Regional development in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia

This discrepancy between past and current realities best shows the role of science in today's world. Issues of regional development, even if they seem well studied over the last decades, appear to be a never-ending research story. The first observation is that regional science and economics are highly dependent on political order. Changes in international relations strongly influence the design of regional policy and practice. Paradoxically, local and regional issues are no longer internal affairs, as their exposure to international context is tremendous. Secondly, the role of science and theory is to give guidelines on how to act, especially in new circumstances and under new conditions. Thus, the new game rules become the background for novel research. This underpins the role of ‘historical’ studies from previous reality – they naturally become a starting point and reference for incoming solutions. Third, regional studies, especially in economics, show that regional stability or sustainability is like building a sandcastle – they are very fragile and sensitive to any turbulence. In addition, the role of science is to show how to make them possibly resistant and insusceptible. Third, regional policy resembles ‘learning by doing’ – for good and bad. From a scientific perspective, each problem, when solved, enriches our knowledge, and this is good when we use past experience to learn for the future. The above-mentioned general rules and findings are to be applied when reading papers collected in this special issue. This primarily refers to papers analysing the territories of Russia and Belarus, as the new political order should be treated as a ‘game changer’ for regional affairs in those countries.