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This brief survey notes new publications which contribute to our understanding of the book as it developed in Siberia. Soviet scholars and librarians have a strong tradition of interest in the study of the book «knigovedenie». The rather numerous works which have appeared recently on the vast Siberian area will be useful in understanding regional printing developments in the Soviet Union.

Not many weeks back, according to newspaper reports, three members of the library staff of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London were dismissed. All had refused to carry out issue desk duty. All, according to the newspaper account, were members of ASTMS. None, according to the Library Association yearbook, was a member of the appropriate professional organisation for librarians in Great Britain.

This paper aims to explain the development of the Siberian Trakt (Siberian Way) project and discuss methodological, instrumental and technological questions related to its implementation. The paper also aims to explore the project’s ability to form a collaborative tourism network that boosts tourism development in the unique Siberian regions of Russia located in the very center of the Eurasian continent.

A multidisciplinary view and case approach are the basic methods chosen to illustrate and analyze the prospects for tourist network development in Siberia within the framework of the Siberian Trakt project.

The findings reveal the opportunities arising from the project. The Siberian Trakt helps to combine the resources of surrounding territories, brings over external resources to the investment foundations of the project and thus adds to the development of settlements that are participants in the project.

The main output of this paper is confirmation of useful approaches in tourism network development along the Siberian Trakt, which historically connected Central Russia with Siberia and the Far East. On the basis of the experience of the Siberian Trakt project, the problems and prospects of Siberia as new tourism destinations are shown, as well as the role of small settlements as important nodes of the regional tourism network.

Open Source Information (OSI) and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) are attracting enormous interest from the business, military and political intelligence communities. OSI and OSINT offer the prospect of delivering valuable intelligence, from so‐called open sources such as newspapers, experts, and online databases. While OSI and OSINT may offer considerable potential when employed to produce information on foreign countries, they are totally dependent on the researchers’ and analysts’ understanding of the target country‘s history, politics and society. A research project on the BAM (Baikal‐Amur Mainline) Railway in eastern Siberia provides a practical example of OSI. The project involved researching a book on the BAM (Baikal‐Amur Mainline) Railway in eastern Siberia using OSI alone as it was impossible to visit the region. The 3,084km BAM traverses an almost unpopulated region which had been virtually closed to Westerners since it became a major gulag zone in the 1930s. Once the book’s research was underway, it became clear that much of the English language published material was ill‐informed and contradictory. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relaxation of travel restrictions, it was possible to validate the information gathered. This led to a number of surprising findings about the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the material collected outside Russia.

Examines the current state of retailing in two of the more remote regions of Russia ‐ Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. Examines categories of retail shop ‐ the department store, or more appropriately the “quasi department store”, the kiosk, food shops as well as markets and street traders. Suggests that there is little retailing in these regions that is in any way similar to that of the west. In an examination of ownership, the only evidence found of any multiple activity is the multiple ownership of kiosks and some multiple ownership through a trading company. Explores the ways in which retailing is likely to develop in the future in these regions.

Economic sanctions imposed by the EU and United States on Russia have brought significant changes into Russian foreign economic policy, in particular leading to deepening cooperation with Asian countries and China in particular. The present contribution aims to shed light on the influence of sanctions on Russian multinational enterprises (MNEs) internationalization toward China using the example of energy and information and communication technology (ICT) industries.

The chapter builds on case study analysis. The choice of sectors allows us to highlight the recent strategic trends in the internationalization of oil and gas industry, dominated by state-owned multinationals, and in ICT by privately owned companies.

Our results provide empirical data for understanding the influence of sanctions on MNEs from the country being under the sanctions. In the case of Russian oil and gas industry and ICTs, research indicates that the shift toward China was not initiated primarily by the sanctions. In both cases, expansion to Asian markets was correlated with business interests in the Chinese market. However, changes in geopolitical and macroeconomic business environment accelerated Russian MNE’s pivot to China, for the purposes of attracting capital and reaching new markets in context of deteriorating relations with western partners. The cases demonstrate a moderating role of the industry in the context of sanctions, helping compensate for the slowdown of economic relations with traditional partners.

The novelty of the chapter is to delineate the consequences of sanctions on MNEs from the country being under sanctions. In this way, it illustrates the role of geopolitical environment in intensifying internationalization of Russian MNEs toward China.