Regional policy of Russia as a geographic task

Abstract

The paper reviews Russia’s experience in regional policy development since 1994. Comparison with foreign experience shows that this work has been quite successful, making it possible to reframe key objectives of state regional policy (including spatial justice and state integrity), define the related basic methods that are most effective in Russia’s context, and reconsider the socioeconomic geography of Russia from the perspective of regional policy. Nevertheless, no official document or legislation has yet been adopted to regulate this area. It is proposed to adapt regional policy to the diversity of Russia’s regions. It is suggested that this diversity can be described by the typology of federal subjects, which has been developed using one of the automatic classification algorithms with supervised learning based on the processing of 230 statistical indicators. The indicators are grouped according to four themes by the Delphi method: resources, population, economy, and finance. Nine types of regions are identified. Recommendations on specific kind of regional policy are made for each type.