Spatial inequality can lead to unexpected consequences, especially in large countries like Russia. State officials’ attempts to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic led to a national lockdown, which was supposed to dramatically reduce the daily mobility of people and therefore the likelihood of infection. At the same time, the Russian government did not introduce an emergency regime, and the measures to support the population and business were criticized by experts as insufficient. Using daily data on mobility in 308 municipalities in Russia, we examined the unevenness of the decline in the level of mobility depending on the level of wages. The results show that the poorer the municipality, the smaller was the mobility decline, that is, the poorer areas were more vulnerable to the pandemic risks. The work also illustrates the larger amplitude of mobility in rich versus poor areas during the period of exiting from the lockdown.

Despite harsh climate, agriculture on the northern margins of Russia still remains the backbone of food security. Historically, in both regions studied in this article – the Republic of Karelia and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) – agricultural activities as dairy farming and even cropping were well adapted to local conditions including traditional activities such as horse breeding typical for Yakutia. Using three different sources of information – official statistics, expert interviews, and field observations – allowed us to draw a conclusion that there are both similarities and differences in agricultural development and land use of these two studied regions. The differences arise from agro-climate conditions, settlement history, specialization, and spatial pattern of economy. In both regions, farming is concentrated within the areas with most suitable natural conditions. Yet, even there, agricultural land use is shrinking, especially in Karelia. Both regions are prone to being affected by seasonality, but vary in the degree of its influence. Geographical location plays special role, and weaknesses caused by remoteness to some extent become advantage as in Yakutia. Proximity effect is controversial. In Karelia, impact of neighboring Finland is insignificant compared with the nearby second Russian city – Saint Petersburg.

The objective of this work is to analyze the impact of seasonality on the socio-economic development of rural areas of the southern part of Karelia. This study is based on the field data obtained via semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts from the local community. The results show that the influence of seasonality is rather indirect, being a constituent of other factors: economic, infrastructural, institutional, social, etc. Although seasonality is most often perceived as a negative phenomenon regarding socio-economic development, modern types of economic activity characterized by a peak of activity in different seasons of the year mitigate the effect of seasonality and even benefit from being seasonal. Based on the materials collected, a typology of rural settlements of the southern part of Karelia based on the nature of the effect of seasonality has been developed (with a predominantly positive and predominantly negative effect).