The Sea Factor in the Spatial and Socio-Economic Dynamics of Today’s Russia

Abstract

The World Ocean and, in particular, its resource potential have always had a dramatic effect on the progress and spatial organisation of humanity. Recently, the effect of the sea factor on the economy and the settlement system has increased amid globalisation, geoeconomic changes, increasing geopolitical turbulence, and the growing competition for resources. In this article, I attempt to assess the influence of the sea factor on the socioeconomic geography of the Russian Federation. A country with an extensive coastline and a vast inland area, Russia has territories that are very different in geographical terms. I pay special attention to the post-Soviet changes in the major components of the country’s maritime economy: seaports, fishing industry, offshore production, recreation, etc. Another focus is the assessment of these industries’ impact on the development of the coastal areas. I demonstrate the growing dependence between the maritime economy and the economic development of Russia’s inland regions. I identify the key natural geographic, foreign economy, settlement-related, and geopolitical factors of the coastalisation of the economy, infrastructure, and population, observed in Russia today. This process is taking place in the Baltic, Black, and Caspian Sea areas, as well as in the Arctic and Pacific regions of the country. I conclude that Russia’s integration into the system of multi-dimensional Eurasian partnerships (including the Belt and Road initiative) and the ‘turn to the East’ contribute to both the further ‘marinisation’ of Russian space and the differentiation of coastal zones by the level and rates of socio-economic development.

Russia in the World Ocean: Interests and Lines of Presence

“…In the 2010s, their renaissance has been observed, accompanied by a concentration of relevant scientific activity, primarily in the leading coastal cities: Vladivostok (Baklanov, 2018;Baklanov and Moshkov, 2015;Baklanov et al, 2017), Kaliningrad (Fedorov and Kuznetsova, 2019;Fedorov et al, 2017a;Fedorov et al, 2017b), Rostov-on-Don (Druzhinin, 2019a(Druzhinin, , b, 2020a, and St. Petersburg (Lachininskii et al, 2016(Lachininskii et al, , 2019Lachininskii and Semenova, 2015). Its tonality and themes reflect the increasing maritime orientation of modern Russia's socioeconomic space (Druzhinin, 2019b), which is trying (as recorded in the Maritime Doctrine of the Russian Federation) to regain a worthy place among the leading maritime powers. The aim of this article is to accentuate the maritime component of Russia's geoeconomic and geopolitical interests and highlight the scale, degree, and priorities of ensuring Russia's (and its leading eco-nomic entities) presence in various regions of the World Ocean.…”

Problemy i perspektywy rozwoju syberyjskich terytoriów śródlądowych w kontekście rosyjskiej morskiej aktywności gospodarczej

“…In today's globalized world, human activity in the oceans and coastal regions is expanding on an unprecedented scale (Kildow & McIlgorm, 2010;Stojanovic & Farmer, 2013;Won, 2012). The universal process of "shift to the sea" (Bowen, Frankic, & Davis, 2006;Chaberek-Karwacka, 2017;Cori, 1999;Martínez et al, 2007) of population, production and infrastructure has been taking place in the Russian Federation in the last two and a half decades (Druzhinin, 2019;Radvanyi, 2017). The purpose of the article is to identify the degree and main directions of the influence of maritime economic activity in post-Soviet Russia on the regions of Siberia, to show the possibilities and priorities of combining the "maritime" strategies of the Russian Federation (primarily in the Arctic) with the extremely necessary (for socio-demographic, economic-structural and geopolitical reasons) efforts to stop the negative economic effects of the "continentality" of the Siberian territories.…”

Coastal zones of modern Russia: delimitation, parametrization, identification of determinants and vectors of Eurasian dynamics

“…Their geopolitical significance was fully appreciated already a century ago (Semenov Tyan Shanskiy 1915), and the natural-ecological and socio-economic specifics began to be steadily comprehend in the Russian scientific discourse since the early 1970s (in the wake of the intensive development of the geography of the World Ocean at that perio; Salnikov 1984), being conceptualized in such invariant categories as «waterside zone» (Anikeev 2012;Aybulatov 1989), «littoral zone» (Fadeev 1998), «seaside territory» (Gogoberidze 2008;Makhnovsky 2014), «marine coast» (Arzamastsev 2009), «sea-land contact zone» (Dergachev 1980) and, finally, «coastal zone» (Bondarenko 1981). Nowadays, in the context of geoeconomically and geopolitically motivated significant increase in the role of the «sea factor» for the Russian Federation and its spatial development (Druzhinin 2016a;Druzhinin 2019) the corresponding problem (finding an increasingly pronounced socio-geographical emphasis) again logically goes to the research forefront (Druzhinin 2016c;Fedorov et al 2017). The purpose of the proposed article is the delimitation of Russian coastal zones based on GIS technologies, assessment of their positioning and «weight» in the socio-geographical structure of the country, as well as identification of trends in the socioeconomic and demographic dynamics of coastal zones (in the macro-and meso-levels) in the geo-economic and geopolitical context of Eurasia.…”