As a result of the socioeconomic transformations in the Russian Federation, the openness of border regions under the influence of integration process taking place in the world community facilitates tourist mobility between neighbouring countries. The author describes an approach that considers the border regions of Northwest Russia as attractive destinations for tourists from neighbouring countries. The development of cross-border tourism as a specific form characteristic of only border regions is one of key areas of tourism development in these regions. An assessment of the prospects of developing cross-border tourism in the border regions of Russian Northwest becomes a relevant research objective. The author identifies the specific features and general trends in the development of cross-border tourism in the Russian regions in question. It is proven that Russian border regions are less competitive than the territories of neighbouring states in terms of the development of crossborder tourism. The author also points out to the avenues of stimulating cross-border tourism development in Russian border regions

The work reported here has examined the transformation of the Northern Ladoga region (a natural and historical region in the Russian-Finnish borderland) from ‘closed’ border area into a prospective tourist destination in the face of changes taking place in the 1990s. Three periods to the development of tourism in the region are identified, while the article goes on to explore general trends and features characterising the development of a tourist destination, with the focus on tourist infrastructure, the developing types of tourism and tourismoriented projects. Measures to further stimulate tourism as an economic activity of the region are suggested.

This article considers the development of cross-border trade and tourism in the Russian- Finnish borderlands in the 19th/21st centuries. We describe the evolution of cross-border trade in the Russian-Finnish borderlands at different stages of the territory’s development. The patterns of cross-border trade have always been depended on the national policies of the two countries. Since the 19th century, cross-border trade in the Russian-Finnish borderlands has been the product of two factors. The first one is the demand from local residents for certain imported goods that are either absent or much more expensive in their own country. The second factor is the possibility of receiving additional or even basic income. We distinguish several periods (peddlar trade, Soviet-Finnish tourism, shuttle trade, shopping tourism) in the evolution of Russian-Finnish cross-border trade and identify their major trends and characteristics. We describe the general patterns of cross-border trade in these historical periods and juxtapose the pertinent institutional, organisational and infrastructural settings. We explain why the direction of the flow of finance and goods changed. Until the early 20th century, goods were brought to and money collected from Finland’s borderlands. Since the 1920s, the opposite situation has been observed. The latter trend has been growing in recent years. In this article, we aim at providing a periodisation and detecting the trends in and features of the evolution of cross-border trade in the Russian-Finnish borderlands in the 19th/21st centuries. To this end, we carry out a statistics and data analysis. We describe the Russian and international approaches to studying cross-border shopping tourism. We address Finland’s experience in stimulating inbound shopping tourism from Russia and examine why the Russians are attracted to the neighbouring state.

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