To the question of the importance of combating the shadow economy in Russia

In their history, many countries of the world had to go through a stage of stagnation. Thus, the UK faced this problem in the 1960s–1970s, the USA in 1970–1982, and in Russia this stage began in 2013 and continues to this day. The factor that makes it difficult to get out of it is the presence of underdeveloped regions within this country, i.e. the unevenness of its spatial development. This factor, in turn, may be due to some other negative circumstances. The present study is aimed at establishing the key of these circumstances and at developing possible ways to level it. Methods: study of the hypotheses presented in the scientific literature and their verification using regression analysis. Results: it has been established that a number of threats to the economic security of Russia, which includes the unevenness of its spatial development, is a connected chain, the initial link of which is a significant level of the shadow economy, amounting to more than 30% of GDP, due to the high scale of corruption. Conclusions: the main tool to combat the shadow economy in Russia, necessary to ensure its economic security, is the improvement of anti-corruption policy, the main goal of which should be to increase the CPI to 70-85 points. With such a scale of corruption, the level of the shadow economy in the country under study will drop to about 12% of GDP, as a result of which its GRP per capita will be more than 70 thousand US dollars in 2010 prices, i.e. exceed that of many economically developed countries.