Abstract:

The establishment of strategic partnership between China and Russia is an important measure for jointly contributing to the sustainability of social and economic development in both countries. Improving the understanding of the development of geography in China and Russia and further expanding the scope of cooperation are necessary for such development. Based on the literature on Russian socioeconomic geography and annual conference material of the Association of Russian Geographers in the past decades, this article briefly expounds contemporary progress of related work in Russia with the vision of inheritance and innovation. The development and major trends of the socioeconomic geography thoughts in Russia are discussed. On the basis of dividing the transformation of Russian economic geography into six stages, this article focuses on terms and phenomena of changes in national or regional geo-relationships, multi-scale regional spatial organization, the development of regional economic network structure, the construction of "big Europe and Asia", as well as the conception of "eastward development". We mainly discussed the inclusivity of socioeconomic geography, as well as the emergence of new sub-disciplines, new ideas, and new concepts along with the progress of globalization and national development. We thereafter listed major concerns of socioeconomic geographers in Russia, as well as the leading scholars and their masterpieces. We also pointed out the shortcomings in the areas of theory and methodology construction, development of less-developed regions, social equity, and poverty, among others. This study may have potential in deepening mutual understanding between Chinese and Russian geographers and promoting the innovative development of socioeconomic geography.

Key words: socioeconomic geography, inheritance and innovation, progress, Russia