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Current geoeconomic and geopolitical transformations project on Russian society and its spatial organisation, highlighting the problems of spatial socioeconomic development and its governmental regulation. This article examines the theoretical and applied aspects of the incorporation into the national regional policy of the sea factor, understood as a combination of location and resources, which is determined by a country's jurisdiction over coasts and waters, its maritime activities and coastalisation potential, including the economic, settlement-­related and psychological elements of the latter. The article describes the key influences of the sea factor on the spatial development of post-­Soviet Russia. The steadily growing impact of maritime activities on the spatial-­economic and settlement dynamics has been given a new impetus by the rising geostrategic, resource and transport-­logistic significance of the World Ocean, as well as its water and water-land substructures, amid increasing military-­strategic confrontation and geoeconomic regionalisation. The article presents a retrospective analysis of the role of the sea factor in Russia’s regional policy and identifies its stages. The authors emphasise the need for a synergy between maritime and spatial policies and proposes ways of achieving it.

This article presents an inventory and a typology of the existing and emerging economic clusters in the coastal zone of the European part of Russia. The authors hold that transboundary clustering takes priority in the Baltic coastal region - nine of the 56 clusters identified are located in the Kaliningrad region and another eight in Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad region. The authors describe major catalysts and immanent inhibitors in coastal zones. The former include a high density of coastal economies, proximity to international markets, and better logistics and communications. The inhibitors comprise geopolitical risks and institutional barriers. It is shown that the potential and prospects of transboundary clustering are affected by both global integration and disintegration patterns, coastal infrastructure, geopolitical and geoeconomic "neighbourhood", cultural excellence, and business and investment environment.

The coastalisation of population is considered as a prolonged, universal, although not a ubiquitous - socio-geographical process. This process is a result of the evolving spatial architecture of countries and regions, a lack of balance between the potential of leading cities, economic and settlement projections of global geoecological, geo-economic, and geopolitical processes, the scale and effect of transnational and transboundary contracts, and the changing images of coastal areas. This article analyses the trend towards the 'drift' of the demographic potential from the inland territories to the coastal periphery, which has been observed in Russia for centuries. A vast body of empirical data and statistics is used to demonstrate that, during the post-Soviet period, coastalisation has become city-centred and regionally/locally selective with a focus on the agglomerations of the Baltic, Caspian, and partly Azov-Black Sea coasts. The multi-scale phenomena of 'inverse coastalisation' and ‘quasicoastalisation’ are analysed and relevant cases are considered. The author identifies numerous factors and explores prospects of the further coastalisation of population in the Kaliningrad and Leningrad regions and Saint Petersburg. The author argues that against the background of increasing socioeconomic risks - particularly due to the change in Russia's geostrategic priorities - the coastal zones remain crucial to the new configuration of the country's settlement system.

This article defines coastal zones as a priority subject of studies in social geography and interprets coastalisation of population and economy as a key indicator of the development of a coastal zone. The author stresses the inverted coastalisation in Russia at the macro- and meso-levels and identifies its causes. The article defines the coastal zone as a full-scale, continuum-discrete phenomenon with clear crossborder characteristics and increased potential for cluster formation in the economy. Marine cross-border clusters are identified as independent typological units. Characteristics and conditions for their formation and development are described in view of contemporary geoeconomic trends. The author examines the conditions and prospects for the formation of marine cross-border clusters in the key segments of Russia's coastal zone.

Promoting the development of social geography (one of the most important components of present-day social sciences) is especially important for contemporary Russia. In the last 25 years Russian social geography has seen dramatic disciplinary changes. On the one hand, it has widened its scope. On the other hand, it has suffered from a growing contradiction between the popularization of the social geographic knowledge, the need to have a clear understanding of the factors and results of a multi-scale territorial social and economic dynamics, and the limits of the field (with its organizational structure, possibilities and practitioners desperately falling behind the times). The aim of this article is to analyze the post-soviet period of the development of social geography to identify the strengths and weaknesses that the discipline has de- monstrated, the challenges it still has to overcome and the priorities it has yet to formulate. It is shown how the traditional dimensions of social geography (with their focus on humanities, culture, economics, geography or environment, respectively) not only keep their value but acquire new meanings. The author concludes about the importance and the strategies of further integration within the community of social geography researchers, and points out the directions of future research: fundamental issues of Russian spatial planning, Russian positioning in both global and local (Eura- sian) contexts.