ABSTRACT
The terms 'commercial' and 'economic' have acquired slightly different meanings: in 1882, Gotz suggested that 'economic' geography was to be more academic and commercial geography essentially practical. Russia's economic geography appears to be changing at a swift rate—even between 1939 and 1959 the population of the USSR increased from 190-7 millions to 208-8 millions, in spite of enormous war losses. In Lord Stamp's view economic theory is not based on static conditions and 'only as geography registers change over time can it be of full advantage to economic theory'. An American geographer, H. H. McCarty, has said that economic geography is becoming the branch of human knowledge whose function is to account for the location of economic activities on the various portions of the earth's surface. An obvious line of first inquiry is the intrinsic natural resources, but these do not of necessity give any clue to the economic activities at any place.
