The 100th Anniversary of the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences in the Background of the World and Russian Tendencies in Geography

Abstract

The Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), was founded in Petrograd in 1918 as the Industrial-Geographical Department of the Commission for Studying Natural Production Forces. In 1934, it was moved to Moscow and renamed the Institute of Physical Geography of the USSR Academy of Sciences and then (in 1936) the Institute of Geography of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Its history included all stages of the development of the national geography, beginning from the traditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the concept of geography as a descriptive science was given up and its branch specialization began, until the formation of geography of the 21st century as a paradigm and synthetic discipline with great prospects for developing knowledge. The modern geography and the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences use a wide range of interdisciplinary remote and field methods, the latest tools, and laboratory analyses to understand the quickly changing world, its nature, the population, and the economy retrospectively, at the present time, and in the future. The results of the research performed at the Institute was published in the Vestnik RAS periodical many times.