Economic development of Russia’s north-western regions and migration to the St. Petersburg agglomeration
... development dynamics were divided into four sectors: St. Petersburg, the Leningrad region, three less advanced northern areas, and the more successful NWFD territories. Before the 2008—2009 crisis, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region outperformed the other north-western areas. However, the crisis led to a sharp decline in economic growth rates across the federal district, with manufacturing, agriculture, and forestry replacing the service sector as the main drivers. St. Petersburg’s development ...
Priorities for the development of manufacturing industries in the Kaliningrad region
... landscape of the Baltic Sea area have more than once caused a restructuring of the region’s manufacturing industry. A factor with unclear implications is proximity to EU countries, with which the region had enjoyed close economic, academic, social, and other transboundary ties before the war of sanctions was waged on Russia. Kaliningrad boasted a range of joint companies engaged in manufacturing, catering to both Russian and international markets. Competition with cheap imports from the neighbouring ...
Confiscation Estonian style: legal and political aspects of potential seizure of Russian assets in EU countries
... for over a year, yet no progress has been made in this regard.
The problem of legalising the confiscation of Russian assets should be considered as consisting of two parts: the confiscation of Russian sovereign assets and the confiscation of funds and other assets belonging to private individuals.
Confiscation of private assets belonging to Russian private individuals
The term ‘seizure of private Russian assets’ refers to the process of confiscating property and funds belonging to Russian individuals ...
Societal security in the Baltic Sea Region: the Russian perspective
... 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 gender inequalities, unemployment, poverty, manifestations ...
A typology of the Baltic region states according to excellence in science and technology
... CIS member states [6] and the EAEU [7].
Having analyzed the indicators of scientific and technological space, most authors from the former USSR countries pay attention to the volume of investments in science [5], [8] and HR [3], [8], as well as some other indicators, such as a number of patents [8]. Certain studies offer complex integral indicators derived from expert assessment [9].
When discussing the causes behind territorial disparities, it is pertinent to delve into the scholarly contributions ...
Three Russian Baltic regions in the context of confrontation between Russia and the West
... in facilitating an international platform for discussing cross-border cooperation through its annual conference “The Baltic Region — a Region of Cooperation”. This conference, supported by numerous partners from Poland, Lithuania, Germany, and other Baltic region countries, has served as a forum for participants to engage in collaborative discussions, publish articles, and collaborate on cross-border cooperation projects with Russian counterparts. The shared goal has been to expand and deepen ...
Reputation and status in Denmark’s strategic culture
... preoccupied with relations with key allies and the country’s reputation amongst them. In this respect, Denmark seems to prove the thesis about the deep concern of small states over the issues of status sovereignty, and formal and informal equality with other participants in international relations, chiefly larger and influential countries [1]. A vivid illustration of Nordic Europe’s close attention to status and place in the international hierarchy is the criticism of the G20 member list, which does ...
The economy of Russian Baltic regions: development level and dynamics, structure and international trade partners
... Sea. These are the federal city of St. Petersburg, the Leningrad and Kaliningrad regions. Their development is closely connected with the blue economy: maritime transport, fishing and fish processing, coastal tourism and recreation, shipbuilding and other regional industries exporting goods by sea or using seaborne raw materials and semi-finished products. The three study regions performed these functions in the Soviet period as well.
Although the fishing industry lost some of its importance after ...
Sanctions risks and regional development: Russian case
...
Introduction
In recent years, sanctions have become a significant instrument of world politics. These economic restrictions are widely introduced against countries, regions, individual legal entities, or individuals to change their actions by other countries and organizations. At the beginning of 2024, most countries were involved in these processes.<1> Moreover, the challenge of growing global contradictions means that any country or some of its regions in one form or another may ...
The border as a barrier and an incentive for the structural economic transformation of the Kaliningrad exclave
..., movements of people, goods, capital and information between integration associations, individual countries and their cores. A changed environment may slow down the development of some industries (and even cause them to decline) and give a boost to others, with these two processes constituting economic restructuring. In the exclave of Kaliningrad, heavily dependent on international trade and transit trade with mainland Russia, geopolitical changes have naturally had an exceptionally strong effect....
The two-party tendency in Poland’s political system: manifestations, causes and prospects
... Poland. Using Duverger’s phrasing, there is a “two-party tendency” in the functioning of the Polish model. The study analyses the facts that firm up this conclusion: not only the distribution of seats in the Sejm (the main criterion) but also many other quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the political system contribute to the development of the current political trend. The main goal of this article is to identify the factors that have led to the emergence and development of the tendency ...
Geopolitical regionalisation of the Baltic area: the essence and historical dynamics
... recently proposed to adopt the activity-geospatial geo-spatial approach to solve this problem [4], [5]. They have identified ten of the most widely used types of ties that contribute to region-building, i. e. natural, economic, cultural, political, and other properties that Russian and international scholars employ to delineate geopolitical regions. Many of them are interpretations of Saul Cohen’s ideas as seen within different schemes of the world’s geopolitical zoning proposed by the researcher....
Artificial Intelligence: a catalyst for entrepreneurship education in the Baltics
The article explores the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in entrepreneurship education within universities. This exploration is set against the backdrop of the rapid and widespread integration of AI technologies across economic and other domains of life. The authors aim to define the concept of ‘entrepreneurial potential’ and elucidate the contribution of AI in augmenting the entrepreneurial potential among university students in the Baltic States. To achieve this goal, the ...
The Visegrad Group and the Baltic Assembly: coalitions within the EU as seen through Russian foreign policy
... to address the question of whether Russia should establish direct relations with the V4 and the BA/BCM as tools to overcome the mentioned difficulties. On the one hand, these associations date back to before the countries acceded to the Union. On the other, they are products of regionalisation in the EU. In answering this question, we achieve three objectives. Firstly, we look for an appropriate theoretical and methodological framework for the study. Secondly, we produce a comparative description ...
Expansionism in Poland’s strategic culture: historical retrospective and variations
... interpreting expansionist elements in Poland’s international political behaviour. The problem is approached using the concept of the strategic culture of states, which covers beliefs, perceptions, and the language states use to describe their own and other countries’ actions. The study examines what expansionist types of strategic culture have developed in Poland, how relevant they are in the current political landscape, and describes their differences and similarities. To this end, the intellectual ...
Efficiency analysis of seaports in Russia’s Baltic basin: performance evaluation
... globalization, geopolitical transformation [1], [2], the emergence of new socio-political problems, the imbalance between existing and required infrastructure, the increasing share of transportation costs in the overall structure of logistics expenses, and other factors. However, focusing solely on optimizing operational activities does not seem sufficiently convincing from the long-term perspective of development. Research on companies engaged in various transport and logistics operations has revealed ...
The impact of the food embargo on consumer preferences and cross-border practices in the Kaliningrad region
... market has been a fascinating subject for researchers investigating food security risks and ways to mitigate them since the embargo was imposed in 2014. The Kaliningrad region, an exclave of Russia, responded more sensitively to the restrictions than any other territory of the country due to the heavy dependence of its food market on imported finished products and raw materials, as well as the transit from Russia via third countries. This study aims to explore how the consumer preferences of Kaliningraders ...
Small towns of Latvia: disparities in regional and urban development
... government. The questionable consequences of the reform have been mentioned by experts, members of local government councils and the president of Latvia. The heavy dependence of regional towns on European structural and investment funds, as well as on other international and domestic sources of finance, complicates their development.
Yet, reasonable autonomy of local authorities, community organisations, political groups and individual citizens, the established configuration of socio-cultural interactions ...
Spatial differentiation of rural territories in the Kaliningrad region: implications for socio-economic policies
... areas or engaging in a different type of economic activities. Contrary to the situation in most regions of the Russian Federation, the rural population of the Kaliningrad region is growing. This growth is facilitated by an influx of individuals from other parts of Russia and other countries. Following the polarisation theory, population growth is driven by municipalities in the western part of the oblast, while eastern rural territories are losing population due to both natural decline (common to ...
International heritage in the memorial landscape of the Kaliningrad region
... the Kaliningrad region commemorating events, phenomena or figures of international history, as well as to reveal their symbolic significance. The study uses empirical data on the origin, time of construction and purpose of the monuments, memorials and other places of commemoration. Theoretically, it draws on the concepts of cultural memory and sites of memory. The idiographic and historiographic methods were employed along with general scientific methods. At the core of the region’s international ...
Military and political cooperation between Germany and Lithuania in the late 2010s to early 2020s
... community of ‘Western democracies’. However, this longstanding affiliation took on new significance in the mid-2010s. Germany sought to compensate for the weakening of its positions outside the Western sphere of interest by bolstering ties with other NATO and EU member states, particularly in the context of deterring adversaries. Brexit and Trumpism in the latter half of the 2010s, along with negative consequences associated with these events [3], [ 4, p. 146—152], underscored the limitations ...
Migration distances in Russia: a demographic profile of migrants
The distance of migration is closely linked to life course events, which are, in turn, marked by age. It serves as a criterion for distinguishing migration from other forms of spatial mobility. This paper aims to calculate the average distance of domestic migrations in Russia between 2011 and 2020, considering various migrant profiles such as sex, age, and type of residential registration. The Euclidean distance ...
The adaptation of Russian regions’ economies to the rupture of relations with Europe: the case of Baltic Sea ports
... open and equal economic cooperation with Europe for many years. The European vector of the development of Russia’s foreign economic relations was justified by the confidence of many domestic politicians that cooperation with partners from the EU and other countries, in general, would be long-term, stable and mutually beneficial. This policy remained consistent, despite the fact that many European partners, long before the aggravation of the geopolitical situation in 2014, refused to take into account ...
Population change and the settlement system transformation in Poland, as revealed by the 2021 census
... population decreased during the inter-census period (2011—2021), with the urban population declining faster than its rural counterpart. The large voivodeships aligned along the Vistula ‘axis’ — Mazowiecka, Lesser Poland and Pomerania — outperform other Polish regions in geodemographic terms. The situation is relatively favourable in Greater Poland, where the country’s main motorways converge. Districts and voivodeships where the geodemographic situation is more vulnerable can be divided into ...
Territorial structure of inbound and domestic tourism in the Baltic States
... progressive changes in the territorial structure of tourism in the Baltic States. The main centres of attraction are the capitals and their adjacent territories. Horizontal contacts with more developed regions of the EU states and vertical interaction with other regions of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have a significant impact on the development of tourism activities. Central regions are dominant in terms of attracting tourist flows. This is characteristic of a highly polarized tourism structure. However,...
The spread of the COVID-19 infection in Russia’s Baltic macro-region: internal differences
... society to the pandemic varied from region to region and from town to town.
Russian economic geographers responded to the challenge of the pandemic with copious research publications. Some works explore the course of the pandemic in selected territories; others look at how the virus spread across Russian regions on a national scale. Stepan Zemtsov and Vyacheslav Baburin conclude that, at early stages, i. e. during the first two waves, the pandemic spread across Russia according to the diffusion of innovations ...
Estonian ‘Balticness’ as a social construct: meanings and contextual specifics
... message was spread in an attempt to grope for alternative ways to reinforce the image of Estonia as part of Northern Europe: if Yule-land is viewed from the perspective of economic performance and living standards, the difference between Estonia and the other states would be too apparent. Although Ilves’s concept did not gain wide currency, it did contribute to legitimating Estonia’s Northern European identity. Aldis Purs notes that few observers ‘register[ed] Ilves’s attempts at humour within ...
Cross-border tourist mobility as seen by residents of the Karelian borderlands: COVID-19 restrictions
... [6] will be treated here as synonymous with ‘cross-border tourism’, with the emphasis placed solely on Russian-Finnish bilateral travel for tourism, leisure and shopping [7]. The use of the term ‘transboundary mobility’ [8], [9] spanning other purposes of cross-border travel is justified by the impact these flows have on the life of the locals. This article uses the term to describe the Karelian-Finnish exchange.
Summarising the theoretical and practical aspects of transboundary tourist ...
Information and propaganda strategies in German non-state media discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic
... accepted. Within the framework of education, various forms of communication are available, including interactive methods like discussions and debates. The key element in education is the recipient of information, the one who is being educated.
On the other hand, propaganda is based on the assumption that the propagandist is, de facto, better informed and holds the authority to determine what changes should be introduced. Propaganda shapes certain behavioural patterns and attitudes, with the propagandist ...
Evangelical Lutheran church of Denmark: socio-economic and territorial-organisational aspects
... tendency is the decline in adherents of the Evangelical Lutheran Church observed over recent decades. This decline is most evident in the capital region, where the proportion of migrants in the population is higher and daily life is more vibrant than in other areas. Territorial variations in religiously motivated behaviour are evident, with the highest percentages observed in the country’s peripheral regions (despite the overall figures showing a negative trend). These areas also boast the most significant ...
Knowledge and innovation dynamics of the Northwest Russia under geopolitical changes
... resilience is complex [3], [27]. A developed innovation system makes it easier for a region to adapt and overcome crises. However, literature [28; 29] provides evidence that innovation activity is more susceptible to the negative impacts of crises and other destabilizing factors. In a period of uncertainty, innovative companies, especially small and medium-sized ones [30], tend to curtail investment projects and reduce their R&D spending, focusing on current activities.
The consequences of the 2007—2008 ...
The Accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO: Geopolitical implications for Russia’s position in the Baltic Sea region
... of Finland, and the Danish straits for Russian vessels. It is stressed that in the current circumstances, Russia needs to consider multiple scenarios in the Baltic region. On the one hand, it must safeguard its interests with minimal damage. On the other hand, it is crucial to steer clear of uncontrolled escalation of tensions with NATO, as it entails the risk of a military clash.
Introduction
The decisions of Sweden and Finland to join NATO were an eloquent manifestation of increased tensions ...
The Swedish institute’s scholarship policy as a soft power instrument
... Sweden’s global influence. The Swedish Institute (SI) has specifically identified Russian students, doctoral candidates, researchers, and university teachers as target groups for its scholarship and grant programmes. Despite the fact that the SI among the other scholarship agencies suspended Russian participation in their programmes in 2022, an exploration of practices adopted in foreign nations can provide valuable insights for updating the nation’s branding strategy and exploring new approaches in ...
The modern economy of Russia’s Baltic regions in the municipal context
... also,<1> to an even greater extent, the significant gap in regional and municipal statistical data that researchers are well aware of. However, the gap is gradually narrowing, especially by supplementing Rosstat statistics with information from other sources (including other public authorities). Moreover, municipal issues are growing in importance, including within the federal spatial development policy [1].
This article has two interrelated objectives. The first one is to emphasize the differences ...
Modern trends in paradiplomacy: a case of Russian-Finnish regional cooperation
... paradiplomacy.
Theoretical framework
Since the 1980s, academics have been deeply concerned about international cooperation of subnational entities. However, a unified definition of this phenomenon is still lacking. Except ‘paradiplomacy’, there are other terms describing external relations of subnational actors, such as ‘constituent diplomacy’, ‘regional diplomacy’, ‘sub-state diplomacy’, ‘microdiplomacy’, ‘multilayered diplomacy’, ‘catalytic diplomacy’, ‘protodiplomacy’,...
France’s strategy in the Baltic region: military and political aspects
... shifts indicating the deepening of the ‘cool war’ occurred [2]: the start of Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO, the attempts by the Lithuanian leadership to restrict transit to the Kaliningrad region, the leaks on the Nord Stream pipelines and others. As indicated in the Russian Maritime Doctrine, at the Atlantic theatre, NATO continues a “direct confrontation with the Russian Federation and its allies”,<1> pushes its infrastructure further to the East and strengthens its military ...
Geopolitical Security of Russia: Remarks on the Problem Statement
... initiative to devise a system of monitoring the geopolitical (regional) security of Russia. The debate centred around the development of a conceptual framework and a geopolitical security model as a prerequisite for the system. The discussion also covered other relevant issues, including the definition of geopolitical security and geopolitical space as well as the types of geopolitical threats and vulnerabilities. Another topic on the agenda was the analysis of theoretical approaches applicable to monitoring ...
Reputation core of Russian authorities: the case of the regional level of executive power
The importance of studying the reputation of authorities is connected, on the one hand, with the formation of a consolidated system of political power and, on the other hand, with the highly social orientation of the category of the ‘reputation of authorities’, reflecting the value-based attitude of citizens towards them. The article presents the results of research aimed at the analysis of the reputation of ...
Geography of the mobile internet in the border and interior regions of Russia
... necessitated a rethinking of the existing geographical approaches to the study of physical space and the emergence of a new object of research — digital space. On the one hand, the latter is closely connected with traditional institutions and systems. On the other hand, it is characterized by its own patterns of construction and functioning. The problem of delimiting the boundaries of cyberspace makes it difficult to manage digital processes taking into account territorially determined needs and interests,...
Evaluating the efficiency of the research sector in Russian regions: a dynamic data envelopment analysis
... expenditure or personnel capacity in a region, the resultant assessment may be incorrect.
Overall, the methodological problems of DEA are a by-product of its advantages. Firstly, DEA is very sensitive to data quality, including outliers, sudden shifts, and other factors. Secondly, the traditional tools of statistical assessment of results are not applicable to the classical variation of DEA. However, the literature has described some approaches to address this problem (see [6]). Therefore, if it is necessary ...
The sea factor in the federal regulation of Russia’s spatial development: post-Soviet experience and current priorities
... and geographical certainty for Russia: it has been at work in the country since the times of the legendary Route from the Varangians to the Greeks, the Hanseatic links of Novgorod and Pskov, as well as the Genoa connections of the Golden Horde. On the other, it is a basically cyclic innovation, which sweeps the country again and again, each time changing the spatial organisation of society and giving an impetus to certain segments of the coast. First of all, the sea factor stimulates the sectors of ...
Internet diffusion and interregional digital divide in Russia: trends, factors, and the influence of the pandemic
... technological revolution, though some authors also talk about a new industrial revolution [2]. The introduction of digital technologies and the spread of the Internet economy provided up to a third of the economic growth in Sweden, Germany, Great Britain and other developed countries [3]. During 2010—2017, the digital sector of the Russian economy grew by 17 %, almost twice outpacing GDP growth [4], and the costs of developing the digital economy reached 3.7 % of GDP by 2019 (in developed countries — ...
Comparative analysis of the territorial support frame of settlement in coastal areas: the case of St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad regions
... international trade [13]. The Russian scholars Svetlana Rastvortseva and Lyudmila Snitko arrive at a similar conclusion: ‘agglomeration effects help regions save their assets and, having a specialisation, distribute them more effectively’ [14, p. 46]. In other words, no matter what consideration we are motivated by, abandoning agglomeration effects is neither possible nor prudent.
Let us consider in this context some fundamental elements of the European experience of urbanisation. It is worth noting that ...
University performance and regional development: the case of Russia’s North-West
... the regional universities’ performance and achieving a balance in the functions’ performance. A leading level is the highest possible level of performance. It indicates the need to use various methods and tools to maintain it and disseminate it to other regions.
The proposed methodological tools allow us to assess the performance of each of the functions, to comprehensively assess the aggregate level of universities’ performance in a region, to conduct a comparative cross-functional and interregional ...
The geopolitical effect of the maritime factor on the spatial development of post-Soviet Russia: the Baltic case
... and the formation of a multipolar world [3]. The change is also felt in such a seminal area of human endeavour as maritime activity, which seeks to harness the potential of sea basins for raw materials extraction, logistics, and strategic military and other uses whilst doing so with regard to settlement patterns and the spatial structure of the economy, as well as to the processes determined by the maritime factor [4].
The metamorphoses of the global world order give rise to violent conflicts, a vivid ...