The development of regional clusters in Russia is one of the conditions for improving the competitiveness of the domestic economy and an intensification of the mechanisms of public-private partnership. In Russia during the crisis the clusters are actively developing, and to date they have already been created a lot. However, the term «cluster» is not universally understood in the same way. There is no clear dividing line between the concepts of «cluster initiative» and «formed cluster ». How we must deal with these problems? Read this article.