THE STUDY OF THE TERRITORIAL AND SECTORAL STRUCTURE OF THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERREGIONAL INTEGRATION: TO THE FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM

The authors, taking into account the existing developments, reveal the scientific relevance of the topic, which consists in verifying the existing concepts of regional growth driving forces in relation to regions with an industrial or industrial-agrarian economy. The authors describe the practical relevance of the study, which, according to the authors, consists in identifying the reasons inherent in the agro-industrial regions as a whole for their lag in socio-economic development. For the first time, the question of studying the territorial and industrial structure and, in particular, one of its key elements-agro — industrial regions in the context of the formation and development of integration and cooperation processes is raised. The article considers the most important aspect of the problem — the impact of integration on the development of agro-industrial regions, the possibility of the latter to enter the integration union on an equal partnership basis. The authors explain their position on this issue in a reasoned manner. The article proposes a classification of agro-industrial regions of Russia by the size of the integration potential. The classification is based on two criteria: the level of socio-economic development and the degree of the region periphery. At the end of the article, the main priority directions and tasks of the long-term development of the topic under consideration are listed.