Экономическое районирование как фактор административно-территориального деления России в XX–XXI вв.

Abstract

The article is concerned with the problem of economic zoning in relation to the territorial organization of Russia. Having originated conceptually in the second half of the 19th century, in the 1920s zoning was chosen by a new political regime, which set the task of a radical revision of the spatial structure to create on its basis a new territorial division. However, the reform very quickly got politicized and put at the service of the struggle for power and consolidation of the position. The new division itself did not last long, disappearing from the map of the country a decade later, by the end of the 1930s. Despite this, scientific research in this area continued, in the early 1960s a grid of economic regions of the USSR was introduced, which is still operating in the part that remained on the territory of modern Russia. In addition, the experience of the 1920s has not lost its appeal with new generations of scientists, primarily economists and geographers. Already in the 1970s and 1980s, there were calls for return to it, and in the 1990s and 2000s it has been repeatedly considered as the preferred option for restructuring the territorial division of Russian regions. It is possible to actualize the idea of economic zoning (in one form or another) in the future. However, the realism and desirability of such a scenario for a number of reasons is questionable.