regional cooperation

Socialist integration is rarely examined in Regional Studies. At the same time most of the assessments of socialist cooperation based on theories of regionalism are shallow and declarative. The author makes an attempt to define which type of international regionalism socialist integration belongs to. Similarities and differences between socialist integration and historical types of regionalism are identified by using the comparative method.

The article describes the achievements of scientific schools in the study of cooperation at various stages of its formation and development. First of all, modern centers for the study of the history of Russian cooperation, formed in the 1990s, when the role of cooperation in the development of the country of the pre-revolutionary and NEP periods and up to the present time began to be rethought, are studied. The oldest scientific schools of the history of cooperation deserve special attention: Ivanovo, Siberian, MSPI-MSPU, Saratov, Samara, Petrozavodsk, etc.