COLLECTION "GEOGRAPHY QUESTIONS"
About 70 years ago, in 1946, the State Publishing House of Geographical Literature (Geografgiz) began regular publication of collections of scientific articles "Geography Questions" under the auspices of the Geographical Society of the USSR (now the Russian Geographical Society). The initiator and organizer of the publication of the series was a well-known geographer, the author of many geography school textbooks of those years, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences N.N. Baransky.
The collections "Geography Questions" were published from 1946 to 1988. Over the years, more than 130 issues had been published devoted to a variety of scientific issues, and educational tasks in all areas of geography and related branches of science. Each volume was prepared by a separate science department of the Moscow Branch of the Russian Geographical Society, and only occasionally the collections were interdisciplinary in nature. In the past years, the Department of Economic and Political Geography had published 43 collections; the Department of Physical Geography, 18; the Geomorphological Commission, 14; the Commission on Social Geography, Geography of Population and Settlements, 10; the Hydrological Commission, 9; the Toponymic Commission, 6; the Department of the History of Geographical Knowledge and Historical Geography, 5; the Department of Cartography and Aerospace Methods, 4; the Commission on Biogeography, 3; the Commission on Landscape Geochemistry and the Department of Local History and Educational Geography, 2 each. 33 collections were memorial and dedicated to outstanding geographers (L.S. Berg, N.N. Baransky, I.D. Papanin, A.A. Grigoryev, B.B. Polynov, N.N. Kolosovsky, E.M. Murzaev, V.A. Obruchev, Yu.M. Shokalsky and others) or significant events.
The collections and the materials placed in them have become the fundamental basis of modern geographical science. No reputable geographical monograph can do without references to them. Thus, "Geography Questions" are a part of the golden fund of the serial publications of Russian scientific thought.
In 2008, the Russian Geographical Society resumed publication of this series. In recent years, eight issues have been published: No. 132 "Modern Toponymy", No. 133 "Geographical and Hydrological Studies", No. 134 "Topical Biogeography", No. 135 "Population Geography and Social Geography", No. 136 "Historical Geography", No. 137 "Mountain Studies", No. 138 "Landscape Science Horizons", No. 139 "Theory and Practice of Tourism". In 2015, two more issues will be published: No. 140 "Topical Geomorphology", and No. 141 "Issues of Regional Development of Russia".
In the future, the Russian Geographical Society intends to publish two collections of "Geography Questions" per year. Up to 25-30 articles are published in each issue, which are reviewed before publication. The collections are sent to the regional branches of the Russian Geographical Society and to the leading geographical organizations of the country. The publication of the collections is led by the Editorial Board headed by the Honorary President of the Russian Geographical Society, Academician V.M. Kotlyakov.
Now the collections "Geography Questions" are a periodical of the Russian Geographical Society. You can get acquainted with them in the Electronic Library of the Society. The Editorial Board of the collections hopes that the resumption of a remarkable series of scientific papers will be an important milestone in the development of Russian geographical science.