I was in my twenties when I went to work for The Wall Street Journal overseas, and there were days when I would come home shaking my head in disbelief. Civil unrest or violence would flare up in some part of the world, and the Journal would blithely editorialize that the problem could be solved by economic development or a progressive tax code. It seemed, to this younger me, completely out of touch.

Of course now I understand how right the Journal was, and that was why I was very heartened by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's recent visit to Vladivostok.

Vladivostok must have been a thriving city at one time. It was the home base for Russia's Pacific fleet and a hub for trade in the Far East. But by the time I arrived there in 1999, it was a sad relic with large numbers of unemployed and under-employed people. My driver was a ship-fitter with more than two decades of experience, sidelined by the sharp downtown in the local economy. The collapse of the rouble earlier that year had brought a wave of children into orphanages after their families were left without the means to care for them. The winter after I brought my older son home, Vladivostok was nearly paralyzed by a shortage of heating fuel, and I wondered how the children still in his baby home were living through it. It was a hard-knock city, indeed.

Fradkov, who heads a special state commission on the development of Russia's Far East, waved a flag of hope on March 1, saying that Moscow may spend trillions of roubles to develop it. There's been a lot of this kind of talk lately: The Kremlin has publicly pledged to spend nearly $4 billion to help the region grow and that didn't include $3.8 billion that Putin indicated earlier this year might be spent building a resort on an island just off the city.

The develop group that Fradkov heads will hold its first meeting at the end of this month, but the agenda already reportedly includes projects in energy, shipbuilding and fisheries. Russian officials have also held out the promise of money for two new bridges, a new airport and updates to both roads (a mess of bone-jarring potholes) and the port.

I can only hope that this all materializes quickly so that the parents of Vladivostok can see promise ahead for their families.