THE PROBLEM OF PERIPHERY IN UKRAINE AND ITS REGIONS: THE SOCIAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL ASPECT
Abstract
In modern Ukraine, there are clearly marked territorial disparities in the structure of the national economy, due both to natural conditions and the availability of natural resources, and a historical factor, namely, a long sojourning of Ukrainian lands within different empires. This is especially true of much of the present state territory, which until 1939 was permanently belonged to the Russian empire and the USSR. With the exception of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, and several other cities where enterprises of national importance were located. The rest of the territory of Ukraine within the USSR was clearly assigned a peripheral role.
The characteristic feature of the present state territory of Ukraine is a distinctly expressed mismatch of the functional center of the state to its geographical center. One of the paradoxes of today is that the central economic district in the Kirovohrad and Cherkasy regions is characterized by a rather archaic structure of an economic complex with a distinct agricultural specialization at a relatively low level of development of services and commute. During the Soviet era, heavy industries were not developed in Ukraine’s Center to stimulate infrastructure development.
Overcoming disparities in the spatial development of Ukraine and, including, elimination from the periphery of the central economic region is possible through innovative development of the service sector, which is a leading economy’s sector in post-industrial society in terms of income and share of the economically active population, as well as introduction of new technologies in agrarian sector. The result of such a land management should be the implementation of a sustainable development strategy in the agrarian area of the discussed region and across Ukraine.
There are reasons to state the “inner isolation” of the central region of Ukraine in the national dimension, which is a manifestation of social geographical and geosophical aberration associated with the displacement of structural elements in the spatial system “center – periphery”. The territory of Ukraine is characterized by a functional center, spatially close to the border, while the middle territories possess the features of an “inner periphery”.
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