Cultural Geography in Russia in the Early 21st Century: Current State and Key Research Areas

Abstract

—The article reviews and analyzes trends in the development of Russian cultural geography at the beginning of the 21st century, its specific features, and the latest scientific achievements with respect to the evolution of cultural geography in Western countries. Similarities and differences in the transformation of the main theoretical approaches, scientific methods, and subject areas of specific cultural and geographical studies in foreign countries and Russia are revealed. The most important thematic sections of the article cover the most significant segments of cultural and geographical research in Russia in the 2000s–early 2020s. It is shown that the main focus in the formation of Russian cultural geography (after several decades of neglecting anthropocultural approaches in the Soviet period) was cultural landscape science. The latest advances of Russian cultural geographers in the field of cultural landscape for the first decades of the 21st century are characterized. Domestic ethnic geography, which developed during the Soviet period as part of population geography, is gradually transforming to ethnocultural. Much attention is paid to the correlation of ethnic and regional identity in polyethnic regions, ethnocultural aspects of the geography of nature management, cultural geography of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East. Religious geography is a new direction of cultural geography for Russia, which has gained great relevance in the post-Soviet period in the revival of religious life in a country characterized by exceptional complexity and the diverse religious composition of the population. The article discusses and analyzes the experience of Russian developments in humanitarian geography—a set of research areas focused on studying systems of ideas about the geographic space in different sociocultural contexts. The great practical significance of cultural and geographical research and the possibility of their use for regional development and optimization of the spatial organization of society are emphasized.