The Far Eastern Frontier of the 1990s

Abstract

The article analyzes the process of changing the content of the frontier over time, under the influence of radical liberal reforms. The development of the borderlands in dynamics is shown, taking into account the foreign policy factor. The vector of changes is revealed within the framework of the economic component and the mission of the Far East in modern national history and in the history of the development of Asia-Pacific Region (APR). A complex of political factors in the transformation of the frontier is revealed. It was concluded that the main feature of this process was various forms of reducing Russia’s military presence in the region, partial demilitarization and the destruction of the military-industrial complex in the 1990s, and the acquisition of new characteristics by the Far Eastern borderlands. The authors come to the conclusion about the dominant role of the political factor in the transformation of the character of the Far Eastern frontier. Conversion and market reforms led to a rapid degradation of the material and social infrastructure of the frontier territories, where in the 1990s the military-industrial complex enterprises were city-forming. The ways of adapting the region to market relations turned the border area into a kind of trading factory; various flows of labor and different forms of organization of enterprises were involved. The first attempts to organize Free Economic Zones and joint ventures, as well as to implement the initial stage of the project of international transport corridors, contributed to the genesis of new features of the Far Eastern frontier.