Peripherality as one of the factors of disproportionate socio-economic development of territories

The vast territory of the Russian Federation is very diverse in terms of economic geography: the length from west to east is almost 10,000 kilometers, and from north to south – from 2,000 to 4,000, the terrain alternates with plains, ancient forests, mountain ranges and rivers that cross the Eurasian continent and create natural obstacles to movement around the country, the climate varies from sharply continental to moderate with a difference in average annual temperatures from subtropical Sochi to the pole of cold in Oymyakon of 30 degrees Celsius. One cannot fail to notice the high territorial differentiation and significant geographical concentration of the country’s economy in the center and its absence on the periphery. While large cities of the Russian Federation develop, expand, become rich, their population is provided with comfortable living conditions, other territories suffer from a budget deficit, constraint in solving problems by local authorities, and in many ways a critically low standard of living for the population. The object of the study was the territorial entities of the Leningrad Region, one of the largest subjects of the Russian Federation, both in terms of territory and the number of municipal entities within it. The area of the subject is almost 84 thousand square kilometers; it consists of 1 urban district, 1 municipal district, 16 municipal districts, 63 urban and 107 rural settlements. The relevance of the presented material is due to the significant inequality in the development of territories close to the economically developed center and those remote from it. The purpose of this study is to identify the problems of socio-economic development of territorial entities of the Leningrad Region and their classification depending on their territorial proximity to the economically developed center. The theoretical basis of the work is the works of such researchers who studied the issue of development of the socio-economic potential of the regions of the Russian Federation as V. P. Zhdanov, P. M. Krylov, I. N. Merenkova, A. A. Nikiforov, I. B. Orlov, M.Yu. Prikhodko, A. V. Torkunova, N. V. Chepurnykh and others. The study uses methods of statistical and system analysis, elements of a comparative approach. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time the work has conducted a comparative analysis of the socio-economic situation of territorial entities of the Leningrad Region – peripheral and close to the center of economic development. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the accumulated research results will allow to fully assess the situation of the territories and subsequently, based on the conclusions made, take a number of measures to level out the disproportions in their development. The result of the study is a comparative analysis of the indicators of socio-economic development of the selected territorial entities obtained during the processing of statistical data and through a qualitative method of collecting information - a questionnaire survey of the local population. Based on the results obtained, the conclusion about the existing disproportion in the development of territorial entities of the Leningrad Region depending on their proximity to the economically developed center was confirmed.