Volume 95, Nº 2 (2025)

The article analyzes the results of the implementation of the Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2025 and formulates the priorities and objectives of the country’s spatial development, taking into account the new challenges that are reflected in the new Strategy for the period up to 2030. Attention is drawn to the main limitations of spatial development and ways to overcome them, the relationship between spatial priorities and documents regulating the development of transport, energy, housing, healthcare and education. A network of anchor settlements is considered as key tools for implementing the strategy, which will ensure the sustainability of the settlement system, increase economic connectivity and increase the quality of life throughout the country, as well as territorial planning, which allows synchronizing sectoral and spatial priorities. The list of target indicators of the new Strategy is justified.

Currently, a very complex and multidimensional transformation of the socio-economic system of Russia is taking place. According to the authors, its essence is to find an acceptable combination of the unique conditions and features that our country possesses. Vast territories significantly affect all major economic and social processes: from the interaction of economic agents and infrastructure development directions to the formation of specific types of economic activities. The hasty and uncritical borrowing of experience in solving issues from other countries has exacerbated many problems of Russia’s spatial development. That is why, in today’s conditions of high geopolitical tension and increasing complexity of supply chains, it is important to combine spatial, technological and industrial policies. Strategic documents in the field of spatial development should reflect approaches and mechanisms that ensure the synergetic interaction of the socio-economic systems of the regions.

Perception space is one of the most important components of a country’s civic culture. It lays the basis for its fundamental values and attitudes. Regional inequality undermines the common space of the Russian Federation. It boosts inequality as far as life chances are concerned. Regional inequality provokes resentiment and latent dissatisfaction with the existing social order. There are two options for coping with inequality. One consists in creating stimuli for migrations of rural and small city residents to big cities. The second one presupposes longterm investment and institutional strategy to develop traditional Russian settlements, to create jobs and expand the possibilities of self-realizaton. The first option will inevitably lead to a drop in birth rate and gradual reduction of the country’s population and ultimately its replacement with migrants from the developing countries. The first option might lead to unpredicted negative consequences of the scale that is difficult now to foresee. The second option would set out to sustain the size of the population and secure cultural and economic resources of small and medium-size cities and towns.

Foreign sanctions have dealt a serious blow to the viability of Russian science. Firstly, they have disrupted the usual communications with the outside world, made it difficult to acquire and maintain scientific equipment, and complicated access to consumables and scientific and technical information. Secondly, they have caused mental harm, demoralizing part of the scientific community, which could not but affect the effectiveness of research.

Mental-resource damage and its components form the subject of this work, which uses the results of surveys of the scientific community “Science Policy of Russia” conducted in 2021–2024. Such components of mental harm caused by anti-Russian sanctions as a violation of the internal balance of a significant part of the scientific community, including the attitude to the new reality and the identification of an individual model of behavior in science, and the incentive for an additional 15% of researchers to emigrate are considered. Three factors of Russian researchers’ termination of work in science under pressure of foreign sanctions were analyzed: moral and volitional attitude, material and resource conditions and salary. As the survey results showed, despite the worsening of the situation compared to the pre-sanction period, the first two factors do not have a decisive influence on the decision to leave science. At the same time, high sensitivity to salary dynamics was established: its potential reduction can lead to a reduction in the corps of researchers in the limit of up to 80%. At the qualitative (psychological) level, the mental and resource damage caused to the scientific community by sanctions can be compared with a state of mild depression. It is emphasized that the current anti-crisis policy in the scientific and technical sphere is one-sided and aimed mainly at eliminating material and technical problems, ignoring the need to prevent mental damage, which presupposes systemic ideological work with the scientific community, which would compensate for the negative effect of the potential deterioration in the material support of scientists and their working conditions.

The gas industry is one of the largest industries in Russia, along with oil production and refining. In terms of production and export of natural gas, our country ranks second (after the United States) and third (after the United States and Qatar) in the world, respectively. In 2010–2023, the share of production decreased in the old regions (Nadym-Pur-Tazovsky and Volga-Uralsky) and increased in the new ones (Yamal-Gydan and the shelf of the Caspian Sea). Production has significantly increased on the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas, which is associated with the commissioning of large deposits of Utrennoye, Yuzhno-Tambeysky and Bovanenkovsky. The article presents a brief history of the development of the gas industry in Russia. The influence of this sector on the economy of our country through budget and foreign exchange revenues is emphasized. The forecast of the development of production and export of natural gas is made, alternative points of view are given.

The article is an analytical review of a fundamental work on the phenomenon of identity prepared at IMEMO RAS under the supervision of Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences I.S. Semenenko. An interdisciplinary study in two books is devoted to the procedural aspects and dynamics of forms of identification of an individual and society in relation, first of all, to country, ethnic and religious affiliation, as well as the conditions for the formation of an all-Russian national self-consciousness from the point of view of civil and civilizational identification. The work substantiates a civilizational approach to the Russian and other largest nations of the world, continental and religious communities; contains an overview of such forms of collective identity as professional, racial, diaspora and others. The decisive role of cultural and identification factors in world politics and in the policy of nation-building, in ensuring the sovereignty and solidarity of state communities is noted. The books contain a bibliographic dictionary of leading scientists and a complete bibliography of scientific literature in this field. The publication is encyclopedic in nature and establishes a new scientific direction in the social and humanitarian sciences – identitarian studies.