Integration of economic space of the northern region: features and problems of ensuring

Russia's transition to the market in the 1990s which led to the destruction of a unified national economic complex, existing technological, cooperative, social, and other ties between the territories and, as a result, to the disintegration of the country's economic space extremely aggravated the problems of the Northern regions' development. In the context of trade liberalization, when competition began to prevail over cooperation, there was a significant reorientation of economic entities from domestic to foreign markets and their integration into global value chains. In this situation, the production potential and resources of the North were used not only for domestic consumption and accelerated Russian economy development but also for export in the form of low-grade products. This economic pattern leads to significant socio-economic costs, destruction of the domestic market integrity and its space fragmentation. These circumstances make it more urgent to find effective mechanisms for integrating the Northern regions into the national economic space. The purpose of this work is to study the features and problems of ensuring spatial integration of the Northern region's economy. To achieve this purpose, a critical analysis of theoretical and methodological approaches to the interpretation of the essence and factors of ensuring spatial economy integration has been carried out. The key features of transformation and integration processes in the Russian North (RN) in the post-Soviet period have been revealed. The author shows that the cooperation relations of the RN with other regions of the country which have been preserved since the Soviet time are an objective basis for the integration processes development. However, their progress is hindered by negative demographic processes that limit the integration development in the region's labor market; a decrease in the space transport connectivity level due to the significant destruction of the system of intraregional aviation and inland water transport. The paper identifies transport connectivity of the main economic centers of the RN and “bottlenecks” in the region's transport infrastructure development. The authors substantiate conceptual basis for ensuring spatial integration of the Northern region's economy.