Transport — Holding the Soviet Economy Together

Abstract

In the great distances of the Soviet Union it is not surprising that transport plays a vital role in holding the territory together. Transport cost in both capital and operating terms occupies a significant part in planning, and the problem of distance is a recurrent theme in the economic linkages within the Soviet economy, with every effort made to reduce the burden on a widely meshed transport network of mostly modest capacity. The transport infrastructure is a major consumer of national resources, perhaps absorbing as much as a quarter of all steel and fuel produced annually, while in 1978 9 per cent of the employed population worked in transport, a quarter of those workers on the railways alone.