Intellectual Heritage of A.P. Gorkin: a Systemic Approach to Territorial Organization of the Economy in Light of Modern Concepts

Abstract The article examines the intellectual legacy of a major Soviet and Russian economic geographer and Americanist, Alexander Pavlovich Gorkin (1936–2022) and his regular coauthors (primarily, his closest associate, L.V. Smirnyagin) in the context of modern theories of economic geography and regional economics. A systematic comparison of the main theoretical provisions of Gorkin’s key publications in different years with Russian and international studies of similar time and their critical comparison with modern (as of the early 2020s) approaches to the relevant problems was carried out. Four key components of Gorkin’s intellectual heritage are identified. It is shown that Gorkin’s theoretical and empirical studies (including the Gorkin–Smirnyagin concept of factors and conditions for the location of production) reflect the realities of both the industrial and postindustrial eras. The systemic–structural approach to studying the territorial organization of industry in the Gorkin–Smirnyagin–Gokhman interpretation is considered in the context of discussions about the territorial structure of the economy in the 1970s–1980s and modern theoretical trends—the concept of assemblage according to DeLanda, the “spatial turn” in the social sciences, etc. Gorkin’s vision of the relationship between microgeographical (the problem of locating enterprises) and macrogeographical (transformation of the country’s industry) aspects of territorial organization is revealed. It is shown that in Gorkin’s ideas about the territorial organization of industry, the mesogeographical level is relatively weakly expressed—research at the level of specific regions and groups of interrelated firms. The limitations of his theoretical approaches are revealed, related to the specifics of his key subject of empirical research and the subject of theoretical reflection: US industry at a certain stage of development. It is shown that in Gorkin and his coauthors' theoretical constructions, innovative processes, which play a key role in modern concepts of spatial organization of the economy and regional development, occupy a secondary place. The problem of updating the intellectual heritage of Russian geographical thought and the constructive application of classical economic and geographical concepts in modern conditions is posed.