For First Time since 1992, Moscow’s Population Declined in 2020

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 6 – According to Rosstat, Moscow’s population fell by 42,000 people last year, the first time since 1992 that the Russian capital has seen a decline when the number fell by fewer than 2,000. Experts blame the pandemic, noting that the coronavirus has increased deaths and reduced the willingness of Russians from elsewhere to move to Moscow.

            According to Forbes which reported this development, the Russian state statistical agency did not give any reason why there should have been such a decline; but demographers with whom it the news agency spoke said the decline was primarily the product of a decrease in the number of people moving to the city (echo.msk.ru/news/2786426-echo.html).

            Some Russians because of the pandemic have put off any such move. demographers say. Others who may have come have not registered because the government offices where they must do so have been closed. And some who used to be registered have not updated their forms and thus have dropped off the roles.

            But there may be another cause as well: the high prices of housing in Moscow city at a time when jobs are scarce. That is suggested by the fact that the number of residents in Moscow Oblast in fact rose last year albeit by fewer than it had been in recent times.

            Some regional cities grew rapidly. Sevastopol, in Russian-occupied Crimea, for example, saw its population grow in 2020 by 14 percent, a reflection of difficulties with water and food in rural parts of that Ukrainian region.

            These patterns suggest at least three trends that are likely to become more evident after the pandemic eases. First, because Russians typically move not from rural areas directly to Moscow but from rural areas to regional cities and then to the capital, there may be extensive pent-up desires to move to Moscow, something that could intensify social tensions there.

            Second, the high rates of territorial mobility Russians have experienced since the virtual collapse of the registration system (propiska) that kept people in place in Soviet times may be ebbing. Many may decide that they are better off staying where they are rather than moving, something that could intensify regional identifications.

            And third, Moscow city is going to increasingly give way to Moscow oblast as the destination of Russians interested in coming to the center, something that will put additional pressures on the city’s already-overloaded transport networks or force some decentralization of business activity from Moscow itself to the oblast.