Economy of Russian Regions in the Pandemic: Are Resilience Factors At Work?

Abstract

—The differentiation of Russian regions by the dynamics of their socioeconomic development in 2020, despite a reason atypical for modern economic crises, corresponded to the prevailing ideas about the factors of the resilience of regions. The degree of diversification of the regional economies and level of their innovative potential were of key importance. As a result, the largest cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg) found themselves in a relatively favorable position, where restrictions in certain types of activity were compensated by an increase in demand for a number of complex services (in the IT sphere, etc.) and the accelerated introduction of online activity formats and working remotely. Specialization of regional economies also mattered: the maximum, typical for crises, was the decline in the auto industry; the overall decline in the global economy hit regions with large-scale mining of fuel and energy resources hard. The traditional factor of regional development also turned out to be significant in 2020: the capacity of sales markets that contributed to the growth of production in major cities and regions working on their markets and that slowed the development of manufacturing industries in the Far East. The border position of regions had no clear impact on the dynamics of their development. It has been suggested that the state anticrisis policy made it possible to slow the decline in problem sectors, while growth in the production of goods and services in demanded types of activity was associated with the objective advantages of territories.