Strategies for the demographic behavior of the rural population of the south of Central Russia in 1959–2010 at the district level

We consider a poorly studied topic related to the rural population movement at the level of particular regions. We study the districts of five regions of the Central Black Earth Region and adjacent regions over a long historical period of the late Soviet society and early of the post-Soviet period. We reveal dozens of facts of formal changes in the population of certain regions associated with administrative and territorial changes, especially with the transfer of a number of rural settlements to urban-type settlements or inclusion in the city boundaries. We establish that the prevailing, but not the only direction of demographic processes in 1959–2010 was a decrease in the number of inhabitants mainly under the influence of urbanization, and in the group of districts due to the Chernobyl disaster. We reveal that throughout the entire period remained a certain number of regions with developed industry, suburban agriculture, and transport infrastructure (in 2010 – 20 %), where the rural population grew. In the 1989–2010 period the depopulation rate in most other districts has slowed down compared to the previous segment. We draw conclusion that the thesis of the widespread and rapid extinction of the rural population does not have a factual basis.

historical demography, rural population, rural districts, Central Black Earth Region, demographic factors