Dear reader! You are holding the first issue of a new scientific theoretical almanac devoted to the problems of complex regional studies. Despite the fact that nowadays in the Russian Far East, there are many academic and university journals, many of which, one way or another, are not alien to the problems of regional science, we are sure that our edition rightly claimed to have its own, special segment of researching field, which nobody occupied. Our understanding of specificity of the almanac is associated with the overall evaluation of the current state of humanitarian researches of the Russian Far East. According to our point of view, during a half-century of active, multi-directional development of regional science it has reached such a high level of differentiation and internal complexity, which requires urgent attention for it as an object of analysis and reflexive regulation.

Intensive branching (especially in last fifteen years), of social researches in the region brings not only the obvious quantitative increase in scientific knowledge, but also less appreciable (especially in terms of a narrow specialist) challenges to the quality. The attributes of knowledge, which have the quality of science, are its systematization and validity. However, the acquisition and preservation of these knowledge attributes does not occur automatically, as it is accumulating. That is why the success of individual branches of research of the Russian Far East does not conduct with the inevitability to the same successful development of the scientific model of the region as a whole. In turn, the lack of a synthesis of conceptual knowledge about the region, an interdisciplinary perspective and conceptual language of universal significance of the study, ultimately, limits the possibilities of the same academic specialists. Deprived of the necessary methodological unity, the researchers of different aspects of shared object can not (and often do not try) to effectively exchange information, not to mention the stronger forms of scientific cooperation, without which any large-scale explanatory studies are inconceivable. In this situation, the results of numerous highly specialized works are not adequately estimated, according to their actual place in the context of the science and practice, and consequently, remain unclaimed.

The weakness of the professional relationships within the scientific community naturally reflected in the above-mentioned general condition of the total product. Working in isolation, researchers choose the direction and theme of their research, in essence, arbitrary. As a result, different aspects of past and present of the region are studied extremely uneven, in the regional knowledge the vast gaps are formed as a sort of «no man's land», which are randomly interspersed with the relatively mastered the subject areas. This kind of spontaneous development turn regional studies of the Russian Far East into a random set of individual research projections, that are not joined to each other, not only conceptually, but even mechanically, and are not able to clarify the general, integral parameters of the display of the object.

All it leads us to believe that the principal, immediate problem of the scientific study of the region is a methodological problem. The development of suitable measures for compiling and interpreting the results of special studies is now a necessary condition for rebuilding the integrity of regional science – both as a community of scholars, and as a system of knowledge. Our issue should be one of the participants of the solving of this problem. The almanac prescribed to assume the role of coordinator of the broad discussion of the opportunities and principles of design of the methodologies for regionology`s synthesis and diversified examination of concepts and models created with the same purpose. The main themes of this debate, in our view, must be: 1) the composition and operationalization of the conceptual apparatus required to describe the regional system, 2) the procedure and mechanism of internal (intersubsystem) and external (environment) relations in the region, and 3) the factors and trends in the historical dynamics of the regional system. As appears from offered themes, the most effective language for discussion and the instrument of synthesis, we believe a system approach. In addition, we hope that the discussion and development of methodology for systematic studies of the region will attract the attention of our authors to the fundamental problem of its compatibility with the principles of anthropological approach.

We would like to emphasize that we are not talking about working in the field of «pure theory», and even more of any opposition to the objective and empirical studies. Completeness and effectiveness of any generalizations is ultimately determined by the volume and quality of the underlying specific knowledge. Therefore, pages of the almanac will be open for the outcome of significant publications in the regional scale, specialized studies, particularly on new and little understood problematics. Thus, a priority for us is to ensure the orderly and systematic study of a specific region. This involves not only explicate, conscious and responsible use of common, or at least compatible, conceptual and methodological device. Reducing the spontaneity of the scientific process requires the evaluation of problem-thematic structure of the accumulated knowledge about the object and the willingness of researchers to focus on overcoming the identified therein contradictions and gaps. In other words, the methodological feature of the almanac must be complemented by planning further studies of the region in the form of training and offering of specific research programs and projects for a scientific audience.

And last (not least) observation. Although the focus of organized almanac of regional surveys, because of the obvious objective circumstances, would be Russia's Far East, the restriction of their limits of one region seems to us inappropriate. The most favorable conditions for the solution of methodological problems are certainly a multitude of objects under study and comparative perspective of their analysis. Accordingly, the editors expressed their interest in the publication of regional and cross-regional (including cross-cultural) studies, which pose similar problems on the material of any socio-geographical entities of complex type.