Globalization in the Russian Heartland

At a recent Kennan Institute talk, Nikita Pokrovsky, Professor and Head, Department of General Sociology, State University-Higher School of Economics, Moscow, described the results of an extensive sociological survey on the effects of globalization on a rural region typical of "Russia's heartland."

Pokrovsky's team worked in the Russian region of Kostroma, which is similar in size to West Virginia and has a population of 800,000. Its main agricultural products are dairy, flax, rye, and timber (70 percent of its territory is virgin forest). Pokrovsky noted that the Soviet era chemical plants in Kostroma have gone out of business, leaving Kostroma's environment as the region's main asset.

The conclusion of the research team was that, despite the region's seeming isolation from the currents of the global trading system, a process of "cellular globalization" is subtly but inexorably changing the character of the region. Cellular globalization refers to the emergence of internalized changes within the individual attributable to the effects of globalization. Pokrovsky noted that almost every family in the region's rural areas has relatives in larger cities—the regional capital of Kostroma, Moscow, or St. Petersburg—and these extended networks are carrying the influences of globalization back to the Russian heartland. This process is slowly changing traditional rural attitudes towards wealth—more rural residents are placing greater importance on wealth than in the past, Pokrovskiy said. Other results of the process of cellular globalization, according to Pokrovskiy, are an erosion of social mores and respect for law, a reduction in accepted cultural demands limiting individual behavior, increased moral relativism, and a lack of respect for history and tradition. There is an overall marked increase in consumerism and interest in the virtual world of celebrity and mass media at the expense of traditional social values.

The effects of globalization will not be limited to the internal lives of the residents of Kostroma, predicted Pokrovsky. The era of diverse, small-scale agriculture supporting networks of rural villages is over. Likewise, the Soviet era of thickly concentrated infrastructure—such as Soviet chemical plants—is past. Pokrovsky suggested that new urban-rural aggregations would come to support each other in the formation of new communities. The economic basis of these communities will include niche agriculture (such as agricultural tourism and organic agriculture), regulated hunting and fishing resorts, and local handicrafts.