When I left Vladivostok two weeks ago, one of the things that struck me was the contrast between the coastal areas, including that city and Nakhodka, and the inland. The former looked reasonably prosperous, but the inland looked for the most-part ensnared in poverty and crumbling infrastructure.
We've already had an insight into Vladivostok in a previous post but Nakhodka also looked thriving. Formerly the terminus of the Trans-Siberian railway for non-Russians in the communist era when Vladivostok was a closed port and home to a major naval base, the town has survived as a major import and export port with lots of modern infrastructure and connected with the rapidly growing economies of east and southeast Asia. Being exported were energy raw material including, coal and gas.
And coming in were huge container-loads of manufactured goods in exchange.
But away from the coast a series of badly constructed and maintained roads with numerous large pot-holes connected lost of small places with problematic economies, though a few had charted some viable post-communist future - mainly in resource development - coal, gas, agriculture (meat production) - and perhaps tourist ventures such as fishing. However, the short summer and cold winters provide limited scope for international tourism. One community visited had a population of 50,000 people in about 1995, but that has declined to a current 8,000 people as poorly located and inefficient communist era industries collapsed. Of course, the young and ambitious have departed, a process that is also blighting rural villages, many of whose houses are in a poor state of repair.
A polluting industry.
These garages originally stored residents' cars.
Derelict factories and a scarred landscape.
Decaying farm cottages:
OK, some activities and places seemed to be in much better, but much of what we saw was truly depressing for outsiders. Governments and the private sector have a huge job ahead rescuing such rural regions from the ravages of poor investments and meeting head on the huge raft of transforming technologies about to swamp us, not just in Russia but nearly every place on this planet.
AS
We've already had an insight into Vladivostok in a previous post but Nakhodka also looked thriving. Formerly the terminus of the Trans-Siberian railway for non-Russians in the communist era when Vladivostok was a closed port and home to a major naval base, the town has survived as a major import and export port with lots of modern infrastructure and connected with the rapidly growing economies of east and southeast Asia. Being exported were energy raw material including, coal and gas.
But away from the coast a series of badly constructed and maintained roads with numerous large pot-holes connected lost of small places with problematic economies, though a few had charted some viable post-communist future - mainly in resource development - coal, gas, agriculture (meat production) - and perhaps tourist ventures such as fishing. However, the short summer and cold winters provide limited scope for international tourism. One community visited had a population of 50,000 people in about 1995, but that has declined to a current 8,000 people as poorly located and inefficient communist era industries collapsed. Of course, the young and ambitious have departed, a process that is also blighting rural villages, many of whose houses are in a poor state of repair.
A polluting industry.
These garages originally stored residents' cars.
Derelict factories and a scarred landscape.
Decaying farm cottages:
OK, some activities and places seemed to be in much better, but much of what we saw was truly depressing for outsiders. Governments and the private sector have a huge job ahead rescuing such rural regions from the ravages of poor investments and meeting head on the huge raft of transforming technologies about to swamp us, not just in Russia but nearly every place on this planet.
AS
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