Metals, weapons, wars, and revolutions: Three hundred years of the economic evolution of the Urals Industrial Region in Russia

The Urals Industrial Region occupies the central and southern parts of the Ural Mountains in Russia. The goal of the research was to establish how the region's three-hundred-year-long industrial history translates into its post-Soviet development. The first chapter identifies the present state of scientific inquiry on the Urals Region and reviews the evolution of the regional concept and industrial region theories applicable to the Urals' regional development. The second chapter provides an overview of the contemporary natural resource base, environmental conditions, and population dynamics in the region. The third chapter discusses the Urals' economic development, broadly defined as "metals and weapons", in the European historical perspective of wars and revolutions. The fourth chapter analyzes the Urals' socio-economic development during the last decades of the Soviet era. The final, fifth chapter provides an insight into the changes in the Urals after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Exposed to a market economy, the core of the Urals Region positions itself as a new high-tech cluster based on an historic center of metal production. Eight contrasting scenarios for future Urals' development are proposed and evaluated in the dissertation's final section. The most realistic near-future scenario, "Integrated Industrial Urals", is achievable in the close-to-present conditions of economic globalization and strong central power in Russia. The recent economic upsurge of the Urals' Sverdlovsk Oblast is presented as a case study. The dissertation concludes that if the Urals' regional and local authorities continue providing support to market initiatives, the region benefits from its unique mineral resource base, its military research and development potential, and the location on the crossroads between Europe and fast-developing East and South-East Asia. Leaving out wars and revolutions, "metals and weapons" in the form of positive path dependency form a solid basis for a high-tech cluster transformation.