Social and economic geography and regional policy: northern aspect

The economic-geographical analysis of problems of the North of Russia, executed in the form of typology of territorial-economic systems on two bases is presented: 1) on forms of placing of the population and manufacture; 2) on profile of economic activity of regional and district municipal formations. Thereby the regional policy concerning the North is concretized in the problematics direction "centre - periphery" and "territorial-branch development". Northern policy should be directed on the solution of concrete problems of the formed territorial- economic complexes, peripheral industrial centers and the countryside. It is also necessary to fill the regional policy with questions of execution of capital functions by the regional, republican and district centers with the establishment of admissible limits of drawing up the population of periphery in the given centers and large cities, their maintenance at high cultural and scientific and technical level, etc. The cities and areas of oil and gas and mining specialization, including concerning their interrelation with reindeer breeding and agriculture, have their problems. A quarter of the population of the North lives in cities and areas of timber industry and agricultural specialization. The sustainable development of these territories becomes a priority problem not so much on the production, as on the choice of new forms of social security of inhabitants of settlements and villages. Areas of reindeer breeding, sheep breeding and horse breeding, not having towns and living rather independently, frequently by way of subsistence production, should be transformed on new technical and social basis, not infringing upon the traditional way of life.