№ 2 - 2006
Zamyatina N.Yu.
Cities, Areas and Countries in the Political Relief of Russian Regions (With the Materials of RF Subjects' Official Sites Used)

The article presents the results of the research of cognitive-geographical contexts of the images of RF subjects, with the materials of the subjects' official sites used. The author's attention is focused on the shades of the meanings imparted to the images of the RF subjects by correlating these latter with Russia as a whole, with her different cities and areas, as well as with foreign countries. The research reveals expanse ideas' "strata" differing both as to the combination of geographical objects embraced and as to the ideological and even symbolic content of the geographical images. The research also demonstrates that the political-economic expanse in which RF subjects' images are efficient, splinters into a whole number of sub-expanses, whose structure reveals their "branch" genesis. Thus, the sub-expanse of the relief context is in many respects economic sub-expanse constituting itself on the principles of competition. There is, furthermore, substantially influential context, political by its genesis and symbolic by essence, reflecting the hierarchy of administrative units and their centers. In accordance with the author's conclusion, all these contexts correlate with the "lines of force" of the country's political field and organize in their way its "pluses" and "minuses".