account the vastness of a number of RF subjects, it is feasible to sort out a few
problem areas within each of them, thus making it possible to effect government
control over and render target assistance for the localities in need, without
extending it to well-developed hubs of RF subjects.
The salient features to identify the problem regions are:
• a dire need to deal with a major problem, failing which is likely to undermine the
country's socio-economic situation, its political stability, bring about
environmental disaster, etc.;
• availability of the resources potential which is of paramount importance in
resolving the most urgent socio-economic problems of the country;
• economical and geographic, or geopolitical factors, as well as natural resources
characterizing a particular significance of a region - making imperative a specific
governmental guidance by federal bodies of power;
• shortage of a region's own resources needed to address the problems occuring
at the federal level, thus earnestly prompting direct or indirect participation of the
state in rendering support and organizational assistance to a region;
• the feasibility of following the program-objective approach, making use of
specific forms of the programs implementation and formally arranging the
problem region status to become an object of government control.
2.3. Degree of problem elaboration
Now that the problems of providing support for depression-stricken and backward
RF regions have become of top priority, the studies on their inequal development
have intensified (works by A.Treivish, T.Nefyodova, N.Petrov et. al.). A preliminary
survey to be discussed at the Committee for Regional Problems of Russia under
the Presidential Counsil was prepared under the guidance of L.V.Smirnyagin in the
Analytical Center under the President of the Russian Federation. The survey
substantiated the vital need to control the development of depression-stricken
areas, presented preliminary results of compulations aimed to select such areas,