Foreword
We confront a necessity to master the regional management on a territory in such a poor condition that one may compare it to a patient in an intensive care unit (ICU).
In the critical care setting, human life is at stake. If this life is lost, the relatives of a patient may prosecute an ICU nurse or physician. The defendant can avoid accusation of malpractice only if he/she presents clear evidence before a court that he/she acted in compliance with rules, practices, and theory of nursing and treatment of critically ill patients. A situation is quite different with societies where shamans take care of such patients. By definition, a shaman cannot disclose its "technology" to laymen; so the only consolation for the relatives of a patient in the case of the patient's death is to seek vengeance on the shaman or members of his family.
An important step toward a law-abiding society is elimination of shamanism from territorial management theory and practice. This article presents one such attempt.
As recent ballots have shown, there are still many desirous to assume personal responsibility to steer the region to prosperity. Another purpose of this article is to help these people make a diagnosis of the territorial condition and to offer them technology needed to overcome today's crisis and to secure further territorial development.
A Diagnostic Scale Of Critical Stages In Territorial Development
There are close linkages between specific socio-economic problems of territorial development, on the one hand, and essentially more general and profound, even global, problems, on the other. Our ability to cope with such problems depends on our understanding of this fact. In times of catastrophically rapid societal and economic changes the identification and control of these linkages becomes a must for choosing a proper development strategy.
We recognize six levels in systems analysis of Siberian territories:
Below is shown how the problems identified at some level derive from those at deeper
levels. Therefore, you must solve them in succession. For example, you can solve economic
problems only after you have solved the problems that generated the economic problems.
Returning to our ICU analogy, we notice that it is useless to give critical care for, say, gastrointestinal disorders while the heart has failed. First, you transfer this patient to an intensive cardiac care unit (ICCU). You must have the patient's heart working, and only then you set off a therapy for the patient's gastrointestinal disorders or other organs and functions.
To make a diagnosis of the territory in the critical stage, we need a scale whereby we will classify such critical stages. It will also help us prescribe a schedule of necessary actions. We suggest a scale resembling those for natural phenomena (Beaufort scale, Richter scale). The magnitude by this scale corresponds to the number of the highest level at which serious problems exist. For example, if there are only economic problems while legal and all the other ones have been settled (or never arisen), we evaluate this critical stage to be at point one by this scale. Notice that heaviness of economic problems has influence on only our decision whether we qualify this stage of territorial development as critical or not. Once we�ve decided on the affirmative answer, we determine the magnitude of the critical stage only by the level at which the serious problems exist. If we have serious problems at all levels up to the global one, we evaluate the magnitude of such a crisis at point six.
We estimate the magnitude of the crisis on Siberian territories by our scale at point five, since most of the Siberian population shares only one idea: We must keep the entirety of Russia in order to have Russia remain a superpower.
In this article, we make emphasis on issues of administrative personnel training. One-area specialists, however brilliant they may be as economists, sociologists, etc., cannot guide a radical reform. No skills or training in one particular area can be sufficient for problem solving and decision making in times of turbulent development and bifurcate transitions. More qualified and better equipped for managing territorial development in times of change are professionals that we call regional analysts. They may be even ignorant of some in-depth subtleties in economics or sociology or other areas. Rather, they exercise a holistic approach to these disciplines. Together with sound practical judgment and keenly sensitive perception of ongoing events and their interconnections, excellent academic training will enable these regional analysts to make precise, apt analytic forecasts.
The Siberian Personnel-Training Center have launched the training of such specialists.
We feel it most natural to begin analyzing the Siberian territorial development from the economic level. The propaganda concentrates much effort on economic problems, so they are most familiar to everybody. We use them as a point of departure.
Previously, local governments saw their main financial functions first in securing the largest possible budgets they drew from the federal government and then in allocation of these funds.
To get control over their spendings, the local governments made up so-called development programs, actually investment projects. Profitability or at least economic feasibility for these projects were estimated only superficially.
Today, budget money is hardly sufficient for executing even basic administrative functions by local governments.
In this connection, local governments had to assume one more important function. They seek to attract private capital to participate in joint territorial development projects. At that, old-fashioned programs are no good, because private investors apply their own criteria of what is good or bad to development projects. New surrounding requires local governments to switch from program-oriented methods to an approach whereby they would set general socio-economic priorities and benefits for the projects complying with these priorities. A job of making up efficient projects for territorial infrastructure development is thereby left to the discretion of the private investors.
The only problem is that the territorial development (i.e., territorial reconstruction) is not profitable investment for private capital today.
Persistent and controversial at once as it was, denationalization policy by the federal government generated new sources of capital. Fleeing our legal situation devoid of necessary rules of the game much of this capital is invested abroad. The flow of outpouring capital has increased greatly, and no prohibitive regulation seems able to stop it.
The situation can improve, first by lowering risks for incoming capital, and also by setting clear priorities for territorial development. Both measures mostly belong in outside an economic domain; we can and ought to apply them at other levels, too. At present, none of new owners can effectively and definitely exercise his/her powers, because our legislature failed to pass laws setting forth owner�s rights and obligations. Legally, all our securities and mortgages are null and void. We arrive at the need to eliminate the causes of economic problems at the legal level.
Every owner is explicitly willing to exercise owner�s powers within a distinct �legal space,� as post-Soviet Russian authors put it. It means the legislature passes laws setting forth owner�s rights and obligations that cannot be withdrawn or arbitrarily changed.
New owners found themselves barred from the �legal space,� that is, they are deprived of property rights enforceable by law. To survive as owners, they seek administrative powers. In the end, they usurp these powers from the state. Once they enter the old �legal space,� they set out to reshape it in order to get legal protection for their business. In case of failure, �shady� as they were during the Soviet era, the new owners are doomed to proceed by an old law that does not recognize them at all. Willy-nilly, they go into politics.
Meanwhile, these circumstances have brought into �shadiness� not only private owners, but also organs of local and regional governments that control and manage municipal property. Conflicts over alleged acts of misappropriation and corruption are both misfortune on the part of the new owners and the fault on the part of the federal authorities barring their new partners from the legal space.
At this point, private capital and local governments went on moving ahead along different paths. These paths are well known in countries that have brought about reforms like ours.
Private capital has formed �managerial chains� according to the sizes of its establishments. The mechanisms of their work are �shady� because of obsolete legislation. Rackets, hired guns, tax evasions, and other illegal practices proliferate in Russia not because of innate wickedness of Russian people or their incompatibility with democracy; rather, we should regret the absence of legal mechanisms enforcing sound practices on business and financial affaires.
Once organs of local governments became aware of themselves as owners, they began to form unions, associations, round tables, etc. Of these organizations, most appealing to the tastes of all parties came to be assotiations organized around traditional administrative division of the land. This very reason itself doomed the idea to establish Interregional Assotiation � Siberian Agreement (IASA) to success.
Setllement of the legal space by new owners has just began, and it encounters orthodoxical opposition from federal authorities. They naively call for solving all problems by settling conflict of only economic interests of the three kinds of owners, as if the owners were purely economic entities.
Only two-way efforts by all parties in this conflict can resolve this lengthy tie. An outcome of the crisis is only possible when
A tiresome role of neglected stepchild the state imposed on them sent the new owners to seek comfort on someone other's shoulder. The Economic Liberty Party and ostentatious Independance Declarations of republics were indicative of such moods. As the process developed, many came to view Liberal Democratic Party of Russia as such a shoulder. After December 12, 1993 (the election of the 1st Duma, where LDPR sweepingly carried the country), the stepchild get married or at least engaged. The analogy itself suggests the future course of events. As a result, federal officeholders need to promptly solve the old problem (that they never realized) under new pressing conditions. Now the �parent� must vest the �child� with superfavorable benefits to lure it away from the Weimar Republic course of events. We see no hope of sudden awakening of hundreds of federal officials in the habit of self-willed decision making they mistake for democracy.
More realistic is another outcome. In the province, the �child� is still unmarried. Therefore, the conflict can be resolved at the level of interregional groups of private owners and proprietary organs of lcal governments with only fraction of resources the lobby in the capital demands. The settlement of the conflict at the provincial level would help federal structures to withstand the crisis.
If all this come true, here comes the heyday of the interregional associations as saviors of the federal structures. The duration of this heyday is only a few months. We need not waste our time in press conferences proclaiming in God knows what time that the Russian might to accrue is Siberia. Rather, we need to set forth the IASA initiative and to provide its mechanisms with means to realize this initiative. In brief, we urgently need to join efforts of state, municipal, and private capital in order to solve problems of territorial development in Siberia.
How can we do this?
Investment capitals are very swift and incessantly move over regions and continents. The task of effective territorial management is to attract these capitals and to have them �set down� on this territory. To do this, you need to promise stable profit making under protection of the reliable authority. You can add also original projects directed by competent specialists who live and work in the region.
We discussed earlier how to strengthen administrative powers. Another factor contributing to attractiveness of a territory for investors is a human resource. It is quite possible that a multitude of creative persons immersed in diversified business activity, like honeybees in their beehive, can bring more capital into the region than both federal and the local governments do it now.
Although there is no lack in natural resources in Siberia, the regional government should pay attention to the most expensive deposit that formed in Siberia in the 20th century. We talk about competent human resources.
More than once, when we considered the problems at the legal level, we came upon a necessity for the new owners to become aware of their role as sovereign entities in the ongoing process. Without this, they won�t be able to effectively operate even in the new �legal space.� If we release their creative activity, they overcome any obstacles and the crisis will go.
To solve the legal problem of �parent � neglected stepchild� relations we need to vest both parties with equal rights. The owners must obtain sovereignty. How can we do it?
At present every reasonably wise government values this resource above any other, for example, mineral. The competence of the professionals working in a region sets limits to a development of the region. If there are natural resources in the region and no people capable to turn them into wealth, the people from other regions will exhaust these resources to their advantage. On the contrary, regions poor in natural resources can do well due to talent of its businesspersons and specialists. Good example of the latter is Japan that imports almost all raw materials needed to its industry.
Countries and regions that lose a competition for intellect inevitably become suppliers of raw materials and cheap labor force for other regions, countries, and transnationals. We in the region quite consistently and logically pursue this course of events, don�t we?
Losses of competent human resource in the Novosibirsk oblast, depending on the way of reckoning, amount to from 50 to 200 million dollars and continue to rise. What if this oblast have lost a $50,000,000 worth of metal, timber, garden appliances, or arms a year? Does it worry anybody?
We use geoeconomical and all other primary resources of the region in order to develop its infrastructure. We must do it for the sake of prosperity of people living in the region, and nobody has any right to exhaust human potential for the sake of development of the infrastructure.
How wise are methods of territotial development bears on the fate of the region. Exhaustion of natural resources and degradation of the human population, on the one hand, and sustainable development and prosperity of territorial communities in pluralistic political setting, on the other, are just two different outcomes of this process. There are many instances of success with unfavorable initial conditions (for example, Arab petroleum exporting countries).
At present, the human resourse in our region can be recovered only at the expense of raw materials and industrial resources.
In the above context we see quite differently the arguments of conservationists in favor of saving Siberian natural resources for future generations. If the only way to provide decent living for the people in the region now is to use our resources, for what future generations should we save them? Are they Chinese or other colonists who are long waiting to settle Siberia?
If we are seriously going to work by using unique human resourses of Siberia, then it is
necessary to take the properties of these resources into account and to know negative
consequences from neglecting them of from clumsy use of them. Siberian human
resources could become its main trump card, but also could be its �trouble from
intelliigence�. The matter is that unlike metal, coal, or oil the human resource possess
living energy and intelligence which are prone to reflexion and self-organization. To get
rid of methane in coal mines, you need to ventillate shafts. It consumes about 3 percent
of all electric power. Human resource is much more expensive and complicated. It is
necessary to plan expenses and efforts to avoid negative consequences of production
and storing of the human resource.
One principal problem is that of socialization. In theory, a society knows what and how
many specialists are required. In practice, there is a crisis of overproduction of
specialists. Too many specialists chase too little jobs, and, in the end, they find
occupations not only useless but even dangerous for the society. Everybody read or
heard stories about hackers making incursions on secret databases or producing
computer viruses. Losses of database owners and users are all but trifling.
Such stories make us question, are they any good, these geniuses? Do we need them at all? If yes, we urgently need not only look for them and train them, as we did earlier, but also socialize them. There are two ways to do it. First, we develop a certain mentality in these persons, and second, we create special sluices between adult persons in similar circumstances and their surrounding, so-called �islands of future.�
At present, competent specialists and researchers are in such poor conditions of impoverishment and moral desorientation that we can no more put off their socialization. The opposite process of criminalization gains speed among them. Rossiiskaya Gazeta of April 6, 1993, published a story Villainy of Geniuses. These geniuses performed an extraordinary complex synthesis of a very dangerous drug on their kitchen. If we do not find any useful activity for our Siberian brains, they may get hired by affluent criminals. However, purely economic goals cannot attract competent and bright Siberian people. Their consciousness is oriented toward global and geopolitical concepts of Siberia and the world civilization.
The principal problem at the level of sovereign entities is that without a firm ethical background the specialist cannot be adapted to a surrounding society.
In this way, personal problems for the most part are derived from the problem of developing correct mentality of decision-making persons (DMPs) and other Siberian people.
Example 1
Let a hypothetical team work on some program of stabilization and development. They
inevitably come upon attempts to make any program fail
There are as many views on the right course of actions as the number of people whom
this program concerns. One program cannot satisfy everybody. We need to unite people
around one issue, or idea, of a phylosophical domain. Most likely, it will be a geopolitical
concept, since economics ideas are no good, according to tradition of Siberian thinking.
Example 2
Suppose administrations of some Siberian regions come to an agreement to unite resources needed for certain interregional projects. In practice this means that there is a case of client politics. If Sibselmash decided on production of a new kind of agricultural machines, the costs are distributed, and benefits are concentrated, since capital is invested in Novosibirsk.
Three mentality problems have arise in the last case:
Problems like these can be posed and solved only after defining basic geopolitical priorities for general development of Siberian regions. Then, we will be able to shape public opinion and mentality.
To evaluate efforts worthy of today�s Siberia, we need to know its position among geopolitical problems of mankind.
All 400-year history of Russian Siberia sets substantial limits both to parameters of its
progress toward market and its ability to retain its industry, natural resources, and
political organization. Its economy was made incompatible with market. Economic
issues were always subordinate to geopolitical interests of first Russian Empire and
then the U.S.S.R.
Russia has always considered Siberia as its raw materials appendage and behave
accordingly at the geopolitical level.
A crucial problem of the Russian international strategy lies in the danger the separation of Ural, Siberia, and the Far East presents both for Russia and the whole world. Only crazy monetarists believe in bloodless re-integration of Siberia into the national economy by means of pure market forces. New Russian international strategy also cannot rely only on economic integration of Siberia. If the Center does not have such a strategy, the Ural, Siberia, and the Far East can integrate into meridional (Pan-Islamic and Chinese) or latitudinal (European and North American) axes. There are different ways of geostrategical reshaping of Euroasia.
Meanwhile Eastern regions of Russia are really global geopolitical resources that can solve geostrategic, economic, and reform problems of Russia. The Ural, Siberia, and the Far East occupy much of the planet and its vital areal. One can truly say: He who has Siberia, the Far East, and the Ural governs Russia, he who governs Russia, controls Eurasia and the Arctic region.
This means that that the geopolitical basis of Russia includes its economic basis plus the idea of integrated economic space and not vice versa.
In order to develop a strategy commesurate to its total potential and dominating components, a geopolitical subject must be able to forecast future and recognize those global situations in which it will solve the problems of survival, stabilization, strengthening, and development.
The usual question is: What is the difference between a human person and geopolitical entity? and global-planetary entity?
The law of survival in competitive surrounding is a universal law of nature and society in a stage of struggle �all against all.� Certainly, other levels of global biological and human harmonious relationships of nature and society are possible where there are no competition but cooperation. But at present geopolitical competition for global resources prevails. In this situation entities that possess planetary volumes of global resources do survive. These entities can be political or economic rulers of vitally important planetary spaces like Siberia. Only such entities can withstand the destruction of national economy, political system, and environment, as well as geopolitical aspirations of neighbors and transnationals.
What conclusions can be drawn from a modern analysis of some countries? What things Russia and Siberia must not give up to anybody?
First, they must keep spiritual and intellectual potential. Without this potential they are
doomed to obscurit
Second, we must not allow for territorial separation and secession. Russian Arctica and
Siberia are unique planetary resource; Far East ports connects Europe and Russia with
countries of the Pacific Ri
Third, we must not forget how significant is for the Russian people a claim for
superpower position.
Conclusion. Sum-Strategy for Siberia.
The principal conclusion from this article is that any territorial development strategy taking into account only one of the six levels described here will definitely fail, for the very reason that it takes into acount the problems of only one level. It will miss the nature of its causes and therefore the interrelation of cause and effect for the other levels.
All problems, at all levels, and their causal interrelations must be taken into account in order to find a true road from the crisis. This will also enable us to make a development strategy. This strategy synthesized from several ones can be called Sum-Strategy of territorial (Siberian) development. It must simultaneously and consistently take into account different factors and tendencies.