• Main Authors: Riitta Kosonen, Tuuli Juurikkala
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Murmansk; karelia*; karelian; Northwest Russia
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.201.9566; http://www.jyu.fi/ersa2003/cdrom/papers/476.pdf

The paper presents the idea and results of a joint Finnish-Russian project on economic monitoring of Northwest Russia financed by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The regions monitored include the Murmansk region, the Karelian Republic, the Leningrad region, St.Petersburg, the Kaliningrad and the Novgorod regions. First, in the paper, the aims and operation of the monitoring project are presented. The aim is to provide regular, comprehensive and comparable information on production and demand indicators, on foreign relations, and on public sector and social developments in the regions. The bi-annual publication is the first of its kind at this detailed level. The statistical, analytical and qualitative insights are targeted at a wide international audience. Second, the development trends in the monitored regions are reviewed. It is demonstrated that the regions are gradually and slowly recovering from the economic shock caused by the breakdown of the socialist system. Also, the regions have gone through a painful and thorough restructuring, with drastic drops in production and the share of the service sector increasing. Regional differences in restructuring are pointed out. St Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad region have become a center of food production, with the help of strong domestic demand and relatively high foreign investment flows. The development in other industries such as electronics is promising as well. Karelia and Murmansk, in turn