Connection of times (to the 120th anniversary of V.A. Krotov’s birth)
N.M. SYSOEVA
V.B. Sochava Institute of Geography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk, Russia
Keywords: distribution of productive forces, economic zoning, Angara-Yenisei region, territorial planning, territorial-production complex, polarized development
Abstract
The article provides an assessment of the scientific legacy of the outstanding Siberian economic geographer and economist V.A. Krotov from the standpoint of modern problems of territorial development and management. During the period of industrial development of Eastern Siberia, V.A. Krotov worked on issues of optimal distribution of productive forces and on the development of the theory of territorial production complexes (TPCs), based on the geographical features of the regions of new development. In the context of the prevalence of sectoral planning, he insisted on the need to develop schemes for the distribution of territorial productive forces, and his approach to planning was based on economic zoning. It is shown that, with the cessation of state control of production, the main complexes created during that period remain the foundation of the economic structure of resource regions with integrating intra-corporate planning. In the economic zoning scheme, V.A. Krotov insisted on the integration of Irkutsk oblast with Krasnoyarsk krai within the Angara-Yenisei region, rather than with Transbaikalia. The scientist’s views are compared with modern approaches to solving this problem (the Baikal region, identified in the 2000s as part of the federal planning system, was again replaced by the Angara-Yenisei region in the 2019 Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation, and Transbaikalia was annexed to the Far East). In his work on the territorial management system based on the TPCs, V.A. Krotov attempted to apply foreign experience, including elements of mutual attraction between producer and consumer in polarized development theories, as well as interregional agreements using the example of the Tennessee Valley Authority. With the elimination of institutional barriers of the socialist economic system, this issue began to be widely developed in modern regional science, including comparisons of the TPCs with poles of growth and clusters. The V.A. Krotov’s contribution to the methodological coordination and integration of research on key problems of distribution within the framework of economic geography and regional economics is noted.
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