Socio-economic studies and political aspects of developing the northern region (to the centenary of the Komi Republic) relations in various regions is gaining significant importance that is recommended to consider in the entire problematics of research of the national and world economy

The article is prepared due to the centenary of the Komi Republic, and it is devoted to the economic teachings and political doctrines that influenced the development of the Republic as part of the Russian state. The author tried to reveal the impact extent of the well-known economic theories and policies of the Russian governments on life and economy of the northern periphery during the periods of radical transformations and evolutionary development. The historical approach to answering this question allowed seeing some analogies of the past with the present times and to actualize the problems of political and economic relations along the “center – region” line.

The purpose of the study is to show the need for special analytical work on the correspondence (or discrepancy) between the practice of economic transformations and social development theories. Except literature sources, we used annual reports of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Socio-Economic and Energy Problems of the North of Komi RC of the RAS Ural Branch.

Scientific justification of Russia’s economic development: pre-revolutionary experience and revolutionary alternative

Pre-revolutionary experience

Advanced Russian economic thought of the late 19–early 20th century was mainly focused on the theory of social reform, the problems of transforming agriculture and industrial development, with the justification of a possibility of Russia’s entry into the forefront of the world economy. The implementation of ideas that combine social, agricultural, and industrial development was considered possible with various options of political and economic transformations: 1) without changing the foundations of the reformed system; 2) with a gradual change of the foundations; 3) with their rapid and revolutionary transformation. Many Russian authors of social and economic theories relied on the teachings of K. Marx, and some agreed with him about the objective laws of the change of capitalist society to a socialist one [1]. Well-known economists and researchers adhered to a position briefly formulated by P.B. Struve: “In order to get out of our economic squalor ... Russia must become a rich capitalist country from a poor capitalist country” [2, p. 250]. Among practical economists with scientific thinking, such views were shared by N.K. Bunge, S.Yu. Witte, and P.A. Stolypin.

Ideas on social changes in the agrarian field were more fully reflected in the works of A.V. Chayanov, who believed that the peasant labor economy could become stable and multiply due to cooperation in several economic activities (acquisition of technical means, sales of products, agronomic and veterinary services, maintenance of communal land and means of production for collective use, etc.). Land reclamation and land management measures, organization of social funds are the functions of the state. Land, according to A.V. Chayanov, should be nationalized and transferred to the use of peasant farms and rural communities on the condition of progressive taxation [3].

The subject of many studies was industrial and transport development, but the accomplishments of D.I. Mendeleev should be noted first. He made a significant contribution to the scientific justification of the development and deployment of productive forces, including such sectors of the national economy as oil, coal, iron ore, argued for the idea of coal gasification, proposed the construction of the Volga-Don Canal, established the commercial and industrial significance of the north-eastern border of Asia and Europe, recommended to develop the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic, to irrigate the lands of the Lower Volga region, and to develop river navigation and rail transport, justified the conditions of customs tariffs and protection of Russian industry, raised the question of how to develop the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic, to catch up and even overtake developed capitalist countries [4].

V.I. Lenin thoroughly studied agriculture in relation to the industry as of the second half of the 19th century. He convincingly showed the fallacy of the views of the Narodnik-economists on the limited possibilities of Russian industrial capitalism and the advantages of the economy’s rural-communal system. Based on scientific analysis of Zemsky statistics, factory censuses, and numerous literary sources, Lenin proved that, in Russia, there was a social division of labor, the growth of commodity production, social stratification of peasantry, and the formation of the working class, the specialization of regions and interregional exchange, i.e., processes that are quite sufficient for the development of the internal market with expanded social reproduction. Lenin said that economic and geographical zoning and the simultaneous deepening of statistical methods for analyzing mass socio-economic processes is the right way to identify stable trends in the development of capitalist relations in Russia [5].

During the First World War (1914–1918), the Commission for the Study of Natural Productive Forces of Russia (KEPS) was formed in 1915 under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) under the chairmanship of Academician V.I. Vernadsky. The foundation for its creation was based on the achievements in the field of not only natural sciences, but also social sciences, as well as the results of complex geographical and statistical characteristics of Russia, carried out under the leadership of P.P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky. The Commission combined the efforts of scientists of many specialties to assess the country’s natural resource potential and to develop measures with the participation of the Russian Academy of Sciences in economic and cultural construction. The concept of placing research institutes in Russian regions was formulated.

Modern analysts of Russian economic thought note some common features of its most prominent representatives: ethical and moral principles of scientific explanation of economic activity, patriotism, and the desire to help the Fatherland, usage of Western teachings, significantly transformed due to Russia’s specifics [6].

Revolutionary alternative

The First World War and its devastating consequences strengthened the position of the radical wing of socialists, which was reflected in V.I. Lenin’s work “The State and Revolution” (the interpretation of the state as a dictatorship: either bourgeois or working class) [7]. The leading political parties (Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, Constitutional Democrats, etc.) ignored Plekhanov’s thesis that Russia is not ready for radical political transformations, and therefore calls for a socialist revolution imply a break with Marxism, a transition to the positions of anarchists, and a lack of understanding of real conditions of the country’s economic development [8].

In 1917–1924, the Soviet government had a surprising split in the assessment and use of achievements of Russian economic thought. One vector of understanding the progressive movement of Russia, indeed, was associated with the ideas of scientific socialism and expressed in completely acceptable political acts for the majority of population (decree on peace, decree on land; decree on the establishment of the state commission for education; decree on freedom of conscience, church and religious societies; basic law on land socialization; declaration of the rights of Russian peoples, declaration of working and exploited people, etc.). The other one reflected only the ideas of state dictatorship and “war communism” that allegedly did not contradict democracy (the decree on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly; several documents on the establishment of a state monopoly in politics and social activity; decree on revolutionary tribunals, etc.).

The part of the program documents on the construction of socialism, which concerned the productive forces, basically corresponded to the historical course of scientific and technological progress. It was assumed to use the advantages of a generalized large-scale industry, transport, and energy systems in the formation of efficient production complexes. V.I. Lenin, in the “Outline of the Plan for Scientific and Technical Works” (April 1918), recommended the Supreme Board of the National Economy to instruct the Academy of Sciences, which began a systematic study and survey of Russia’s natural productive forces, to form several commissions of specialists for the fastest possible preparation of a plan for the reorganization of industry and economic recovery of the country. This plan, according to V.I. Lenin, should include: “rational placement of industrial facilities in Russia from the point of view of proximity of raw materials and possibility of the least loss of labor during the transition from processing raw materials to all successive stages of processing semi-finished products until the finished product is obtained; rational, from the point of view of the newest largest industry and especially trusts, merging and concentration of production in a few largest enterprises; the greatest provision of the present Russian Soviet Republic (without Ukraine and without the regions occupied by the Germans) for independent supply with all the main types of raw materials and industry” [9, p. 228].

Special attention was paid to the electrification of industry and transport and the use of electricity in agriculture, usage of non-first-class fuels (peat, coal of the worst grades) to produce electric energy with the lowest costs for the extraction and transportation of fuel, application of water forces and wind engines in agriculture.

The listed tasks concerning scientific and technical works were specified in the State Commission for Electrification of Russia (GOELRO plan – 1920). Its district-wide principle of organizing the national economy in the form of production complexes, formed around large state-owned electric power stations, was the basis for a new (constructive) economic geography of Russia in theoretical terms and practical placement of industrial facilities. GOELRO Commission prepared the basis for the creation of a state body for systematic long-term planning. State Planning Committee (Gosplan) was organized in February 1921.

N.D. Kondratiev started the theory of forecasting social development with the scientific justification of its general guidelines. He conducted a statistical study of large (long) cycles and showed the interconnection of economic fluctuations of various durations, associated with the renewal of long-term elements of fixed capital (production facilities, transport, energy, and other infrastructure), with major technical changes, creation of new energy sources, new types of raw materials, and development of fundamentally new technologies [10]. There also were other scientific achievements that correspond to the ideas of the planned organization of economic activity (methods of economic and social statistics, compilation of product and intersectoral balances, mathematical modeling of the state and prospects for the development of the national economy, etc.).

The second vector of economic management in Soviet Russia can be described as “steeply politicized”. It was formed on the principle of “the end justifies the means”. At the same time, the purpose setting was mostly political: retention and consolidation of Bolsheviks’ power, creation of labor communes as production and social organizations, simulation of aggravation of class struggle, destruction of everything that provokes capitalist relations. It may seem that this was caused only by the confrontation between white and red terror, Civil war, famine, and the weakness of the democratic state in solving the problems of the war economy. In fact, as if bypassing previously created theories of social transformation, a model of the autocratic power vertical, corresponding to the “Asian way of production”, began to be purposefully built. Some foreign and domestic analysts have identified it as Eastern despotism, which is characterized by the absence of private property, the abolition of market competition, and an absolute power of the state bureaucracy [11; 12].

It is impossible to deny the influence of extraordinary circumstances on the Soviet government’s choice for clearly non-democratic governance. However, it was precisely the principles of “war communism” that corresponded to the ideas of the supreme leadership of Russia about a socialist society (the absence of private ownership of the means of production, elimination of commoditymoney relations, equalized distribution of material goods). Moreover, V.I. Lenin began to interpret the country’s national economy as a single factory, individual districts as its workshops, and this is not yet an extreme case of economic thought about socialist construction. Ideas and principles of “war communism” determined the essence of the general line of the party; the new economic policy (NEP) was only a temporary departure from it (it existed in the USSR from 1921 to 1929).

There were conditions when politics predetermined the content of economic science. If someone did not justify the chosen course of building “socialism”, showed a real picture of public life, or revealed processes that did not correspond to political directives, then he put his life in mortal danger. So, A.V. Chayanov in 1937 and N.D. Kondratyev in 1938 were executed by firing squad. The former – for respecting peasantry and its freedom, including the choice of forms of rural cooperation. The latter – not for the theory of large cycles as a progressive technological sequence, but for its social interpretation, which does not coincide with the “theory” of the transition from socialism to communism. It is impossible to combine these two vectors of building a socialist economy with the help of science, so political and social aspects of collectivization, industrialization, cultural revolution, and the promotion of productive forces to the East and North were not considered outside official interpretations.

Projection of Russian economic thought and revolutionary doctrines on the northern periphery

V.I. Lenin in his work “On Food Tax…” (April 1921) wrote: “Look at the map of the RSFSR. There are vast expanses that would fit dozens of huge cultural states: to the north of Vologda, to the southeast of Rostov-on-Don and from Saratov. to the south of Orenburg and from Omsk, to the north of Tomsk. All these territories are dominated by patriarchal, semi-savagery and the most real savagery. What about the peasant backwoods of the rest of Russia? Everywhere with dozens of versts of country roads – or rather, dozens of versts of offroad roads – that separate the countryside from the railways, that is, from the material connection with culture, with capitalism, with large-scale industry, with a city. Does not patriarchalism, oblomovism (sluggishness and apathy), and semi-savagery prevail everywhere in these places?” [13, p. 228].

We citied this quote to partially disagree with it at first. As for economic backwardness, the reality is exactly as it is written by V.I. Lenin. However, “savagery and semi-savagery” is a characteristic of people themselves living on the outskirts of the Russian Empire, and this characteristic did not correspond to reality. For example, Komi and Pomors were better in terms of national average literacy; they were not inferior in the level of organization of peasant farms and latrines1. The Pomors gave the country M.V. Lomonosov, and the Komi – P.A. Sorokin.

Educated people in the Komi Republic knew about socio-economic science and its achievements. This knowledge was formed during training in Moscow, Petrograd, and other cities of central Russia, during communication with exiled revolutionaries. Economic science penetrated the Komi Republic together with the organizers of expeditions to collect statistical and other information to assess the possibilities of colonization of new lands and connect natural resources to the national economy. So, for the 1901–1914 period, 11 state expeditions were organized. Some of them, like the Komi public figures V.F. Popov and K.F. Zhakov,actively participated in it and organized scientific stationary statistical observations. They smartly approached the assessment of P.A. Stolypin’s policy on the resettlement (colonization) of peasants from central Russia to Siberia and to the North. “K.F. Zhakov concluded that it was impossible to colonize the Komi Region widely, since this would lead to the destruction of forests, disappearance of fish, animals, and fowl, as well as general decline of the region, and he did not see any free lands for colonization. K.F. Zhakov and V.F. Popov opposed the allocation of land for immigrants, defended the expediency of conducting land management of local old-resident population, allocating them free arable and other land” [14, p. 164].

Local cells of social democrats, social revolutionaries, and cadets supported propaganda of their political beliefs with certain social works and attitudes of political leaders. However, after the revolution of 1917, this diversity was replaced by political monopoly of the Bolshevik party and the forms of organization of Soviet power corresponding to its ideas.

The quote about the backwoods expanses is also cited to remind the reader of Lenin’s assessment of the economic structures of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. V.I. Lenin wrote in 1921: “... what exactly are the elements of various socioeconomic structures existing in Russia. This is the whole point of the question. Let us list these elements: 1) patriarchal, i.e., largely natural, peasant economy; 2) small-scale commodity production (this includes most of the peasants who sell bread); 3) private-economic capitalism; 4) state capitalism; 5) socialism” [13, p. 207].

In some regions of Russia, these elements were presented differently. In the North, natural and small-scale peasant farming prevailed, in some places – private-economic capitalism, and therefore social transformations should have been based primarily on the theory of A.V. Chayanov and some other agricultural economists, including V.I. Lenin (if we keep in mind his works “The Development of Capitalism in Russia” and “On Food Tax”). The ideas of complete collectivization here did not correspond to the real situation in the agricultural sphere2. The nature of the peasant labor economy and the family-labor theory were excluded from the field of view of the Soviet government as a possible socially fair and economically effective source of socialist accumulation.

The economy of the Komi Autonomous Region as part of the Russian Federation, and then the USSR, in the 1920s and 1930s was studied within the framework of the theoretical concept of the initial socialist accumulation, first, at the expense of income from foreign trade activities, and then by non-equivalent inclusion of the natural resources of the marginal territories in the country’s manufacturing industry. The European North had become a gold and foreign exchange shop, supplying roundwood abroad through the Arkhangelsk port. The Russian government received gold and foreign currency for this. In the GOELRO Plan, the European North was considered a reserve, the potential of which had to be thoroughly studied. One of the most striking examples of scientific and organizational work on the complex study of the northern territories is the expedition to the Komi region under the leadership of Academician A.P. Karpinsky, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (“Pechora Brigade”, 1933).

At present, there is a complete overview of the results of the work of the Pechora Brigade, which allows us to understand the scope, nature, and results of its activities. It includes the monograph by M.P. Roshchevsky, L.P. Roshchevskaya, and A.A. Brovina, which is not only of historical value for science itself and the Russian Academy of Sciences (celebrating its 300th anniversary in 2024) but is also a source for understanding the mutual relationship between socio-economic theories and political practice [15]. This work clearly traces the theme of the double vector of social transformations in Russia (the USSR) in the first half of the 20th century: scientifically based development and distribution of productive forces and the formation of a social system with elements of political oppression devoid of any scientific basis (except for the theory of the “Asian way of production”).

On the one hand, the natural resource potential of the Ukhto-Pechersk region was studied according to all scientific rules, there was a desire to find an economically and socially acceptable way to use it for the benefit of people. On the other hand, even working conditions of the brigade, not to mention practical experience of mineral resources development that it studied in Chibyu, Water fishing, Yareg, Vorkuta, and other places, are characterized in its reporting documents by the words OGPU, GULAG, political prisoners, special settlers, barracks, supervision, etc.

Scientific orientation of the North to the selective development of resources (construction of the enterprises that are economically necessary and cannot be built in other areas; creation of a focal northern industry with high mechanization and reduction of the cost of live labor) was not used in practice precisely because of the availability of cheap forced labor.

Scientific support of the administrative-planned economy

Mobilization economy

The book of the Chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee (1938–1949), Academician N.A. Voznesensky “Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War” [16] reflects the greatest feat of the Soviet people in the victory over fascism, primarily due to the mobilization of high human qualities and willingness to sacrifice for the sake of saving the Motherland, relatives, and friends. It is difficult to judge whether this kind of human nature was formed despite the economic dictates of “war communism”, but, of course, historical memory of the origins of the Fatherland and examples of its heroic defense played an important role.

This book is about the economy during the war. At the same time, N.A. Voznesensky believed that the military economy can also exist in peacetime, when the tasks of creating a defense complex and other conditions for national security become paramount. It is noteworthy that the military economy was built according to certain rules of expanded social reproduction using the balance sheets of the national economy and, what is especially important for economic geography, it implemented the political doctrine of a significant and short-term shift of productive forces to the East.

As a result, we can say that the military economy strengthened the mobilization thinking, natural for the entire Soviet period, with a political and patriotic tinge of overcoming difficulties, inevitability of long endurance, denudation of the central Russia’ countryside, and, most importantly, the belief that this way of organizing the economy and the “artel-barrack” way of life reflects the advantage of socialism over capitalism.

From a scientific point of view, the mobilization economy can be interpreted as a way to solve complex economic problems. It encourages the development of methods of system analysis and the creation of programs of increased complexity. An example of this is the work of academic commissions on the mobilization of resources for the defense needs [17]. Especially the activities of the commission for the Urals, Western Siberia, and Kazakhstan. The programs and projects of the commission, agreed among themselves on the terms of execution, material, technical and financial support, were implemented according to the rules of scientifically based program management3. Perhaps only the oil and gas development program in Western Siberia came close to such a high level of development and implementation of national economic programs in peacetime.

Economic science and socialist planning

The most general understanding of planning is the choice of a goal and methods to achieve it. Based on numerous scientific works on economic planning and personal experience in the development of territorial planning concepts, we note that this type of activity is immanent in humans and social systems; it is useful not so much for predicting the future, but for building a chain of logical conclusions about progress and problems that arise in its path.

Initially, the problem is recorded explicitly (for example, how best to cut the plywood to get the desired workpieces with the least waste). Then it is complicated by the issues of rational use of equipment, working time, and the replacement of some resources with others. This is how the theory of optimal planning emerged in relation to enterprises and factories [18].

The content of state planning depends on the understanding of the essence of the state itself, its social functions. The theorists of socialist planning proceeded from the stereotype of the state as a comprehensive body of public administration (the management of society, not general-purpose affairs) that had developed in the USSR [19]. If, for example, in the United States and Western countries, economic science interpreted the development of intersectoral balances as a method of understanding the production and financial proportions to correctly determine the vector of economic development, in the USSR, where this area of scientific research reached a world level, intersectoral balance from a practical point of view was considered as the plan itself or, in any case, as its framework.

The political-economic interpretation of planning emphasized the advantages of socialism: the absence of economic crises, wasteful competition, and contradictions between the social nature of production and the private mode of appropriation. At the same time, since the 1970s, the signs of the USSR lagging behind the developed countries in terms of labor productivity and the quality of life of the population have become increasingly noticeable. Economists-researchers, who were focused not on justifying political economy, but on finding ways to update the economic mechanism, concluded the increasing importance of economic independence of enterprises and regions, economic calculation, and economic incentives for labor [20–24].

An interesting fact is that the authors of the economic and mathematical field were the first to write about this, who knew about the possibilities of computer technology to calculate planned tasks “from the plane to the nail”, but nevertheless stated that the socialist economy should function based on commodity-money relations. This position, to some extent, corresponded to the goal of reforms of the Chairman of the USSR government A.N. Kosygin.

The views of many geographers-economists shifted from the resource and energy-technological factors of production placement, which were strictly set by plans to the analysis of relatively free (variant) conditions for the formation of territorial social systems [25–27]. The actualization of social, cultural, and ethnic aspects of life has strengthened the natural-historical approach to explaining the processes of population settlement in contrast to the policy of its voluntary resettlement. This shift was also caused by the fact that the economic and geographical reinforcement of the “territorial section” of socialist planning did not receive a proper response in management structures or was carried out in an exaggerated form, as happened with the sovnarkhoz organization or the division of territories into zones of activity of industrial and agricultural regional committees of the CPSU.

Hope for a correct understanding of the role of socio-economic geography in planning and management flickered with the inclusion of information about territorial production complexes (TPC) in the materials of party congresses. However, the joy was premature: 12–15 selected TPCs did not correspond to the specified principles and teachings; they embodied the meaning of the mobilization economy, when new growth points were needed to save the decaying industry. The situation was corrected by the theory of program targeted TPC, which showed ways to implement large investment projects together with natural and social conditions of areas of concentrated construction [28].

Scientific support of the administrative-planned economy in the Komi Republic

Since the beginning of the 1950s, transmission of Soviet scientific and economic thought to the Republic of Komi began to be carried out through the Komi branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Syktyvkar, which also includes the Department of Economics. Then this kind of broadcast was supplemented with in-depth studies of the economic efficiency of economic measures. At the same time, the practice of the Northern socio-economic policy was critically studied.

Economic thinking, combined with geographical and ecological thinking, “suggested” orientation to limited opportunities for the development of natural resources despite political demands for production growth at any cost; to possibility of forming territorial production complexes in the North and in the Arctic, but only as local systems with a developed interregional commodity exchange. The Timan-Pechora TPC, created according to the logic of ministerial selfsufficiency, eventually became only an additional line of five-year plans, losing the essence of territorial integration. Economists and geographers drew the attention of the country’s political leadership to the fact that the promotion of industry in the northern latitudes requires special scientific and technical training and advanced development of industrial and social infrastructure, otherwise a sacrificial economy with a significant use of forced labor again arises [29; 30].

The economic assessment of the northern conditions in the justification of the five-year plans was carried out with significant errors. Thus, the estimated cost of constructed objects in the republic, in comparison with similar ones in the Moscow Oblast, increased by 1.34 times. An expert assessment with a scientifically based approach to the analysis of natural and economic-geographical conditions showed that 1.43–2.25 times price increase existed for certain territories of the Republic [31]. In practice, this discrepancy was shown by the lack of financial resources at the end of the five-year plan and the presence of large volumes of unfinished construction.

However, the paradox was that the lack of balance in the overall planning of the national economy in 1960–1980 led to unprecedented growth of the economy of the Komi Republic. However, the economic assessment of the depletion of natural resource capital at that time was not yet given, and statistical indicators, such as total social product, gross national income, nominal value of monetary income, etc., did not reflect the realities of regional development.

Economic science and revolutionary reform

Approaching reforms

In the late 1980s, Russia’s economic science underwent significant changes that are considered revolutionary [32]. Indeed, at that time, economics laid the theoretical foundations for new relations about property, institutionalism, system of optimal economic functioning, structural proportions of social reproduction, economic motivation of productive labor, and social priorities in the planning system. If we paraphrase the earlier statement of P.B. Struve, we can figuratively formulate the main credo of Russian economic thought in the late 1980s: “To get out of our economic squalor ... Russia must change to a rich socialist country from a poor socialist country”.

At the same time, these achievements of Russian economic science should be supplemented with research on the theory and methodology of reform as a specific management process. But such studies were not organized properly. The Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR, as the highest body of state power (1989–1991), did not receive knowledge from the social sciences about the procedure for carrying out reforms. It is difficult to say whether it would have helped the progressive development of our country’s economy or not, since the subsequent reform did not require scientific knowledge.

Revolutionary reformation

The term “rev-reforms” was introduced by V.N. Leksin and N.A. Shvetsov; they also concluded that economic transformations carried out in the Russian Federation in the 1990s were not reforms from a scientific point of view [33]. Economic transformations involving self-financing planning, state order, economic standards, direct economic relationsб and wholesale trade, equilibrium prices, self-financing-guaranteed system of distribution of the wage fund, program and regulatory financing, self-financing credit system, contractual management structure were designated by E.G. Yasin as “radical reforms” [34]. At the same time, “shock therapy” with a simultaneous introduction of free prices, voucher and collateral privatization, depreciation of bank deposits of population, legal speculation in the foreign exchange market, barter, economic banditry “under the roof of the state”, exorbitant social stratification of citizens, etc. are difficult to define by any scientific term. The government and business ignored the calls of academic science for a moral economy. The state itself aimed at complete destruction of everything socialist, and it is interpreted as the collapse of the ideas of the reformers even by Western authors [35].

The Komi Republic: reaction to deter revolutionary reform

We assess the economic behavior of regional governments in 1992–2000 as a period of the formation of local countermeasures that opposed the actions of the Center in terms of the revolutionary reform of the political and economic system of Russia. Many regional leaders, in contrast to the federal ones, were more inclined to consistent and gradual changes. Within the regional economy and socio-economic geography, this position was supported by a scientific analysis of the problems of the formation of regional property, the system of territorial management, and geographical expertise of management decisions [36]. Based on the materials of a long-term observation of the households in the Komi Republic, the reaction of ordinary people to the “reforms”, carried out in the country, was shown: transition to small-scale production, social isolation, psychology of survival, and loss of hope to get out of poverty [37].

The laws of the Komi Republic, adopted in the 1990s, which protected the interests of population and focused on the rational use of natural resources, did not have a mechanism for use; in this regard, territorial and intersectoral development programs were more effective. The key was the Program of socio-economic development of the Komi Republic with its administration as a special management body. However, implementation of the programs, along with the positive effect, exacerbated the problem of the spatial gap between created and consumed surplus product, since the management of the programs was mainly extraterritorial, and the norms and rules of classical economic federalism were not applied in the regional policy of the Russian Federation. Constitutional norms on local self-government, regarding an independent solution of several tasks related to life support of population, also did not have a constructive form of implementation. All this was subjected to scientific criticism, but without a positive response from the state administration. Regional and local government structures were forced to work in the “manual control” mode.

Economic science and evolutionary development

Evolutionary thinking

Since 2000, transition from revolutionary reform to the policy of evolutionary development has been marked. Evolutionary orientation contributed to the emergence of a new hypothesis of the integration society, which is defined by the ideas of economic sociodynamics, mixed economy and social clusterism, philosophy of cooperation, evolutionary theory in connection with reproduction regimes, and others that reflect the global trends of inclusion of factors of society’s sustainable development in the system of state and interstate management.

Evolutionary thinking “draws” an ideal image of the future and the corresponding methods of achieving its goals, but it constantly conflicts with current undesirable circumstances. Economic science and the practice of public administration are forced to move from the traditional analysis and rational use of development factors (science, technology, labor, territorial division of labor, needs and interests, etc.) to the analysis of circumstances (natural and man-made accidents and catastrophes, epidemics, market cataclysms, geopolitical instability, social tension, etc.). In such circumstances, regional and federal governments often use the “manual control”.

There is a situation when the “circumstances of the way of action” become one of the main subjects of socio-economic research. It also turned out that the evolutionary economy is difficult to combine with previously formed and, in fact, unchanged political and economic base, in which “...the orientation of monetary authorities to serve the interests of currency and financial speculators and the offshore oligarchy daily increases the contradictions between the ruling elite and people, making them antagonistic” [38, p.24].

Differences between macro -, meso -, and microeconomics

The author believes that the idea of the role of the regional economy as a science in the system of state and municipal administration will be more correct if its subject is the organization of territorial management – activities related to the formation and rational use of municipal and sub-federal property, as well as inter-economic and interregional cooperation [39]. This clarification is relevant to the topic of our article, since it emphasizes the belonging of other socio-economic sciences to the formation of regional policy. Moreover, the regional economy is not a link between enterprises (firms) and national economy. The study of regions and other territorial and economic systems initially takes place on an interdisciplinary basis. The translation of macroeconomic indicators to the regional level remains the prerogative of macroeconomics itself. It is also important that some processes that are studied by macroeconomics and the economy of firms are not captured at the regional level. This circumstance should be kept in mind when scientific recommendations are made to state and municipal management on behalf of the regional economy.

Science and its interest in strong regional power

With the hope for political stability, considering understanding of the increasing role of the subjects of the Russian Federation in state administration, the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of the Komi Republic was formed in 2000 under the chairmanship of Academician N.P. Yushkin. Its main task was to identify scientific, technical, and socio-economic problems, general directions for long-term development and deployment of productive forces, and integrated use of mineral, fuel and energy, water, forest, and other resources, considering environmental factor in the Komi Republic and adjacent regions. Involuntarily, there were analogies with the allRussian KEPS of 1915 and the borrowing of its forms of activity. The published works and scientific and analytical materials of the RK KEPS have significantly increased the importance of socioeconomic research in making specific decisions of the government of the Republic. There was an element that strengthened its self-sufficiency, which was noticed by the federal government. At the end of 2004, the commission de jure ceased to exist.

The example of the RK KEPS is only a special case of a general contradictory situation in relations between the Center and the regions. Let us pay attention to a possibility of a new aspect in the interpretation of these contradictions. Under the current circumstances, in the field of economic federalism, all significant, and even insignificant, issues are resolved by regional governments in Moscow, and therefore socio-economic research in the regions has also begun to be conducted with a Moscow orientation: if the scientific result is perceived by the central structures of state administration, then the likelihood of its practical application on the ground increases. Of course, the scientific space is formed on top of administrative and territorial borders, so the procedure for implementing the results of research does not necessarily have to take place on the principles of “shuttle diplomacy” between the Center and the regions.

At the same time, the procedure of “joint management” is mandatory in terms of solving the most urgent problems of the transformation of territorial and economic systems caused by extreme and complex conditions for their further functioning.

In the Komi Republic, an example is the current situation with the Arctic cities of Vorkuta and Inta, where the coal industry is losing its city-forming mission. In determining the prospects for their unstable development, the logic of the mobilization economy can be useful, when any directions for their preservation should be considered with an eye to the risks of Arctic life activity. We believe that it is possible that the resettlement program from Vorkuta and Inta will have to be carried out unconditionally and in the evacuation mode. Economic tasks related to national security, the development of urgently needed mineral resources and the study of the Arctic should be solved with the use of a shift method of work and the use of high-availability block modules for the construction of unique Arctic bases.

The prospects for the development of territorial and economic systems of the taiga part of the Republic are determined by the optimization of the formation and reproduction of their human and natural resource potential, practical application of “green economy” principles, reconstruction of rural settlement based on the strengthening of supporting settlements and relocation of residents of unpromising villages, change in the configuration of land use, new spatial organization of infrastructure and social services. The solution of these tasks involves a significant reallocation of financial resources in favor of regions and municipalities.

These examples reflect three aspects of socioeconomic research conducted in the Komi Republic: 1) analysis of trends in the North in terms of population, environmental management, formation of economic systems and mechanisms for regulating socio-economic processes; 2) determination of value and significance of individual indicators (characteristics) of the northern regions in the development of the regional, national, and world economy. Demographic, natural resource, and environmental potentials, ethnic culture and traditional economy, socioeconomic space (peripheral, sparse, difficult to overcome), climatic discomfort and other natural conditions of life are evaluated; 3) development of recommendations in the field of strategic planning and programming of economic systems development based on northern (Arctic) production and social technologies [40].

Conclusion

The author’s idea is to show the role of socioeconomic research in the development of the Komi Republic while the collection of analytical material and compilation of the text of the article was implemented with some additions when referring to the problems of “science and power”. First, let us pay attention to consequences that arise if theoretical research is not considered or implemented in an exaggerated form. Thus, by 1917, Russian economic science had formed a kind of theoretical basis for objectively determined social transformations, which served as a reference point for the accelerated development of Russia’s productive forces and the growth of people’s wellbeing. The same basis was formed in the prereform period by 1992, when the key idea was to carry out socio-economic transformations without revolutionary restructuring of the existing sociopolitical system. However, the political reality turned out to be completely opposite, anti-popular. This situation allows us to make three recommendations:

• 1)    criticism of the existing and creation of an image of the future should be accompanied by the development of an appropriate theory of reform as a management process;

• 2)    planning is subjected not only to the material and technical part of the productive forces, but also to an adequate socio-economic mechanism of their action, improvement of social relations within the framework of universal values and concepts;

• 3)    revolutionary reform of the economy associated with the struggle for political power through “shock therapy” is outside the scope of socio-economic research; it does not need scientific justification and is only covered by the significance of selectively taken economic theories, such as the regulatory role of the free market and monetarism

or is carried out with the false idea of not adhering to any economic theory.

Evolutionary path of development (gradual and long-term movement toward an integrated society of social justice) is more rational, but its implementation is associated with various negative circumstances. This leads to the adjustment of the classical topic of socio-economic research in two ways:

• 1)    inclusion of circumstances in the subject content of the economy;

• 2)    understanding the essence of the mobilization economy, since the mobilization economic thinking arises and develops not only in wartime, but also in peacetime due to emergency circumstances or when the country’s political leadership sets ambitious tasks that are impossible to solve within the objectively established proportions of social reproduction and limited investment resources

Appeal of socio-economic sciences to regional topics is caused by the great importance of specifics in the adjustment of the entire national economy. From the experience of studying the Komi Republic, it follows that:

• 1)    inclusion of the Russian periphery in the general system of economic and cultural transformations can be fruitful only if the way of local life becomes the most important subject of science and management practice;

• 2)    general economic theory and regional practice of economic activity may develop in parallel for some time. However, there comes a time when it is necessary to carry out an examination of scientific knowledge and practical experience of management for their compliance with actual socio-economic situation of specific regions. A possibility of a significant restructuring of economic thinking under the influence of local practices is not excluded.