Industry

MACHINE BUILDING

Russia's machine-building industry provides most of the federation's requirements for steam boilers and turbines, electric generators, grain combines, automobiles, and electric locomotives and fills much of its demand for machine tools, instruments, and automation components. Important automobile factories are located in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Miass, Yaroslavl, Ulyanovsk (formerly Simbirsk), and Izhevsk; the largest plants include the Zhiguli works at Tolyatti (near Samara) and the heavy truck factory at Naberezhnye Chelny (in Tatarstan).

CHEMICALS

Because of the complex history of the development of the chemical industries and the great variety of raw materials involved, chemical manufacture is widely dispersed. The industry initially utilized mineral salts, coke-oven and smelter gases, timber, and foodstuffs (mainly potatoes) as their raw materials. On this basis, synthetic rubber factories were built in the Central Black Earth and Central regions, areas of large-scale potato production; sulfuric acid plants were developed in the Urals and North Caucasus, where there was nonferrous metallurgy; and potassium and phosphatic fertilizer plants were constructed at sites in several regions, near deposits of potassium salts and phosphorites.

Since the end of the 1950s the massive increase in oil and gas output has provided new raw chemical materials and lessened the dependence on traditional resources. New chemical plants have been built both in the oil- and gas-producing areas of the Volga-Ural and North Caucasus zones and in other regions at points served by pipelines. Chemical industries requiring large quantities of electric power, such as those based on cellulose, are particularly important in Siberia, where both timber and electricity are plentiful.

Light industry

Russia's textile industries are heavily concentrated in the European sector, especially in the Central region, which produces a large share of the federation's clothing and footwear. The dominant branch is cotton textiles, with the raw cotton coming mainly from the Central Asian states. In the zone between the Volga and Oka rivers, east of Moscow, there are numerous cotton textile towns, the largest of which are Ivanovo, Kostroma, and Yaroslavl. Durable consumer goods—refrigerators, washing machines, radios and television sets, and the like—are produced primarily in areas with a tradition of skilled industry, notably in and around Moscow and St. Petersburg.

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TRADE

As part of the U.S.S.R., the Russian republic traded extensively with the other Soviet republics, from which it “imported” a variety of commodities that it was unable to produce in sufficient quantities itself. These included cotton (from Central Asia) and other high-value agricultural products, grain (mainly from Kazakstan), and various minerals. In return Russia “exported” oil and gas to republics with a weak energy base such as Belorussia (now Belarus) and the Baltic states and sent its skilled engineering products and consumer goods to most of its partners. By the mid-1990s, trade relations among the former union republics had not been established in any systematic manner, one problem being agreement on the prices to be charged for goods exchanged in place of the artificially low ones that prevailed during the Soviet period. It was clear that the former union republics remained heavily interdependent and that some kind of free-trade grouping was necessary if the economies of the new states were to flourish. A move in this direction occurred in late 1993, when Russia and nine other republics signed a treaty of economic union.

International trade by the U.S.S.R. remained at a rather low level until the 1960s, most of it being based on bilateral and multilateral arrangements with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) states. As Soviet economic expansion slowed during the 1970s and '80s, it became apparent that further growth required large quantities of high-tech equipment from the West. To finance these imports, increasing amounts of hard currency were needed, and this could be obtained only by increasing exports to the West. In this expanding trade, oil and gas were of particular importance.

With the collapse of Comecon and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, individual republics began to develop their own trading relations with the outside world, but no clear pattern had emerged by the mid-1990s. Russia, with its large resources of oil, gas, and minerals, seemed well placed to continue the type of trading relations with the West already developed by the former Soviet Union. In June 1994 Russia signed an agreement that strengthened economic ties with the European Union.