Pacific Russia in the "Greater Eurasia” at the beginning of XXI century: challenges and responds

The article examines main factors that determine the pace, nature and direction of everyday life and economic development of Pacific Russia in the early 21st century. The author identifies and analyzes fundamental nature and impact of three, in his opinion, basic challenges, the answers to which determine Russian government policy towards this region: the threat of its loss under the influence of internal and external factors; peripheral status and lagging development based on its specialization in the raw materials extraction; modern Eurasian integration projects of Moscow, Beijing and Seoul. The first challenge was purely speculative but it allowed Kremlin to mobilize the country's political and business elites to strengthen Pacific vector of Russian policy and support Russia Far East development. In this case, the goal of this development was not to overcome the peripheral status and raw specialization of the region, but to utilize its potential more effectively in the interests of central government. The results were contradictory from the point of view of both domestic and foreign policies. Such outcome has prompted central government to create new instruments and institutions for implementation of his geopolitical and economic projects on the Pacific. The closure of an active phase of "Russia's integration into the APR", Kremlin promotion of the "Big Eurasia" concept as well as the Chinese "Belt and Road" initiative being launched alongside the Russian project, in the aggregate reserve for Pacific Russia a place "in the back" of the Eurasian integration, tightly fixing for her the status of a double - European and Asian - periphery.