Trends, Problems, And Mechanisms Of The Development Of Northern Rural Territories In The European Russia

The article presents the results of the analysis of trends and issues of socio-economic development of the Russian Federation’s rural territories and subjects, situated in Russia’s European North. It reveals that the key problems of territorial development are unfavorable demographics; poor housing improvement regarding all improvement types; high share of the population provided with bad-quality drinking water; noticeable income difference between rural and urban population, etc. The authors propose a typology of rural territories according to the size of rural population, periphery, and their economic specialization. We reveal that the territories adjacent to large and major towns, as well as ones having agro-industrial and extractive specialization, are developed the most. We substantiate a mechanism for managing Russia’s rural territories in current conditions and propose recommendations for updating their state development policy: 1) to ensure a complete implementation and achievement of goals of the RF state program “Integrated development of rural territories”; 2) to provide an equal availability of state support measures to rural developers; to help provide state support measures for the development of small- and medium-sized businesses in rural areas; 3) to create conditions for attracting non-budget financing investment sources to socio-engineering countryside infrastructure; 4) to develop different forms of agricultural cooperation; 5) to establish professional teams of experts, specialists, and activists, interested in developing rural territories, in each subject of the Russian Federation, etc.