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Transport is the overall limiting factor in the economic growth of the U.S.S.R. Russia's resources, especially iron ore and coal, are wide apart (see above). Russia has five main industrial regions: north western European Russia (Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky); the Ukraine (Kiev, Krivoi Rog, Dneprostroi) ; the newer industrial complex just behind the Urals (Sverdlovsk, Magnitogorsk, etc.); the Kuznetsk Basin (Novosibirsk, Stalinsk, etc.); and the scattered mills, mines, army bases and slave-labor camps near the Pacific. Despite a widespread belief in the West that Russia's industrial trend is toward "safety behind the Urals," there is evidence that about 1947, Stalin & Co. hardheadedly concluded that U.S. bombers could strike behind the Urals almost as easily as in the Ukraine. So the trend appears to be back to the Ukraine and Western Russia.
The Soviet aim is to make each of these regions as self-sufficient as possible, so that if one is knocked out in a war, the others can fight on. But Russia's regions are still heavily dependent on each other, which means on transport. For example, nearly all Russia's synthetic rubber is made at Voronezh, four-fifths of her trucks and cars are made at Gorky and Moscow, each more than 300 miles away.
From the days of the Revolution, the Communists have made shift with old rail equipment, putting their limited steel into other kinds of capital goods. But Russia made or acquired in Europe nearly 150,000 new freight cars in the last five years, now has about 850,000. Many of Russia's passenger coaches and more than half its locomotives were built before World War I. Most of the rail networks are still single track. About half the rail mileage was destroyed or badly damaged in World War II. Since the war most of the damage has been repaired, but new construction has lagged.
Other standard forms of transport are little developed in Russia. Highways are poor, development of pipeline transport has only just got under way. With her present steel output, Russia cannot afford to stress both armament and transport. And transport is one item it cannot stockpile.
What Can the Satellites Contribute?
The satellites are a dubious asset to Russia. Their economies have long been tied in with Western Europe. In steel, for example, the satellites have a total capacity of 5,000,000 tons — one-fourth of Russia's capacity. Yet this production has long been based on materials imported from the West, especially ores from Sweden. In oil — mainly from Rumania's Ploesti, Hungary's Lispe and Austria's Zistersdorf fields — the satellites can produce 6,000,000 tons, a sixth of Russia's own production. But most of this oil is needed to keep the satellites' own industry going.
The maintenance — let alone the expansion — of satellite industries might cost Russia more than it would be worth.
Militarily, the satellites might be of more use to Russia; they can provide about 100 divisions, whose worth would depend largely on the effectiveness of Communist propaganda and political control.
How Much Food Can They Grow?