The sea factor in the federal regulation of Russia’s spatial development: post-Soviet experience and current priorities
... waters, its maritime activities and coastalisation potential, including the economic, settlement-related and psychological elements of the latter. The article describes the key influences of the sea factor on the spatial development of post-Soviet Russia. The steadily growing impact of maritime activities on the spatial-economic and settlement dynamics has been given a new impetus by the rising geostrategic, resource and transport-logistic significance of the World Ocean, as well as its water ...
Societal security in the Baltic Sea Region: the Russian perspective
... Sea region. Particularly, the paper describes four paradigms of international relations (neorealism, neoliberalism, globalism and postpositivism) and theoretical approaches to the concept of societal security formulated in them. On a practical plane, Russia has managed to develop — together with other regional players — a common regional approach to understanding societal security threats and challenges in the Baltic Sea region. These challenges include uneven regional development, social and ...
The economy of Russian Baltic regions: development level and dynamics, structure and international trade partners
The article explores the challenges encountered during the formation of the Baltic macro-region comprising Russia and eight EU countries (Germany, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) in the context of the ongoing geopolitical and geo-economic changes. The article aims to assess the dynamics, level, structure and pace of economic ...
The marine component of human geography studies in Post-Soviet Russia: key trends and development priorities
... of the geopolitical and geoeconomic aspects of the marine economy and close attention given to coastal border areas (particularly the prospects and risks of their socio-economic development within the continent-ocean dichotomy). The marine focus of Russia’s geostrategy will generate steady demand for national human geography of the world ocean, including its inevitable humanities component. Another trend is the involvement of human social geography in cross-branch geographical synthesis. The study ...
Problems and prospects of EU — Russia dialogue on visa-free travel
This article deals with the issues pertinent to the EU — Russia visa dialogue — one of the major areas of cooperation between the two partners. The article aims to identify the main problems of this dialogue, as well as prospects for the introduction of a visa-free regime between the EU and Russia. The authors ...
The Visegrad Group and the Baltic Assembly: coalitions within the EU as seen through Russian foreign policy
Today Russia has difficulty doing business-as-usual with EU states. It seems that the countries of the Visegrad Group (V4) and the Baltic Assembly/Baltic Council of Ministers (BA/BСM) have contributed substantially to this state of affairs. Overall, the tensions ...
Motivations of Russian firms to invest abroad: how do sanctions affect Russia’s outward foreign direct investment?
In 2013, Russia’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) soared and the OFDI stock exceeded $ 500 billion. However, a year later, Russia’s OFDI dropped by nearly 15 per cent. Rapid upward and downward swings make it necessary to analyze the motivation of ...
France’s strategy in the Baltic region: military and political aspects
... strategy of France in the Baltic region. This area has not traditionally been among the main priorities of French diplomacy. However, under President Emmanuel Macron, France pays closer attention to the Baltic Sea due to the growing tension between Russia and the West. According to France’s key strategic documents, the government assesses the present-day situation mainly in a negative way, considering Russian actions as the main reason for the militarization of the region and expressing its readiness ...
Reputation core of Russian authorities: the case of the regional level of executive power
... executive power. The paper examines the reputation of Russian authorities of different levels and branches using the example of regional executive bodies. The author determines the structure and features of the reputation core of the conceptual category ‘Russia’s authorities’ understood both as federal and municipal authorities of the Russian Federation as a whole. The article also offers a comparison of the reputation core of regional executive authorities with that of ‘Russia’s authorities’ ...
Internet diffusion and interregional digital divide in Russia: trends, factors, and the influence of the pandemic
... digital divide between Russian regions narrowed. Overall, the Internet use patterns are consistent with those of the spatial diffusion of innovations. Amongst the leaders, there are regions home to the largest agglomerations and northern territories of Russia, whereas those having a high proportion of rural population lag behind. Coastal and border regions (St. Petersburg, the Kaliningrad region, Karelia, Primorsky Krai, etc.) have better access to the Internet due to their proximity to the centres ...
Transformation of global value chains in Russia and the Baltics amid Covid-19: prospects for regionalization and implications for economic policy
Although Russia and the Baltics have historically been economic partners, the economic relations between them are tense today. Nearly stagnating bilateral trade contributes little to the development of either side. The Baltics-Russian bilateral trade conducted ...
Russia and the European Union: an elusive quest for common values?
... and the position of the Council of Europe member states on the European Court for Human Rights (section 3). The author comes to a conclusion that the concept of “common values” is to a great degree fictitious, and its viability depends on whether Russia behaves as a European country. The complete internalisation of democratic values, human rights, and good governance is still unattainable for the Russian Federation, which uses the platform of common values predominantly to achieve strategic goals ...
Security in the Baltic region as a Projection of Global Confrontation between Russia and the USA
... Barry Buzan’s regional security complex theory, address Steven Mann’s controlled chaos theory and the concept of Intermarium. Their starting assumption is that the situation in the Baltic depends largely on the politics of external powers — Russia and the United States, — being a projection of their global geopolitical confrontation. The US strategy thus becomes a major part of the equation. The authors believe that since the end of the second Iraq war the American elite has been divided ...
Foreign nationals on the Boards of Directors of Russia’s Ten Largest Non-Financial Companies Investing Overseas
This author analyses the international membership of the boards of directors of Russia’s ten largest outbound investors. The data used in the study come from the companies’ annual reports and official websites. The information is correct as of February 2017. It is concluded that foreign nationals hold 30 % of board seats in Russia’s ...
Russia-EU energy efficiency cooperation in the Baltic region: the untapped potential
... within the Energy Charter and its Treaty, Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, Energy Dialogue, Common Economic Space, Partnership for Modernisation. However, it lacks practical development, which relates to the instability of the legal environment in Russia, insufficient mechanisms of financial support for energy conservation projects and poor political support. Nevertheless, energy efficiency cooperation is capable of changing Russia-EU energy cooperation qualitatively: it offers a cheaper way to ...
The Republic of Belarus and the Kaliningrad region of Russia as a sub-regional security complex
... region and the Republic of Belarus has caused a response — coordinated cooperation in the framework of the Union State. The consequence of which was the formation of a sub-regional security complex (SRSC), which includes the Republic of Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad region. And a theoretical justification for the formation of this complex is the focus of this article. The authors determine the floating boundaries of the SRSC, where spatial effects of military-political ties take on a special ...
German participation in the Three Seas Initiative: opportunities for Russia
... bridge the gap between Southeast, Central and Eastern Europe, on the one hand, and Western Europe, on the other. This article aims to show how German policy on the Three Seas Initiative has changed and what risks and opportunities it represents for Russia. The official data on the Three Seas Initiative was used to explore the specifics of the concept and the impact of its most promising projects on the Southeast, Central and Eastern European markets. The analysis of materials from German think tanks ...
The coastalisation of population in today’s Russia: A sociogeographical explication
... transnational and transboundary contracts, and the changing images of coastal areas. This article analyses the trend towards the ‘drift’ of the demographic potential from the inland territories to the coastal periphery, which has been observed in Russia for centuries. A vast body of empirical data and statistics is used to demonstrate that, during the post-Soviet period, coastalisation has become city-centred and regionally/locally selective with a focus on the agglomerations of the Baltic, Caspian,...
The development of cooperation between the European Union and Russia on migration issues: from „the „common spaces” to the actual implementation
... Cooperation Agreement (1997) to the Roadmap for the Common Space on Freedom, Security and Justice (2005), the article assesses the main results of its implementation, such as the Readmission and Visa Facilitation agreements. Moreover, it stresses the role of Russia as an agenda-setter of the EU migration agenda in the Eastern Europe.
1. Averre, D. 2005, Russia and the European Union: Convergence or Divergence?, European Security, no. 14 (2), p. 175—202.
2. Barbé, E., Costa, O., Herranz, A., Johansson-Nogués,...
Really: syntactics without semiotics?
I discuss the relation of linguistics and semiotics on the basis of the Old Russian discourse particle TI1 ‘indeed’, ‘verily’, ‘truly’ discovered by Andrej A. Zaliznjak in 1993. Linguistics and semiotics are different research programmes: the first one deals with specific features of language structures, while the second one discusses general characteristics of all sign systems, from a perspective of interpreting most or all of them as secondary respective to natural language. Formal...
The history of the integration between Russia’s Kaliningrad region and Poland’s northeastern voivodeships: A programme approach
This article considers the development of integration between Russia’s Kaliningrad region and Poland’s northeastern voivodeships in 1946—2016. The authors set out to identify the main results of Russian-Polish cross-border cooperation in the context of the changing historical and political paradigms in the ...
The US ballistic missile defence policy in the Baltic and Nordic regions
This article examines the implications of the deployment of the US ballistic missile defense (BMD) system in the Baltic and Nordic regions. These implications are to be considered to ensure Russia’s military security. Using the structural-functional method, the authors analyse the internal structure of the US BMD in Europe, stages of its implementation, and its influence on the military equilibrium in the region. Being similar to other ...
Cross-Border Tourist Routes: The Potential of Russia’s North- West
Developing cross-border tourist routes is an effective way of developing cooperation between border regions of Russia and the neighbouring countries. The author presents an approach that interprets cross-border tourist routes as an instrument for the conservation, reproduction, and promotion of natural, cultural, and historical potential and as a means to boost ...
Studies into the history of Russian Neo-Kantianism in Poland
..., Jewropejskije lanshafty i cyvilizacija bolshoj ravniny (F. А. Stepun) [European landscapes and high plains of civilization (F. A. Stepun)] // Rossija: voobrazenije prostranstva/prostranstvo i voobrazenija / pod red. I. I. Mitina, D. N. Zamiatina [Russia: the imagination of space/space and imaginations / eds. I. I. Mitin, D. N. Zamyatin]. Мoscow, p. 378—397.
15. Shchukin V. G. 2012, Ot mietafiziki lanshafta k fienomienologii nacii. F. А. Stepun ob osobennostiah russkoj kultury [From metaphysics ...
Russia and the Baltic States: Some Results and a Few Perspectives
Russia has a vested political interest in the Eastern Baltics; yet acting upon this interest is made either difficult or altogether impossible when it comes to the Baltic States. For 20 years, the Russian Federation has been actively promoting a model ...
Electric energy cooperation in the Baltic Sea region and the role of Russia in it
... explores the existing undersea HVDC power exchange projects. It is emphasised that cooperation in the electric energy sector is concentrated largely in the EU member states despite earlier plans to establish the Baltic energy ring, which would also include Russia and Belarus. The author stresses that one of the most acute problems for the EU today is overcoming isolation of the energy systems of the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) from that of the major part of the EU. This task has become ...
Local border traffic as an efficient tool for developing cross-border cooperation
... interest to specialists in international and, particularly, in cross-border cooperation. The authors analyse the mechanism of local border traffic and identify possible trends based on the general socioeconomic situation and foreign policy background in Russia, Belarus, and the EU (Norway). The article employs the cartographic method to enhance the visual component of the study. It is concluded that the LBT mechanism is effective and it has a positive effect on the development of border contacts between ...
Local Border Traffic as a Form of Visa Liberalisation and Territorial Development
This article addresses the issue of visa liberalisation between Russia and the European Union, which constitutes a key aspect of the parties’ diplomatic cooperation. This work sets out to identify the main results of Russia/EU cooperation. The authors have conducted a brief historical analysis of this area of relations....
Russia’s political risk for the foreign investors: A special emphasis on Kaliningrad
The main goal of this article is to analyse the political risk of Russia with a special emphasis on Kaliningrad. In this study, political risks are assessed using the normative model of macro political risk assessment developed by Alon and Martin in 1998. In this model, political risks are divided into government-, ...
Migration attractiveness of the coastal zone of Russia’s North-West: local gradients
... the sea on the economic development and settlement structure in the Baltic Sea region, Balt. Reg. vol. 9, no. 2, p. 4—18. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.5922/2074-9848-2017-2-1.
5. Druzhinin, A.G. 2017, The coastalisation of population in today’s Russia: A sociogeographical explication, Balt. Reg., vol. 9, no. 2, p 19—30. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.5922/2074-9848-2017-2-2.
6. Creel, L. 2003, Ripple effects: population and coastal regions, Washington.
7. Coldbach, C. 2017, Out-migration ...
Formal terms of reproach in Russian discourse
This article is concerned with the formal terms of reproach in Russian discourse and the corpus methods of their identification. Theoretically, it builds on the thesis that there are ‘true’ reproaches that can function autonomously in discourse and be adequately understood outside their context. Practically, the article describes the corpus search for formal terms of reproach. Methodologically, it abandons the synthetic outlook of pragmalinguistics, which dominates Russian linguistics, and treats...
The Tourist and Recreation Potential of Historical Cities in North-West Russia
... settlement. This is particularly true for many historical cities, whose economic resources have been curtailed. This study provides a rationale for a more efficient use of the tourist and recreational potential to boost the socio-economic development of Russia’s historical cities. The article describes problems of the cities’ development using the country’s North-West as an example. The authors explore factors behind the formation of a new development strategy for historical cities and analyse ...
Transboundary Clusters in the Coastal Zones of the European Part of Russia: Inventory, Typology, Factors, and Prospects
This article presents an inventory and a typology of the existing and emerging economic clusters in the coastal zone of the European part of Russia. The authors hold that transboundary clustering takes priority in the Baltic coastal region — nine of the 56 clusters identified are located in the Kaliningrad region and another eight in Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad region. The authors ...