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The objective of the paper is to analyze a city network of the Russian Federation (the RF) in order to understand how the existing urban pattern correlates with the aim and strategic directions of a contemporary regional policy. To reach this goal the present hierarchy of Russian urban system will be analyzed, on the base of population size, level of urban functions and accessibility of transport system. The paper will present strengths and weaknesses of current urban system structure. The regional development of the RF has specific features due to a set of historical, political, economical and social aspects. The Soviet period of planned economy had significantly influenced the territorial development of the country. For a long time Russia had been in a self-isolation condition and, as result, it had the unique planned system with their specific terminology, distributive mechanisms and administrative regulations. In the contemporary Russia regional planning is switching over to a new stage. Apparently Russia seems have been reached the era of so-called "regional revolution" later than the other industrial countries. Now we can observe a creep from sectoral (industrial) planning to territorial development planning. On the one hand, Russia tries to devise a regional development strategy based on the principles of polarization. The budget levelling policy is substituted by the growth pole policy. The "open question" is: which regions and cities could be the poles for the future country's development? Thereby, realization of a new regional policy demands development of a suitable information, data base, statistics, researches, etc. On the other hand, in the RF is emerging a progressive bifurcation between socio-economic policies and spatial planning. The regional policy is realized without territorial binding. The role and place of the city is indefinite in the regional policy. The issue concerning which cities should be alive in national and global competition is still under discussion. The research methodology is based on the analysis of existing planning and strategic documents of the federal, regional and local levels in the RF, as well as on a retrospective analysis of Russian population settlement pattern and in carrying out a comparative analysis. The adequacy of research will be ensured by using a statistical data of the RF.

The evolution of an urban settlement system in the post-Soviet space is analyzed by the comparison of the progress of urbanization and changes in migration balances of cities of different size, status, and location in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Despite the differences in size and density of cities, their hierarchical and spatial structure, and management decisions, many trends in the development of city systems were similar in these countries. The reasons for different migration attractiveness of cities of different sizes are discussed including their socioeconomic statuses and infrastructural arrangement. These countries are characterized by strong contrasts in urban settlement patterns where large and very large centers play a major role and there is a significant proportion of small towns. In all three countries, there are significant differences between the quality of life in large urban centers and small towns. The situation before the military events in Ukraine in 2014 is analyzed. Migration in the period of 1990–2013 mostly from rural areas and from small and medium-sized cities to major centers supports the hypothesis of renewed urbanization that had gone uncompleted in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in the Soviet era. Two main migration directions can be noted in the post-Soviet period: from rural areas to capitals, their suburbs, and other large cities, and for Russia and Ukraine (until 2014), from the east to the central and southern regions.

This paper argues that there is a complex socio-economic, spatial and political trend towards increasing unevenness among Russian cities against the shortage of researches about Russian urbanized space. In addition to this Russia experiences a lack of studies taking into account that, in modern globalized world, cities are considered as a power machine stimulating the country?s development. The urban researches on Russian cities mainly are focusing on Moscow and Saint Petersburg, or on some regional capitals and cities hosting mega-events such as Vladivostok and Sochi. As a matter of fact, a considerable part of Russian cities have lost themselves in the new market conditions since the general vector of urban development has changed after the USSR breakup. Great transformations have occurred in both inter and intra urban levels. The disparity of country?s development has increased: European Russia and Northern regions with rich oil and gas deposits are becoming more affluent, while Far East and Siberian regions are undergoing population loss and resources outflows. In spite of contemporary Russian policy is mainly focused on the national and regional issues, world economy is more and more aware that cities are the growth poles for a whole country. Therefore an updated development policy demands a re-scaling at the urban level and requires a precise analysis of urban condition and dynamics. The paper aims to classify the whole Russian urban system on the base of some socio-economic characteristics: demographic dynamics, housing quality, economic performance at two temporal thresholds. The adopted method, the Neural Network Self-Organizing Maps (SOM), is able to single out groups of cities with high internal resemblance. The paper starts with a brief overview of the urban networks formation during soviet period, its transformation after the breakup of the USSR and the consequences of these two processes for the contemporary cities. The second section explains the data which will be used for the analysis and describes the used SOM algorithm. The subsequent section presents the analysis of the results describing spatial urban patterns in terms of quantities and geographical characteristics. The conclusions discuss the nature of those patterns. Due to SOM implementation it has been possible to identify twenty five groups of cities, with similar socio-economic trends during the last decade, where each group is characterized by an appropriate profile (a codebook). Moreover the empirical results have allowed sketching a new urban hierarchy in Russia, outlining four layers: ?urban engine?, ?strong cities?; ?potential cities? and ?weak cities?. The outcomes will allow the definition of appropriate urban development strategies.