Paul Goble
Staunton, July 24 – The extent to which Moscow now dominates the rest of the Russian Federation, pulling resources from the rest and attracting more people, has long been the subject of attention. But what is less often noticed is that a similar process is taking place in Belarus where Minsk has assumed an even more dominant position in that regard.
After surveying recent economic and demographic data, the Think Tanks portal says that the regions are “weakening” while Minsk is “strengthening” and that this trend is so advanced that “soon ‘Belarus’ will mean only ‘Minsk’” (thinktanks.pro/publication/2025/07/24/kak-slabeyut-regiony-i-krepchaet-minsk.html).
One of the reasons that this development has attracted less attention than the analogous one in Russia is that Belarus gets less notice than does its eastern neighbor; but another and perhaps equally important one has to do with the way in which Minsk presents economic and demographic data.
Minsk treats the city itself and its neighboring oblast separately when in fact like Moscow’s urban agglomeration of the two analogous regions in the Russian Federation are typically treated together. As a result, the portal says that the role of this Belarusian urban agglomeration is often understated.
Over the last generation, the city of Minsk has seen its population grow from 16 percent of the population of the country to 22 percent; but Minsk Oblast has seen its population almost double (by 87 percent). As a result, “the capital agglomeration” which includes both units, now has “almost 40 percent of all Belarusian residents.”
That reflects the fact that all Belarusian oblasts except the Minsk Oblast have lost population over the last 30 years, given outmigration both within the country and abroad and death rates that exceed birthrates. Within oblasts, a similar pattern obtains with some truly depressed regions suffering strikingly large losses.
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