Paul Goble
Staunton,
March 11 – The Kremlin’s regressive economic policies and its desire to control
the population ever more tightly is provoking migration flows from rural areas
and small cities to the megalopolises comparable in size to those that occurred
after the collapse of Soviet central planning, Pavel Luzin says.
And
those flows, which reflect the decisions of millions of individuals rather than
state policies, the regional analyst says, simultaneously represent a threat to
the regime’s ability to control the situation and a development that will make
it far more difficult for the country to take the steps toward economic and
political reforms it needs (region.expert/small-towns/).
This is something reformers need to
recognize, Luzin continues, because it means that the people in small and
medium-sized cities can be its allies and that it is important to look beyond
the megalopolises and “millionaire” cities because people there want the
benefits where they live but feel they have to leave in hopes of finding them
elsewhere.
Many Russian regionalists and other
reforms assume that “only megalopolises with their agglomeration and
conurbations are objectively interested in the decentralization of administration
and a market economy,” while smaller cities and rural areas have no such
interest. But in fact, the latter have
just as great an interest as do the former, he says.
That is shown by the pattern of
migration within the country over the last 20 years. Between 2000 and 2010, when incomes were
rising, only about two million people a year moved. As conditions deteriorated
and the government became more repressive, the number of migrants has risen to
over four million a year.
That increase directly correlates,
Luzin argues, “with the Kremlin’s turning away from the modernization of the country
and its attempt to ‘tighten the screws.’” What is worrisome and seldom noted is
that the numbers now are comparable with those in the first years after the
collapse of the Soviet system.
This change in the structure of the
patterns of settlement is taking place because of the choices of people
themselves rather than at the direction of the authorities. And it is happening, Not as a result of economic
development but rather as a result of stagnation and even the degradation of
the country.”
The Kremlin has tried to resist this
process because its control system requires holding people in place, but it has
been overwhelmed by the actions of individual Russians who make their own
choices on this most important question.
The regime can’t offer people in the regions advantages and so they flee
to the megalopolises.
The current regime is not ready or
perhaps even able to “create conditions for free human initiative and for the
development and growth of wealth,” Luzin says. It has written off most of the
country as areas without prospects and people are having to respond by moving
to Moscow where at least there is a chance to get some of the money it has
pumped out of the regions.
“This extraordinary centralization
is creating problems already for the megalopolises” and soon will for the country
as a whole. These migrants upset that
they had to leave their homes and not being able to achieve their goals even if
they move are eventually going to present “the Kremlin with a bill.”
Of course, when they do, it is
entirely possible, Luzin continues, that what they will be demanding will not be
about expanding freedom. That makes decentralization and expanded economic
choice and opportunity at the local level must be part of the agenda of those
who want freedom and reform.
And in that pursuit, the regional
analyst says, they must recognize that “small cities and settlements … are
allies for such a course of modernization.” They must cease being an afterthought
or ignored altogether.
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