post-Soviet Russia is increasingly shrinking towards the centers, exposing the inner periphery.

So, the epithet “catch-up” with respect to previous modernizations is valid and largely explains the other: “mobilization.” Aware of the threat of falling behind, the rulers spurred Russia, resorting to paramilitary methods “for its own good.” However, this cannot be done for a long: the country gets tired, slows down, just falls asleep. In general, it is waiting for something, then it is catching up intensely, but to wait and catch up, as the proverb goes, is the worst. Brazilian historian N. Werneck Sodré (1976, p. 98) likened this development to the movement of a square wheel, which is forced to an angle, but then it falls to the plane and freezes all motion (Fig. 13). Hence, such definitions of modernization as impetuous and impulsive. Perhaps Russia became a country of great reforms and reformers and revolutions and revolutionaries because it could not be updated little by little, i.e. by frequent pulses coming from below. The same feature explains the sharp fluctuations in the assessments of its space and development, their perception by society and its elite.

Fig. 13.

Rolling square wheel of “secondary” modernization. Author’s illustration of N. Werneck Sodrés image.

PERCEPTION OF RUSSIAN SPACE AND ITS MODERNIZATION

When studying the “second” historical reality, it is impossible to apply modern sociological methods of analyzing mass consciousness. Written sources are more accessible: artistic, journalistic, and philosophical. They reflect the way of thinking of the most educated strata, allowing at least to reveal their attitude to the space of the country at a particular time.

In 1831 A.S. Pushkin wrote a poem To the Slanderers of Russia, referring to the West, which stigmatized the empire for the brutal suppression of the Polish uprising. It contains the famous lines:

As if we’re few? Or from Perm to Taurida,

From Finnish snowy rocks to fiery Kolkhida,

From Kremlin, shaken by the calls,

Up to the steadiest China’s walls,

With its steel arms, shining not in vain,

Will not rise Russia up again?

After reading them, Pushkin’s friend and colleague P.A. Vyazemsky wrote in his diary: “I’m so tired of our geographic fanfare: ‘From Perm to Taurida’ and so on. What good is there, other than to rejoice and boast, that we lie stretched out, that we have five thousand miles from thought to thought…” (Vyazemskii, 1963, p. 214).

In the same vein are the ideas of P.Ya. Chaadaev, which were declared insane; he believed that the Russian space, as it were, swallows up historical time.¹¹ We find judgments about the roads and agony of driving along them from Pushkin himself (in Eugene Onegin) and the French marquis A. de Custine, who noted in 1839 the paradoxes of Russians’ attitude towards distances: “There are no distances in Russia, Russians say… but sad experience makes me say the exact opposite: only distances exist in Russia. There is nothing there but desert plains stretching in all directions…” (de Custine, 1843).

Where does this “geographical despondency” come from, which made one acutely feel the size of the country and weakness of its links in the first half of the 19th century? Previously, open spaces did not frighten but even inspired, e.g., M.V. Lomonosov, who promised growth of Russia’s power by means of Siberia. One probable reason is the absence in the 18th century and earlier the difference in driving speed, which was 10-20 km/h on land and water (in Russia, the fastest route in winter was tobogganing). However, the railways came to Europe with the coal and steel industry, reducing the already smaller distances, and Russia fell behind and clearly realized this from the experience of the 1850s Crimean War. That was a good lesson. By 1914, already with the Trans-Siberian Railway, Russia occupied second place in the world after the United States in terms of railway length.

Opinions have their own momentum. Criticism of space, its arrangement, and role in the development of Russia did not subside. We can recall the words of N.A. Berdyaev about the soul bruised by breadth, that vast spaces were easy for the Russian people, but it was not easy to organize them into the greatest state in the world. Or we can recall V.I. Lenin’s thesis on the possibility of growth of capitalism in terms of breadth on a new land, which slows down its development in terms of depth on the old. It is still the same thought: geography and space dominate history and development. There were other voices as well. D.I. Mendeleev (1906) promised that Russia’s center of population gravity would move farther East. V.P. Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky (1915) proposed for the Russian system of territorial possession “from sea to sea” the rapid development of its middle zone between the Volga and Yenisey rivers. Such practitioners as S.Yu. Witte and P.A. Stolypin toiled in this vein.

The brightest Soviet period of “geographical euphoria” is associated not so much with the construction of roads or canals, but with the common pride of the participants in the great social experiment, with the steps of industrial modernization and redevelopment of the Union’s territory. Hence “Wide is my native land,” “We have no barriers either at sea or on land,” etc. The experiment was to cover the Earth, erase distances and boundaries. The already mentioned novel by V. Kataev Time, Forward! states that the revolution is heading East to reach the West, and no force in the world can stop it. The lines of P. Kogan mix this messianism with the prewar agitation:

“But we will reach the Ganges waters, // We’ll still die on the battlefield, // So from Japan to English quarters// My Motherland will shine steeled.”

Enthusiasm and pathos faded, and by the end of the 20th century, the hardships of sovereignty spurred, among other things, the search for small, peaceful homelands. The poet dissident I.A. Brodsky wrote:

If you were destined to be born in the Empire,

It’s best to find some province, by the ocean.

Away from Caesar and the blizzard, in your nook.

No flattery, no rushing, constant fearing.

The spleen is again associated with a backlog, including transport. The length of railways even in the RSFSR remained second in the world (now third after China, not counting the EU as a whole). In terms of density throughout the territory, Russia is close to Australia and Iran: 5 km/100 km². There are fewer roads than in all giant countries and even Japan and France; their network in Russia is one of the sparsest. However, in the 21st century, the breakthrough in сellular telephony occurred. Not only by Russia, not on Russian equipment, nor Russian technologies. And communication does not completely replace transport, but it is very important for such a country.

The perception of space is cyclical as its modernization and is partly associated with it. It was not the size of space that frightened the thinking elites, but its “friction” and slowing of any movement: people, ideas, modernization pulses. Bouts of “geographical despondency” did not coincide with expansions, but with the country’s stagnation and failures, including in the technique of communications; enthusiasm was fed by the leaps of catch-up and outstrip** development, even illusory. The problem was seen not in the vastness of Russia, but the lack of roads. Transport must combat this, but its development is complicated by another problem: bureaucratic. Russia has no unified transport and communication system in the institutional sense, although de facto space absorbs everything: innovations, archaisms and bottlenecks that worsen its accessibility, permeability, etc.¹²

The results of geospatial analysis of Russian poetry of the 18th–early 20th centuries are interesting (Lavrenova, 1998). In the 18th century, poets saw the European Russia, but not yet Siberia, as though from the outside, from the south of Europe through ancient and renaissance optics. In the 19th century, from the capital, the estate or the Caucasus, in hope or fear, they looked at the West and animal–ore–penal Siberia: these broadened the poetic space. The observer point at the beginning of the 20th century was the same, but mysterious, alluring Asia was already coming into view (Fig. 14). Let us add here the era of the USSR, where the internal West–East dichotomy is erased, and the muse of foreign lands flies farther to Africa (Oceania is still rare and drawn for children or a joke). Then, the localization and fragmentation of the poetic geospace, as well as of the domestic socioeconomic space. Reflections about the relationship of its history with geography returned. According to G.D. Gachev (2008), the discrepancy between the step of Space and the rhythm of Time is a regularity in Russia’s history, its eternal fate and tragedy.

Fig. 14.

Prevailing poetic views on country and outside world in 18th–early 20th centuries, after (Lavrenova, 1998), and in Soviet times (added).

Mass perception depends on the media as intermediaries between the elite and public. At one time, they were considered a sure way to guide peoples to the “true path,” although skeptics had doubts, noting cognitive dissonance when confronted with basic values (Katz and Blumler, 1974; etc.) and therefore unseeing great meaning in levels of coverage, etc. This did not lessen propaganda in the media, and its effect was nevertheless discovered, finding, however, that it strengthens “cultural imperialism” and the inequality of centers and peripheries. The UNESCO report on the many-voiced world (Many …, 1980) even called for maintaining a balance of information flows between worlds.

People absorb what is closer to them. In Russia’s backwoods, the local press is read more often than the central, and federal channels are watched on TV, but talk shows and Western films are unliked. “Modernized” owners of satellite dishes choose programs about hunting, fishing, and travel (Potentsial …, 2014, pp. 190–209). Judging from surveys, these people have no clear image of Russia or even a city that broadcasts its innovations and values. The glamorous image of a megacity still is an attraction factor that accelerates the outflow of young people from the periphery. Commuting, from daily to distant and long-term (otkhod for work), is practiced by middle-aged men. The hinterland loses an employee, but the family remains, and hence the settlement. On the other hand, impressions, the exotic, recreation, and new activities in nature, including owing to media images, attract tourists and summer residents. In the depopulated outback, people buy and build houses, directly or indirectly contributing to the modernization of infrastructure, but rarely to production.

PENDULUM (CYCLE) OF INNOVATIONS, REFORMS, AND REGIONALIZATIONS

When in 1855 Alexander II, who was also known as an adept of serfdom, assumed the throne from Nicholas I, the Slavophile writer A.S. Khomyakov consoled his acquaintances: rulers in Russia alternate, and if one was bad, the next will be good (Eidel’man, 1989, p. 114). It seems to be the first Russian version of the “law of the historical pendulum,” or cycle (a pendulum is an oscillator that operates in wavelike rhythm). In a broad humanitarian sense, this was studied by N.D. Kondratiev, Y. Schumpeter, G. Mensch, both Schlesingers,¹³ K. Freeman, F. Braudel, S. Menshikov, V. Ryazanov, E. Gaidar, S. Glazyev, V. Sadovnichy, A. Akaev, A. Rudskoy, V. Pantin, V. Lapkin, and V. Il’in. Mathematicians, economists, historians, and political scientists suggest different cycles, but relationships are usually found between them.

In market conditions, chains of pulses look something like this. An economic recession based on the previous technological order incentivizes venture capital to search for inventions and discoveries converting them into innovations. Power, if it changes, goes to the reformers. On the rising wave, innovations are circulated, but modernization leads to social stratification, protests, and political reaction, often with a redistribution of benefits. The descending wave saturates the demand for new products, and everything repeats. This scheme, sketched by Kondratiev, works in any economy, but it affects the rhythm of the waves. A high turning point is inevitable with aging funds and limited markets, but a rise may require special measures from the authorities to modernize and mobilize resources.

There are many disputes and problems in “cyclology,” related to indicators, timing, and duration of waves in different fields and countries. This is partly a matter of generalization. The multiwave innovation process, when displayed in detail, looks like different “oscillograms” filling the entire “screen.” However, as demonstrated by G. Mensch and confirmed by M. Hirooka from the Institute of Technoeconomics in Kyoto, innovations on the rise of a Kondratiev cycle still form bundles and produce a synergistic effect. Exceptions in the form of long-lasting waves Hirooka called infratrajectories. Figure 15 shows both for the last two K-cycles and the expected next one, according to the generally accepted count, the sixth.

Fig. 15.

Diffusion of innovations during last K-cycles by (Hirooka, 2006); y-axis is conditional share of conquered market.

Most often, the cycles of past modernizations are generalized and averaged. This generalization, among other things, is spatial, in the limiting case, in terms of the entire world or leading countries. In modern times, they were the countries of the West, which picked up and seized the innovative baton from each other. The more detailed the geographic scale, the more likely breaks in the rhythm, shortening or extension of waves, and fluctuations in their levels. On all plots for the world and Russia (Fig. 16), there is a tendency towards a shortening of the cycle, but not quite consistent in the economy and, moreover, in politics.

Fig. 16.

Technical, economic, and political cycles of late 18th–early 21st centuries.

The Kondratiev curve makes an impression with Soviet modernization, which almost fused the third and fourth K-cycles, compressing them to quarter-century segments, and significantly narrowing the gap to the leaders. Paradoxically, the leap was based on Fordist technology and the strict discipline of monotonous labor, alien to the Russian character. According to its cognoscenti, the short summer for centuries instilled in peasants the habit of urgent work and winter relaxation. The Soviet industrial “summer” seemed to be the nation’s long field day until the “Stalinist” momentum of growth wore off. The fifth cycle and technological order, already within the postindustrial era, were underdeveloped by Russia. According to a number of estimates, up to four-fifths of its gross product is created in the sectors of previous waves (in the United States their contribution is four times less). Modernization of the economic structure has been discussed for a quarter of a century, but there are few results.

The cycles of reforms and counterreforms depend on “subjective factors” and are even less regular. Nicholas II, according to the pendulum scheme, should have become a reformer, but he immediately refused this role. This ended in a series of revolutions. Political cycles in Rus’ have been sought since the 9th century. (Ryazanov, 1998), but later ones are more reliable, of course. It has been noted (Tsikly …, 2010; etc.) that modernization in Russia is intensifying on the peaks of Western, and not of its own K-waves (the main failure occurred in the early 20th century), and is accompanied by a crisis, whereas the economic upsurge falls on a wave of political reaction. It can be understood as a repudiation of everything previously achieved. Even without actually being such, the time of reaction hinders modernization, giving rise to the effect of its incompleteness, and it is fraught with various excesses. Long Russian reigns, starting from Ivan the Terrible, contain both phases of the cycle and are divided into “early” and “late.” Today, versions of this evolution include methods of imitation that mask the brake on reforms.

In the 19th century, the entire cycle from reform to reform, on average, took about 50 years, while in the 20th century, this was reduced to about 35. If the beginning of the current cycle is dated to 1985–1990, then a new one should be expected after 2020, which is what some experts predicted. It was not known what it would be, this is generally an assessment not on a good–bad scale, but simply on the intensity and direction of the process. Apparently, in a specific situation, much will depend on the outcome of the current crisis against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation with Russia’s neighbors, etc.

The forecast is especially doubtful when it comes to geospace in all its polyscale and polyscenario development. Propagating in space, innovation waves, each with its own velocity and amplitude, create complex combinations. Even knowing the nonlinearity of processes, one can fall prone to standard errors, excessive optimism or pessimism.

A hypothetical diagram (Fig. 17) shows several innovation waves, differing in the pace and breadth of diffusion. As they leave the primary centers of origin, the coverage areas of space increase to a certain limit. At time t₁, available innovations I₁ and I₂ are expanding, and the extrapolated forecast promises further expansion. At time t₂, these early innovations are attenuating, and new ones I₃–I₅ with their areal ranges are barely noticeable. A hasty diagnosis and prognosis will apparently be sad, although the trend is more favorable than at time t₁, and the innovation space is qualitatively more diverse, which is valuable and promising in its own way. Thus, with an interlacing of innovative tracks, the socioeconomic space pulsates, alternating periods of contraction and expansion.

Fig. 17.

General scheme of multiwave innovation development of space. I₁–I₅, innovations in order of their origin; t₁, t₂, time slices to illustrate spatial results of process.

The phases of modernization waves, while renewing the economy and society, do not always drastically change their spatial structures, and if they do, they do so in different ways. Both rising and falling can both level the statistical relief “up” or “down,” and dissect it (Fig. 18). Incidentally, this is why regional science and politics should be precisely multiscale, taking into account the variability of processes at different spatial levels. In the real socioeconomic space, in addition, the forms of this “relief” and their location vary widely.

Fig. 18.

Basic combinations of “global” trend with dynamics of symbolic statistical (socioeconomic) relief. Scheme-section.

The different geography of the adjacent phases of the cycle with respect to Russian regions is reflected in Fig. 19. During the recession of the 1990s, the raw material regions of the North, East and partially of the Urals and the Volga increased or maintained their contribution to the total GRP. The recovery growth of the 2000s mostly affected outskirts, such as “gateway,” new oil and gas regions, etc., expanding the economic space and not replicating either the pattern of the 1990s or the Soviet one. Regular crises at first may bring signs of “downward leveling,” with deeper subsidence of prosperous centers than the undemanding periphery, but they are more noticeable within regions and soon followed by new differentiation.

Fig. 19.

Changes in contribution of Russian regions to their total gross product (in 1990, public product enlarged by additional valuation of service sector output).

One cannot ignore such phenomena characteristic of many countries, in particular, large ones, as regionalism and regionalization. The latter that we talked about in the 1990s was, in fact, a boom in regionalism. It, as the author of these lines believes, consists of a triad of phenomena: (1) regional identity, self-awareness, and patriotism; (2) their embodiment in more or less radical and successful social movements; (3) account for the interests of regions in policy based on the recognition of regional life and development as a form of social self-organization.

Regionalism, the antonym of centralism, grows out of protest against the rigid and petty tutelage by the central bureaucracy. In Russia, it comes to light only when the center is sharply weakening and in places it quickly transforms into separatism—partly a reaction to the suppression of even innocent forms of regionalism for fear of something bad happening. And in the end, then, it really happens. Thus, waves of regionalization and centralization are closely tied to the fate of the whole country.

Both the great troubles of the 20th century brought it to semicollapse. Any crisis of state identity caused the ethnoregional turmoil, then the “parade” of sovereignties and secessions, when popular statism passed to the regions, one floor below. In 1917–1922, up to 70 states were proclaimed on the ruins of the empire. Most often they were ephemeral, but it was thence that the multitier federal structure of the USSR and RSFSR emerged. Moreover, having strengthened the vertical, but not yet kicked on the “afterburner” of modernization, the Soviet government tried to make use of regionalism’s potential by creating large, relatively self-sufficient administrative and economic zones. In the 1930s, they began to interfere with the people’s commissariats to solve the problems of industrialization on a national scale and began to disappear. In the 1950s–1960s, N.S. Khrushchev revived the territorial principle of administration through economic councils. They were again swept away by the central departments of the Brezhnev time. Finally, in the 1980s, the idea of “regional cost accounting” turned into the collapse of the USSR and the regionalization of Russia in the 1990s (for more details, see (Treivish, 2009)).

Waves of spontaneous or planned regionalizations were separated by 30–40 years (Fig. 20). Their correspondence to reform waves and the interwave troughs of K-cycles is significant (see Fig. 16). That is, regionalization coincided with the crossroads when the authorities were not firm in choosing an evolutionary or mobilization model and in the meantime tried somehow to consider the diversity of the country and bring management closer to the “places.” Soon, all this was canceled by a wave of centralization and a mobilization breakthrough into a new era. It was out of tune with and did not take into account regions. The slogan of their harmonious integrated development remained only that: as if in memory of the actually canceled regionalization. This rollback could have descended to the level of hypercentralism. Based on the above forecast with prolongation of the wave rhythm, in 2020–2025 we must anticipate a wave of regionalization of yet unknown force. This is certainly a risk factor and a serious challenge for Russia.

Fig. 20.

Schematic waves of Russian (Soviet) regionalization–centralization.

HISTORICAL “LESSONS” AND NEW CHALLENGES (WHO AND WHY NEEDS MODERNIZATION)

The word “lessons” here is put in quotation marks for, as stated at the beginning, there is no prescription nor panacea, but rather information for reflection. These “lessons” may apply not only to Russia and its geographical space. Besides, it is known that the lessons of history and geography teach few people or teach them poorly. However, if “schooling” turns out wholly in vain and is not assimilated by science and society, then this is fraught with new troubles.

The first lesson stipulates that modernization is not the final goal; it cannot be absolutized, forgetting about relativity and side effects. Yet, they can explain, but not justify, repudiation of modernization as a tool for solving a number of problems. And this is a tool, the rejection of which is fraught with no smaller costs than reckless use.

The second lesson says that the main problems of modernization are not related to the size of the country, but with the “friction” of space, distances and the means to overcome them, as well as the lack of stark and attractive development prospects.

The third lesson is that, while recognizing the importance of culture for modernization, it cannot be exaggerated either. Partitions between cultures are not Chinese walls. Tradition is only formally antipodal to innovation and does not necessarily serve as a barrier to it.

The fourth lesson suggests that the modernization space is impermanent. It pulsates, with alternating phases of expansion and shrinkage as well as differentiation and integration. With an abundance of objects, structures, and locations, many different forms of innovation areas and their combinations arise in the geographical space.

The fifth lesson is related to such a form of sociospatial diversity as regionalism. An antonym of centralism, it is not a synonym for separatism, develo** into it under special conditions. It is more useful to reckon with it than to fight uncompromisingly, thus limiting the scope of the search for various modernization options.

The sixth lesson pertains to science and boils down to the fact that our knowledge of the laws of spatial development is limited. Despite the triviality of this judgment, it is true and means that work must be continued.

What we do know is that the world, the country, its regions, and centers are mobile. They change, changing both the economic and political-geographical position of Russia, and its internal spatial composition, which is actually quite inertial. Among the external and internal challenges of the 21st century, there are inherited, almost eternal ones (they are the essence of “lessons”). And there are completely new or incipient changes, such as set out below.

Geopolitical shifts on a global scale are expressed primarily in the growth of China to the level of a superpower (it has always been a huge country). Russia is familiar with the Far Eastern challenges, but they did not change the stable West–East asymmetry of its development. It is not entirely clear to what extent it can be reduced this time, with limited mobile resources, but so far favorable foreign policy conditions. Nevertheless, this is a vital issue.

An even larger external challenge is created by what is called globalization, or one could simply call it permeability of the world in terms of investment, migration, communication, and information. However, if it grows, then it is nonlinear and not ubiquitous, with throwbacks and negative (right and left) reactions, including in the most developed countries. This concerns Russia’s modernization. The problem of most of its areas and cities is lack of demand in the spatial development “market”; competition is intensifying and the role of cognitive factors is growing including reputations of places and their successful branding

One internal challenge is the trend of narrowing the room for innovation, summing up multidirectional shifts, which limits the time and spatial front of Russia’s modernization. To what extent is this a consequence of the next administrative centralization or of objective processes? How to deal with the hypertrophy of the leading metropolitan centers and stagnation, depression, and depopulation of the peripheries, including the old-developed internal periphery, rich in historical and cultural heritage? What should be better, organize its secondary development or an orderly retreat instead of fleeing from the hopeless parts of this front (reversed frontier)?

All these acute problems of Russia’s development in the 21st century are superimposed by demographic challenges caused by inexorable objective processes and catastrophes of the first half of the 20th century. Their results, in the form of narrowed reproduction of the population, reduction in the number of able-bodied citizens, demographic aging, and influx of migrants from the former Soviet republics, are well studied. Note, however, that some of them, e.g., the same mass immigration and rapid change in age structure, have no analogs in the preceding history. The range of their socio-economic and political consequences (like of many other demographic phenomena) is very wide and often unexpected.

We know that partly modernized and “Westernized” Russia in the 21st century replicates its Eurasian ethnodemographic structure, strengthening, in particular, the Islamic component and cultural tension, especially in the main centers. They are compacted, filled with a heterogeneous population, infrastructure, housing, objects of the postindustrial economy, while the periphery, expanding its limits, is increasingly dependent on them in geoeconomic terms.

The fundamental features of Russia’s social space—sparseness, centralization, deep internal contrasts—were significant at all historical stages. Russian modernization practice shows how contradictory if not unsuccessful it is. Having expended much effort to catch up to its leading rivals and having started this race earlier than many, Russia still lags behind. Speeding up time with mobilization-related fits and starts, it could got stuck in its own space. Perhaps it is its modernization that remains the most difficult task. Expanding the country in campaigns for lands, resources, and innovations, the modernizers made up for this breadth by clenching innovation “fists” and emptying the rest. It is possible to drag the chain by one link, but others will sag, which will complicate and slow down the work or even devalue its results. Perhaps that is why for some, the word modernization is almost an idol, but just a word for others and a curse word for anybody else.

The question arises: was it necessary to try so hard and catch up with someone, especially taking into account the victims, often in vain? To “execute, squander, or otherwise destroy the townsfolk with discretion,” following M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, or save the people, in the words of A.I. Solzhenitsyn, becomes the main condition for further development, since human capital is the weak side of modern Russia as a giant country (brain drain is to be added). However, if the country has not overtaken the world leaders, who, by the way, have changed themselves, then this is not the worst option. “Relaxing” for a long time would also be dangerous in the 20th and 21st centuries, with their diverse challenges.

Most of all, the deep initial lag behind the leaders, the ragged rhythm of catch-up development by the square wheel scheme and controversial prescriptions with violence, excesses, maneuvers, and goals incomprehensible to the masses have and continue to complicate the matter most of all. The pendulum of reforms—counterreforms and regionalization—centralization is also accompanied by cycles of opening—closing of the country to the outside world and pro- or anti-Westernism. Phases of the first type, dragging the country into the global mainstream, can be inadequate for Russia itself, fraught with dependence, polarization of space, and disruption. The phase and model rejecting such reforms and transition to isolation, bring some relief, but sooner or later lead to stagnation, loss of the navigation channel, and sense of reality. Jum** from one extreme to another is a bad policy. In space, it reduces the quality of its control and development, including communication infrastructure, which is often sacrificed for other interests and needs.

Waves of innovation and reform are still not fruitless and vicious circles, not “one step forward, two steps back.” Russia is neither a triumphant nor a miserable victim of centuries of modernization. Ignoring the latter, it could simply disappear from the map of our not very cosy world. It is needed not in order to earn the dubious praise of certain authorities, positions in the ratings of international agencies, or to subordinate an unpredictable and recalcitrant country to external centers. It is necessary to strengthen Russia’s own sovereignty, the health and well-being of its citizens, to turn the sparsely populated and not very permeable “ocean of land” into a space where people would like and manage not just to survive, but to live and work enthusiastically for themselves and the good of society. It remains to be hoped that Russia’s next modernization, better if “organic,” is waiting in the wings.