THE COUNTRIES OF THE RUSSIAN NEIGHBOURHOOD BELT IN THE RESEARCH OF THE INSTITUTE OF ECONOMICS OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES: HISTORY, METHODOLOGY, RESULTS

The article was prepared for the 95th Anniversary of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and is devoted to the history of country studies (CS) at the Institute and the people who organized and conducted them. Historically, the Institute’s country studies had a mainly practical purpose, aimed at providing the agencies carrying out the foreign policy of the USSR with information on the political, economic and social processes taking place in the countries of the socialist world. In the course of this work, knowledge on the implementation of the socialist doctrine in countries of different social and economic levels was accumulated, which made it possible to develop proposals for the transfer of experience in building socialism and deepening of mutual cooperation. With the collapse of COMECON, and then the USSR, the subject matter and methodology of CS changed. Their content, against the backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty and growing competition, is determined by issues of transformation, regionalization and modernization. While maintaining an applied nature, these studies have acquired scientific and theoretical significance, important for understanding the possible directions of development of the various states in a rapidly changing world. For Russia in this context, neighboring states that have historically closely interacted with it play a special role. The article examines the features of the study of countries included in the European, Asian and post-Soviet segments of the Russian neighborhood belt.