Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 24 – Over the last
25 years, 71 percent of Russia’s 1100 cities lost population, almost one in
five lost more than 25 percent of its residents, and 18 lost more than half of
their residents, a clear indication that the dying out of Russia many have
talked about is not confined to villages and rural areas.
That is the conclusion offered by
three researchers at Russian Business Consulting in what they say is the first of
a series of articles investigating changes in Russia’s urban landscape since
1989 that they will be publishing in the course of the coming weeks (daily.rbc.ru/special/society/22/01/2015/54c0fcaf9a7947a8f1dc4a7f).
There are currently 1128 cities in
the Russian Federation, including both occupied Crimea and the administratively
closed centers, and as of the beginning of this year, 69.5 percent of Russians,
just over 100 million people live in them. Over the last 25 years, 60 places lost
city status, but one -- Magas, the capital of Ingushetia -- was built from
scratch and acquired it.
Between 1989 and 2014, there were
8.2 million more deaths than births in Russia’s cities, the study says, and the
population would have sunk in far more of them had it not been compensated by
the influx of migrants from the villages and other countries and the inclusion
of additional territory and hence population in some cities.
Because of these factors, the
researchers say, the urban population of Russia grew by 3.7 million over the
period, but if one does not include administrative changes, then the growth in
Russia’s cities over the last 25 years was only 0.9 percent.
The number of cities with
populations less than 12,000 – which is one of the criteria for classifying a
place as a city – increased from 157 to 246. Most of those should have been
stripped of their urban status, but only nine were – and those two, Chekhov and
Gornozavodsk in Sakhalin Oblast, were among the top ten population losers
during the period.
Even slightly larger cities suffered
declines, the RBK researchers say. Among cities with 50,000 or fewer residents,
their combined population fell from 18.9 million to 16.7 million. “And these
are official data,” the investigators say. “In reality, the situation could be
still worse.”
Places in the far east and far north
suffered the most while the cities with the greatest growth were either those
in the North Caucasus, those in oil and gas processing regions, or Moscow.
North Caucasus cities grew primarily as a result of greater births over deaths
and migration from rural areas. Moscow grew because of migration from other
regions and countries.
The population of St. Petersburg is
dying out “more strongly than in Moscow,” but the losses of the northern
capital were “largely compensated by migration and the inclusion within the
borders of the city of neighboring municipal formations.”
Sixty-seven regions of the Russian
Federation have seen a population decline since 1989, with most of the losers
being in the predominantly ethnic Russian regions of the center of the country
or in company towns where the industry closed.
“By the end of the 1990s, Russian industry had contracted by 50 percent”
from where it was in 1990, official statistics show.
The only oil and gas city that grew
on its own without immigration was Shali in Chechnya, but its growth had less
to do with the expansion of industry than with subsidies, given that
four-fifths of its budget came from outside aid. “In other words,” the RBK writers says, “the
city grew but it lives not on its own money.”
“Thanks
to high prices for oil in the 2000s, the negative tendencies in the development
of Russian cities slowed down,” but with the price of oil having declined, they
suggest, these trends are likely to reassert themselves in the years ahead,
especially flight from the smallest cities to the megalopolises. Ethnically
Russian cities are likely to suffer the most, with the populations there aging
as a result.
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