North Caucasus: economic dynamics of the first quarter of the 21st century (all-Russian trends and regional specifics)

The article examines the main trends in the economic dynamics of the North Caucasus macro-region of the Russian Federation in the first quarter of the 21st century. It is concluded that all the strategies for its social and economic development implemented at this time had low effectiveness (most of the goals and key parameters recorded in them were not achieved). However, this did not prevent the North Caucasus from demonstrating fairly high rates of economic growth in the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s, mainly focusing on the development of a number of agricultural industries and related clusters of light and food industries. Since the mid-2010s, the recreational and tourist complex has become a noticeable driver of the growth of all North Caucasian regions. Developing in line with the all-Russian social and economic trends (the process of metropolization; the outpacing growth of the service economy and the service sector; the construction sector), the republics of the North Caucasus changed according to their own demographic and settlement, economic and cultural, ethnic and social specifics. This specificity found expression in the steady preservation of the vast shadow sector, the widespread use of small-scale production in republican societies, the high employment of the population in private households and in informal segments of the economy, the orientation of producers towards public investment. In 2022-2023 (the period of the special military operation), industry, agriculture, and the construction sector of most regions of the North Caucasus demonstrate growth rates that exceed all-Russian indicators, which is evidence of a fairly successful adaptation of the economy of the macro-region to the new operating conditions.