The Russian language performs important communicative, humanitarian, cultural, and economic functions in the modern world. However, the Russian-speaking population within the former Soviet Union is rapidly declining nowadays. The aim of the study is to identify the factors that influence the dynamics of Russian language proficiency in young countries. First of all, this is a demographic factor. It is reflected in a significant reduction in the number of the Russian population as a whole and its migration outflow from the countries near abroad. This process takes place against the background of the demographic restructuring of the post-Soviet space, where there is a redistribution of the population between countries in favor of those that traditionally had a lower level of Russian language proficiency. The high status of the Russian language in a number of neighboring countries has a positive impact on the dynamics of Russian language proficiency. The study revealed another important factor that affects the Russian language proficiency of the non-Russian population, including the titular peoples of the young states. Russian-speaking regions and countries in general, where a relatively high proportion of Russians remains, are characterized by an increased proportion of the non-Russian population who are fluent in Russian. In case of further reduction of the Russian population in the neighboring countries, even the high status of the Russian language will not be able to prevent there the decrease of the population who are fluent in Russian.

Socio-economic and demographic growth of regional centers have led to an increase in the polarization of the space of the Belgorod, Voronezh and Kursk regions. The peculiarity of the studied territories is their border position with Ukraine, which left an imprint on the demographic, socio-cultural, ekistic indicators of the border areas. The main tasks of the work are: establishing and assessing the socio-economic role of regional metropolises in the growing polarization of space in the ХХI century, identifying changes and trends in the development of regional settlement systems, determining the transport accessibility of capitals in the polarization of the space of regions. Disproportions, polarization of the socio-economic space of regional metropolises and territories under their control have been proved. The position of the border municipalities, that, with the exception of the Belgorod region, are located in the zone of periphery and active depopulation, has been determined. The changes in the spatial development of regional settlement systems of the Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk regions are revealed. The differentiation of transport accessibility of metropolises has been established.

Many conditions for the development of the agriculture and food production have changed in the 2010s: in addition to the consequences of the economic crises of 2008 and 2014, there were the introduction of restrictions on the import of certain types of agricultural products and food from the EU and a number of other countries, the intensification of import substitution, a new round of attention to food security problems in state political agenda, etc. The paper examines the territorial and sectoral structure of agriculture and food production in the Leningrad region that is simultaneously located in the zone of influence of the largest agglomeration (metropolis) and neighboring EU countries. The analysis showed that the dependence of the territorial structure of agriculture on the state of the largest enterprises has increased, and also there have been some local transformations associated with the emergence of new dairy farms. In the sectoral structure, no fundamental changes were revealed, but in absolute terms, vegetable production increased significantly (“Vyborzhets” in the Vsevolozhsky district), which is directly related to changes in competition due to the food embargo and improved credit policy conditions (though effective only for large enterprises). In the production of food, the production of meat and semi-finished meat products, fish and bakery products increased significantly. However, the territorial structure of production has changed only for bakery products: it shrank to a smaller number of enterprises with a simultaneous increase in concentration and production volumes at “Petrokhleb Group of Companies”. The food embargo of 2014 opened up colossal free niches in the market of St. Petersburg with ca 5 million inhabitants. This could radically affect the production of certain food products in the neighboring Leningrad region, but for a number of reasons this did not happen. These reasons include a decrease in demand due to a drop in the solvent demand of the population during the crisis years, an insignificant raw material base in the region, the use of new opportunities by enterprises in St. Petersburg itself, filling the market with goods from neighboring regions and imported products (especially due to the seaside location and the presence of a seaport).

This paper summarizes the results of studies of geomorphic and structural analyses of elongated forms of relief of the Northern part of the Russian Plain, based on digital elevation model (DEM) based on topographic maps of scale 1 : 100000 and various geological data. DEM have revealed 11 elongated forms in the topography of the region within the river basins of Northern Dvina, Mezen and Kuloi. The length of these ridges varies from 30 to 200 km, average relative height is 20–60 m and an average width is 1–4 km. It has been suggested that these elongated forms, previously described as “eskers”, “moraine” or “end-moraine ridges” are completely of tectonic origin with the effect of accumulation and abrasion during the periods of Quaternary marine transgressions and subsequent processes of erosion and denudation. The direction of Belomor-Mezen and Belomor-Dvina shear dislocation zones and faults control the orientation of these elongated forms. Intraplate tectonic events related to the vertical and horizontal mobility between crystalline basement and sedimentary cover across long-lived dislocation zones and faults had important implications for the formation of both the ridges in particular and present-day relief of flat areas in general. The data presented in this paper provide a foundation for future field studies of the ridges, as well as the factors controlling their formation.

The landscape structure features of the nature reserve “Lindulovskaya Grove” (area is about 10 sq km) is considered. The natural reserve is located in the Vyborgsky district of the Leningrad region (Karelian Isthmus) and included in the list of cultural heritage sites of UNESCO (“The historical centre of St. Petersburg and associated complexes of monuments”), as a place of growth of the oldest artificial plantations of larch (Larix) in Russia and Europe. Based on the field studies in the reserve 18 types of landscape sites and 53 long-term landscape states were first identified and described. The landscape map of the natural reserve “Lindulovskaya Grove” has been compiled, and on its basis a map of actual processes in landscapes as well. In total, 12 directions of actual processes were identified. The changes occurring in larch stands of different age and in different landscape sites, including those under the influence of increasing recreational loads, are analyzed.

This paper is a kind of review of most meaningful definitions of mires in the Russian mire science. The term “boloto” (mire) and its development, the causes and conditions of its reformulation in Russia from the end of XIX century up to nowadays are given. In Russia the development of mire science always has existed in between theoretical concepts and requested applied studies. This affected the development of the term “boloto”. The scientific opinions of some selected mire specialists that most adequately reflect the corresponding period or contribute to its completion are used for the analysis. The paper is based on the delimitation of the concept of the essence or invariance of the definition of “boloto” as a phenomenon from its individual features. Authors make a detailed consideration of the mire features and methodic aspects of mire research for the purpose of clarification of scientific concepts. Periodization is proposed with an interval of 20 years due to the complex asynchrony of the appearance and approval of the mire definitions in certain branches of mire science. It is taken into account that nearly “similar” concepts often had ambiguous interpretation; but “different” ideas could represent the same content. In addition researchers changed their views over time which also made it difficult to distinguish milestones. The work considers seven periods from 1880 to 2020.