Analysis of the Socioeconomic Situation in the Regions of Russia

The rapid socioeconomic changes that are taking place in the regions of Russia have necessitated the development of special computer technology for their monitoring. This technology is based upon the creation and monthly update of a data base, which contains a small number of key socioeconomic indicators, a special program based upon cluster analysis, and a special program for the automatic classification of regions that displays the results on a screen or a laser color printer in the form of a geographical map of Russia, color-coded for each class. We chose a somewhat unusual scale of classes to display the results and deliberately rejected the traditional scale of ranks that can be used to determine each region's rating. The scale of classes does not indicate which region is "better" or "worse." Each simply has its own complex of socioeconomic characteristics, the meaningful interpretation of which can range from the evaluation of the degree of investment risk to the creation of prerequisites for analyzing the possible results of future choices.