The Russia’s Far East: Traditional Routes of Spatial Development and Their Modern Transformation

The experience of exploration and development of the Russia’s Far East from different directions, at different scales of time and space is summarized, starting from the foundation of Vladivostok in 1860, the most remote large city from both Russian capitals. It is shown that the maritime (eastern) route in the past and the space route today play no less a role in the development of the macroregion than the traditional overland (western) path. The sea ways played a decisive role until the launch of the Trans-Siberian Railway entirely across the territory of Russia in 1916, and since the beginning of the 1970s, the symbiosis of digital and space technologies makes it possible to remove restrictions on the spatial accessibility of an ever wider range of functions, land and water areas, concurrently expanding the opportunities for their consolidation and integration into both the national territory of Russia, and Greater Eurasia. Exploration of Space as a part of geosphere laid the foundation for the transformation of the traditional model of the Far East spatial development, with competition and alternating dominance of the land and sea routes. Since the early 1970s, within the framework of this transformation, the division of labor between modes and systems of transport and directions of communication has been gradually harmonized, when the development of the macroregion from the sea and by land are increasingly acting not as competing, but as complementary