The Siberian Curse: Does Russia's Geography Doom its Chances for Market Reform?
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2003/09/fall-russia-hill
"Russia has a severely distorted economic geography... a huge portion of modern Russia—cities, factories, and people—lost in the distance and cold of Siberia. Until Russia's leaders come to terms with Siberia's misdevelopment... their efforts to build a competitive market economy and a normal democratic society are likely to fail."
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"The tsars bequeathed to the Bolsheviks a huge swathe of the world's coldest territory, but the Bolsheviks chose to defy the forces of both nature and the market in developing it.
Thanks to Soviet industrialization and mass settlement of Siberia, much of Russia's population today is scattered over a vast land mass in large but isolated cities and towns. Inadequate road, rail, air, and other communication links hobble efforts to connect those population centers, promote interregional trade, and develop markets. About one in ten Russians live and work in almost impossibly cold Siberian cities, places where average January temperatures range from -15 to -45 degrees Celsius (+5 to -49 degrees Fahrenheit). Because of their location, these cities still depend heavily, as they did in the Soviet era, on central government subsidies for fuel, food, and transportation. "
