Following the Old Road: Organizational Imprinting and the Regional Development of Russia

ABSTRACT In this article, I draw from organizational imprinting theory to illuminate the impact of the Soviet legacy on contemporary Russian economic geography and regional policy. I argue that central coordination in the creation and regulation of Russian urban agglomerations is connected to a socialist imprinted paradigm associated with the Soviet economic regionalization model and territorial-production complexes (TPCs). I conduct a qualitative historical study to analyze the role of the foundational environment and the dynamics in the development of this imprint. I propose that this imprint effect is prone to reproduction in contemporary regional development strategies and community-based paradigms due to exaptation and cultural-cognitive persistence. The article extends the literature of socialist imprinting by demonstrating how imprints may emerge, transform, and affect localized organizational communities in transition economies and highlights the role of imprinted paradigms in policymaking and regional development.

The Territory Requires Coherent Work: The Role of Interregional Interactions in Economic Recovery (To the 100th Anniversary of I.G. Aleksandrov’s Work ‘Economic Regionalization of Russia’)

The coronavirus pandemic has acted as a catalyst for discussions on the choice of economic policies for recovery from the crisis. This research focuses on one of the aspects of this problem, aiming to analyse interregional interactions, the activation of which can become a driver of growth. Based on the idea of ‘double circulation’ from the China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, we demonstrate that Russia also has the ability to shift the focus of economic policy towards expanding the domestic market and developing ties between regions. The paper draws parallels between the early 1920s and 2020s. It is noted that the need to overcome economic depression was determined by justifying close cooperation of individual regions in Russia. The article describes the use of interregional interactions as a tool for spatial development based on the existing federal strategic plans. The study demonstrates that that the task of strengthening interregional interactions is only briefly touched upon in the plans. However, it is important to note that this process balances the constraints and opportunities for the development of the whole country. The analysis of the spatial markets’ hierarchy in the context of economic macro-regions revealed their incomplete nature as complete economic systems. The obtained results show that in order for the idea of macro-regions to actually work, real interregional projects should appear inside of these macro-regions. It is determined that on the international level the demand for special tools for enhancing interregional interactions is gradually growing. The author proposes measures based on successful examples to support such interregional interactions in Russia. Finally, the author concludes that in the current situation the increase in interregional interactions can positively affect the economic development of Russia as well as create new spatially distributed value-added chains