Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 8 – The depopulation of the majority of the regions of the Russian Federation is “the direct result” of the operation of free market forces which concentrate economic activity in major cities, draws people from rural areas and smaller cities into them, and further depresses population growth, Mikhail Sergeyev says.
The economics editor of Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper draws that conclusion on the basis of conversations with scholars and an analysis of polls and suggests that unless the Russian state intervenes to improve living conditions outside of Moscow, this trend will continue (ng.ru/economics/2025-08-07/1_4_9311_population.html).
Among the experts Sergeyev cites is Asya Voropayeva of the Moscow Institute of Sociology. She says that “the experience of recent decades shows that the government cannot secure the growth of social well-being and quality of life in small cities only by relying on market relations.”
“The process of super-concentration of the population in the largest cities at one and the same time promotes the heightened alienation of the urban population,” she continues. That means that the big cities will continue to get larger and larger by attracting ever more people from small cities and rural areas.
But the depopulation of major parts of the country along with the lower fertility rates in the cities is now worrying the Kremlin. Polls suggest that the population outside of the megalopolises would remain if the government spent money to develop infrastructure there, but up to now, there is little evidence that the Putin regime is prepared to do so.
That failure means that Moscow will be surrounded by empty territories, a situation that will not only raise geopolitical questions but mean that the Russian population will continue to decline, quite possibly at ever more rapid rates, a combination that points to a looming disaster the Kremlin hasn’t been willing to admit openly let alone respond in an effective way.
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