Paul Goble
Staunton,
Oct. 25 – Russians are accustomed to news that rural portions of the country
are emptying out, with young people deserting the villages and moving to cities
and almost everyone in distant parts of the country leaving them for the center
of Russia. But now population declines are hitting even some of the largest
cities as well.
At a
time when many Russian cities still aspire to become “millionaire” cities, that
is urban places with more than a million residents, at least one that has long
been in that category, Nizhny Novgorod, is now set to lose that status because
of rising mortality, falling fertility and increasing outmigration (trtrussian.com/magazine/vymiranie-rossijskoj-glubinki-pochemu-pusteyut-regiony-rf-7358727).
There
and in other medium and even large Russian cities, factories are closing,
incomes are falling, medical care and other public services become increasingly
inaccessible, and residents are concluding that they will have no future unless
they move to the megalopolises in general and Moscow in particular.
And
that means that not only is rural Russia dying but urban Russia outside of
Moscow, St. Petersburg and a handful of other cities is as well, a conclusion
TRT Russian draws on the basis of a survey of Arkhangelsk, Vorkuta, Tula,
Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov and Norilsk, famous names from the Russian and Soviet
past.
If
even they cannot hold their populations, it is unlikely that Moscow’s hopes for
a Russia of the agglomerations will be possible. Instead, that country is
likely to have a half dozen large cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan,
surrounded by emptiness, a pattern more typical of developing countries than of
modern ones.
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