Territorial-Production Complex

a unit used in a particular type of territorial organization of the productive forces of socialist society. This type of organization corresponds most fully to the needs of the development of these productive forces within the context of the scientific and technological revolution. A territorial-production complex forms part of an economic region or subregion; it comprises all interrelated industrial and agricultural enterprises within a particular territory. (The area encompassed need not correspond to an administrative territorial unit.)

Territorial-production complexes figure prominently in the general system of the territorial division of labor. The economic unity of a territorial-production complex is realized through the production links between enterprises, the utilization of natural and economic resources and conditions common to the area, and the system governing the distribution of the population. In contrast to an isolated or random placement of enterprises, the organization seen in territorial-production complexes makes possible significant economies because of the cooperation between enterprises, the possibility of combining enterprises, and the more rational use of natural and labor resources, secondary raw materials, and existing transportation networks. Economies are also realized through reduced construction costs for auxiliary and service enterprises, utility lines, and social and cultural facilities.

Territorial-production complexes are in most cases the result of a complicated interplay of both internal (within the boundaries of the production complex in question) sources for development —local natural and labor resources and accumulated assets in industry, agriculture, and transport resources—and external territorial relations (links between regions) regarding mobile factors of production.

Territorial-production complexes are not the same as economic regions; they do, however, serve as the material and technical base for the regions. Each of the levels of a territorial-production complex is characterized by its own system of organizing territorial production links and by the extent to which the level is self-contained.

An important parameter of a territorial-production complex is the arrangement of the complex’s basic elements, especially the industrial centers, clusters of agricultural enterprises, and structures of the industrial infrastructure linking the centers and clusters. Various industrial and agroindustrial combines comprising enterprises that interact to carry out a production process can be regarded as local functional elements of a territorial-production complex. This is also the case with groups of processing enterprises that have a common source of raw materials or manpower or that produce for a common user. Territorially, these local elements may be concentrated or dispersed.

Resolutions of the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Congresses of the CPSU called attention to the progressive character of the process of establishing territorial-production complexes in the country and to the close connection between this process and the preplanning and planning of the comprehensive development and placement of the country’s productive forces. The Twenty-fifth Party Congress stressed in particular the prospective developments to be accounted for in the creation of a rational network of territorial-production complexes of all sorts.

In regions with a high concentration of valuable natural resources, territorial-production complexes of countrywide importance are being established. For example, in the northern part of the Western Siberian Lowland, through an accelerated development of oil, gas, and timber resources, a territorial-production complex for the northern part of Western Siberia is being organized. It includes oil and gas fields, logging and timber distribution establishments, treatment plants for natural gas, petrochemical combines (in Tomsk and Tobol’sk), lumbering complexes, the Surgut State Regional Electric Power Plant, supply dumps for the construction industry, and a system of local and long-distance pipelines for oil and natural gas. In Eastern Siberia, development of the Bratsk-Ust’-Ilimsk Territorial-Production Complex is proceeding, based on the extensive and cheap water-power resources of the Angara River. The complex consists of the Bratsk and Ust’-Ilimsk hydroelectric power plants, an aluminum plant, logging and timber distribution establishments, lumbering complexes (in Bratsk and Ust’-Ilimsk), and construction industry enterprises.

Power from the Enisei River, together with other natural resources, provides the basis for the Saian Territorial-Production Complex. When completed, it will include the Saian-Shushen-skaia Hydroelectric Power Plant, aluminum and freight-car plants, a large steel foundry, processing enterprises for ferrous metals, and enterprises of the electrical and food-processing industries and of light industry.

In the areas opened up by the Baikal-Amur Main Line, several territorial-production complexes will be established, including the Upper Lena, Southern Yakut, and Lower Amur complexes.

The territorial-production complex in the region of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly is based on the uniquely rich iron-ore reserves there, as well as on the favorable soil and climate resources and the established infrastructure of the Central Chernozem Zone. The Orenburg Territorial-Production Complex is being developed because of the large deposits of condensed natural gas in Orenburg Oblast. The economic basis of the Southern Tadzhik complex is the series of major hydroelectric power plants (Nurek, Rogun) on the Vakhsh River. Energy-intensive enterprises, such as an aluminum plant, an electrochemical combine, and a nitrogen-fertilizer plant, are under construction, and irrigation and the development of agroindustrial complexes are being carried out on a large scale.