1. Introduction
Most regions of the Russian Federation (RF) are considered problem regions
today. The rapid transition from the planned economy system to a market-oriented
economy has resulted in enourmous socio-economic changes affecting all the 89
regions that form the subjects of the RF. Yet even before this change there were
substantial differences between these regions resulting from the inequality of ist
economic environment, ist diverse infrastructures, endowment with natural
ressources and the multinational structure of ist population wwho inhabit that Euro-
Asian vastness of the country quite unevenly. These differences have been
aggravated by the political and socio-economic changes of the last decade: the
adaptive potentials of the regions to a market economy exhibits large variations.
This paper attempts to give an empirical differentiation of all 89 regions (federation
subjects) of the RF according to their problem character. This will be done in three
steps:
1) a short description of the regional division of the RF and the salient nature of
their problems
2) an elaboration of a set of indicators defining the socio-economic situation in all
89 regions of the Russian Federation plus procedures to replace groups of
correlated indicators with single estimated (synthetic) targets and to order
regions within multidimensional space (regions' ranking) in relation to the base
year 1992 and within year-to-year series (1993,1994)
3) a clustering of all Russian Federation regions according to their principal types
and drawing on the regional typification and providing a rationale for the sorting
out of backward and prosperous regions, those in depression and those
considered to be border areas and a description of the problem character of the
specific types.