2020 Issue №3

The article shows various structural-functional transformations of Mos­cow and its region generated by the changes in mode of production in Russia as a result of ‘perestroika’ as well as of the results of a combination of global changes triggered by the Fourth industrial revolution (hereafter the STR-4) and by the change in Russia’s geopolitical role in the modern world. The au­thor identifies the main trends as Moscow’s dependence on global geopolitical transformations, growing spatial and other forms of mobility resulted in a de­cline of its population’s reflection. At the same time, the Greater Moscow is being shaped through the integration of Moscow and its ‘periphery’, a gap be­tween the rich and poor is widening, and the phenomenon of a ’Deep Russia’ independent form Moscow is emerging.  Such mega-cities usually see their ‘periphery’ as the supply of a labor force and the waste processing sites. As a result, a social asymmetry has emerged: Moscow is developing and becoming wealthier while their periphery has got exhausted and loses its social capital. The general outcome of this process may be seen in an intense merge of natu­ral, social and technical structures that results in a transformation of modern mega-city into a very complex sociobiotechnical system (hereafter the SBT-system) which regularities and dynamics have to be carefully investigated. It requires a close integration of natural, social and technical sciences, and an urban metabolic concept. An ethos of an interdisciplinary study based on equality of social states of different sciences, their interest to study the com­plex issues and the ability for mutual understanding of various scientists is to be developed.

Relations between Russia and India in the academic and research space have been developing long. In modern history, the two countries act as strate­gic partners that aim at common development of priority areas of knowledge with high potential for the commercialization of results and the generation of innovations. The article assesses the potential for enhancing Russian-Indian interaction in various fields of scientific knowledge. The geography of the study is 268 cities of India and 44 cities of the Western borderland of Russia. The research hypothesis supports the assumption that in Indian-Russian sci­entific cooperation, the factor of territorial remoteness can be compensated by a similar level of scientific and technological (S&T) development and the pri­orities of national scientific systems. The research methodology is based on spatial scientometrics. The data source is the international abstract scientific citation base Dimensions. The authors reveal an insufficient level of existing scientific cooperation between India and Russia which is expressed in a rela­tively small number of co-authored publications in 2000—2019. The most productive in terms of an increased number of collaborative articles and cita­tions are five fields of science, i. e. physics, engineering, chemistry, mathemat­ics, and medicine. Humanities and social sciences are least involved in the process of co-production of knowledge by Russian and Indian scholars. The main constraints to the implementation of the existing potential of Russian-Indian scientific cooperation are the language barrier, the priority of state support for certain areas of knowledge, territorial remoteness and the related complexity in building social ties, the difference in the systems for assessing the effectiveness of scientific productivity.