Abstract
Taking the Chelyabinsk region of Russia as an example, the author examines how economic decline, the result of transition, can be countered by the organization of local regional scientific and educational complexes. These bring together the government departments responsible for science and higher education, both at the federal and at the local levels, the local research institutions, and the local higher education institutions so that they can pool their efforts in achieving common educational, economic, scientific, and developmental objectives. Several of these regional complexes have been founded, or are in the process of being founded, in the Urals area of Russia. The author concentrates on the Regional Scientific and Educational Complex that is being created in Chelyabinsk, briefly describing the tasks that it has set for itself.