On Military Review, in the National Security section, we try not to lose sight of a topic that, despite its apparent remoteness from the issue of security, plays one of the primary roles in it. We are talking about the demographic indicators of Russia and the accompanying demographic phenomena and processes. Today's consideration of this issue is connected not so much with the general Russian demography, its indicators and manifestations, but with a narrower direction. This direction is a Russian village. And there is no mistake here - it is the Russian village. Namely, those rural areas of the Russian Federation that have been inhabited by Russians from time immemorial, and which today (with all the seemingly positive demographic processes) are experiencing enormous difficulties.
For starters, there are official demographic figures from Rosstat, which summed up the results of the population assessment of the Russian Federation for 2016. Indicators Federal Service State statistics show that the resident population of the Russian Federation in 2016 increased by about 200 thousand people compared to 2015 and amounted to 146.5 million citizens. For any government representative who has at least some relation to demographic reporting, these data can, as they say, uncork champagne: there is an increase, but go into details - "from the evil one" ...
However, equidistant from both liberal whining about “#everything is lost” and pseudo-patriotic bravura slogans in the style of “demographic problems are completely resolved”, we can say with confidence that population growth in general is one thing, and quite another is the issues of the titular nation. Yes, the current constitution seems to “forget” about the existence of such, but this does not negate the fact that it is the Russian people (in the broadest sense of the word) that is the state-forming for Russia. There is no talk of any, thank God, “exclusivity” of the Russian people, but at the same time it is quite possible to call it strange the unwillingness of those in power to raise such an acute issue as the demographic problems of the Russian population, the problems of the Russian village, the Russian hinterland.
Why do the mentioned powers that be prefer not to start talking about such a problem? Yes, everything is simple. As soon as this issue is raised at a high (or relatively high) level, a beautiful and vivid picture is immediately blurred that everything is wonderful with demographics in Russia. Moreover, blurring the picture, by definition, should lead to the need for those in power to start working more intensively, and not everyone is ready for intensive work in such a matter - it just so happened ... The softer the chair and the more special phones in the office, the more often it happens that it is more difficult with an intensive in matters of solving domestic Russian problems ...
However, again - to the statistics of Rosstat. Historically, in Russia (since the start of statistical research in 1913) there has never been such a large gap in the size of the urban and rural population as in recent years. The data show that at the end of 2016 there were 108.6 million city dwellers in Russia, and 37.9 million rural dwellers. The percentage ratio: 74 percent to 26. According to short-term reports (January-February 2017), the percentage of the rural population fell below 26 for the first time, reaching 25.9%. Close to the current parameters were in the USSR (RSFSR) in the era of collapse - in 1990-1991, when the ideology that development Agriculture the country does not need it, because “friends are around”, and these “friends” will provide us with food, because “we are building democracy, and this more important than cultivation wheat."
Today, thank God, people have begun to realize that growing the same wheat is much more useful than building a pseudo-democratic system imposed by the West. However, unfortunately, such considerations are still clearly not enough to solve all the problems of the Russian village.
If we take the statistics for the constituent entities of the Russian Federation with the overwhelming majority of the ethnically Russian population, then the percentage of villagers is even lower - on average, about 22-23%. In a number of regions, the figure has already dipped below 20%.
So, even official statistics show that the Russian village is actually dying out. Here you can talk a lot about how this is cunning and that there are villages that follow the path of development, but in the whole country, let's be frank, there are hardly a significant number of them.
The reasons for the problems with demography in the Russian countryside have not changed in any way over the past few decades. The main problem is the lack of a proper number of jobs, which entails a whole mountain of social and economic problems. In other words, the problem would be solved at least partially if state investments for development were directed not only to the development of the Chechen village, but also to the development of rural areas in other regions of Russia...
And here, a person who is familiar with government programs may object, saying that the Cabinet of Ministers, headed by Dmitry Medvedev, is already implementing a program that is ultimately designed to partially solve the problem with jobs in rural areas. Indeed, there is such a program. It is described on, headed by Alexander Tkachev. The essence of the program is concessional lending farms. The chain is something like this: a farmer working “in the countryside” receives a preferential loan from a bank for his specific project, then he implements this project with the involvement of peasant personnel, at the same time developing both his own economy and the infrastructure of the village.
Everything seems to be great, and what is especially great is that Tkachev promises bank loans to farmers at a rate of less than 5% per annum. During the speech of the head of the Ministry of Agriculture at a government meeting, it was stated that a number of banks included in the program issue loans to our farmers for nothing at all - at 2-3% per annum - below the inflation level. The state, they say, still compensates.
However, in reality, the program is, oh, how difficult. In reality, there is no question of getting an ordinary farmer a loan from a bank (even a state-subsidized one) at 2-3% per annum. Banks both issued at best at 14-15%, and issue. And these statements are not unfounded. Your obedient servant - the author of the material - talked with several farmers who own agricultural land different area, on the subject of "preferential lending". And none of them, as they themselves said, managed to get a loan at the low interest rate mentioned by Tkachev, although they presented all Required documents to get a soft loan.
And here is what the Minister of Agriculture himself said about this, speaking in the government:
As of February 22, the Ministry of Agriculture included 1,420 borrowers in the register for obtaining a soft loan for total amount over 134 billion rubles. Short-term loans in the field of crop production are planned to be received by more than 640 borrowers in the amount of more than 38 billion rubles.
An attempt to find out who these 1,420 lucky borrowers who received soft loans were unsuccessful. This information is kept secret for the time being with the following reasoning: banks do not have the right to disclose data about their customers. Yes Yes...
In practice, it turns out that ordinary farmers are not the happy owners of soft loans provided by banks under the state program. Not at all those who really live in the countryside and are ready not only to receive funds for own production, but also eventually invest in the development of rural infrastructure - the development of schools, first aid centers, the opening sports sections for youth, construction and repair of roads. Loans are received by those who are commonly called "agrarian large" - who, in the pursuit of personal profit, is not ready to pay attention to the "social sector", but is ready to bring Central Asian guest workers to the Russian village in order to be able to get even more "profit". I received a loan at 2% per annum - quickly rebuilt, for example, an oil plant sparkling in the sun, brought in fifty "gastrics", and the village ... "what a village ... let him drink more ... why should I pay attention to this on their problems...” The village stood as it stood with rotten and rickety huts, gaping empty eye sockets of windows, and so it stands. And in the reports - everything is wonderful: "there is a backbone enterprise - an oil plant." And the fact that “the plant is separate, the village is separate”, those who read these reports diagonally, are of little concern.
In this regard, the question is: are our effective managers aware of which way the implementation of the “agricultural” program is actually going, and that a very, very narrow circle of people has access to it? Or is this the very case in which reporting is everything, and the fate of people in the outback is the tenth thing? .. And if so, then what kind of demography is there ...
Photographers have seen the ugly side of Russia, which contrasts sharply with the luxury and grandeur of Moscow, with its beautiful decoration and magnificent architecture. A series of photos show the harsh reality of the people who live in the abandoned villages of Russia northeast of Moscow.
“Pictures from Russian life” is quite creepy: abandoned villages in the Moscow region and the Kostroma region were photographed by Liza Zhakova and Dima Zharov from St. Petersburg while traveling through the “Russian desert”. In the photo published by the Daily Mail, poverty, unemployment and drunkenness of the last surviving villagers.
Sasha is trying to restore his house, which is falling apart in the almost abandoned village of Yelyakovo
Photographers Liza Zhakova and Dima Zharov from St. Petersburg published a photo chronicle of their journey through the "Russian desert". They report that it is not uncommon for an entire village to have only one resident left. Liza and Dima published a full cycle of photos on Zhakovazharov.ru. 
Lesha - a former miner, lives in the village of Spirdovo; fills his day with hunting and drinking in an empty village 
There is no electricity in Lesha's house (with hunter friends)
The photographers told the Daily Mail that they believe that Russian government left these villages on purpose, in order to force people to move to other places. 
The publication Roads and Kingdoms reports that the population of the entire Kostroma region is 660,000 people. This area covers 23,000 square miles, which is about the size of West Virginia.
Russia's wealth is mainly concentrated in major cities. This means that villagers suffer from unemployment, low wages and lack of social security compared to those who live in cities. 
Hunter 
Village hunter, Lesha's friend 
There is no electricity in the house 
Lesha has 10 children from three different wives, they all left the village
One of the people left in the village is a man named Lesha, who now lives alone in the village of Spirdovo. Photographers spoke to a former miner who receives a minimum pension payment. He does not have to pay electricity bills, which reduces his costs.
Lesha said that he is the father of ten children from three different women. He also detailed his relationship with alcohol: “I've been drinking for 10 days now. I drank 6-7 bottles, and I'm already in firewood. It doesn't matter if I die today or 10 years later - it doesn't matter." 
The other person the photographers talked to is Sasha, he is from a village in Yelyakovo. He also hunts for food and says he has noticed a decrease in the number of wild animals.
But Sasha is not interested in moving. He said: “I don’t like cities at all, I can go there for four days, but no more - I can’t stand it any longer.” 
Sasha lives alone in the village of Yelyakovo, he does not want to go to the city to live. 
Zoya Timofeevna and her husband are the last inhabitants of the village of Asorino
Alexei Fedorovich and Zoya Timofeevna Chernov are the last inhabitants of the village of Asorino. Husband and wife keep livestock but have stopped working. Like Lesha, they also talked about drunkenness. They told the photographers: “There are binges, if you think about it, there are. The problem is, we have plenty of time. If there's still some alcohol left and I have to work, damn it, I'll work. If you drink again and again, then you need more and more. And how can you work when you're drunk..."
Alcoholism is a problem in rural areas of Russia as well as urban areas. The Lance study showed that 25% of Russian men die before the age of 55, and primarily due to overuse alcohol and tobacco.
Scientists have calculated the point of no return in the process of destruction of rural infrastructure.
According to the Center for Economic and Political Reforms (CEPR), by 2023 there may be no hospitals left in Russian villages, and by 2033-36 there may be no rural schools and clinics. This can happen provided that their number will decrease at the current pace. In any case, CEPR experts are convinced that the authorities are “optimizing” the rural social infrastructure much faster than the population is decreasing there.
According to the results of the CEPR study, over the past 15-20 years, due to the neoliberal policy of “optimization”, which hit rural areas especially hard, Russian villages have largely lost their social infrastructure.
Thus, the number of rural schools during this period decreased by almost 1.7 times (from 45.1 thousand in 2000 to 25.9 thousand in 2014), hospitals - by 4 times (from 4.3 thousand to 1.06 thousand ), and polyclinics - by 2.7 times (from 8.4 to 3.06 thousand).
Meanwhile, the number of depopulated villages between the 2002 and 2010 censuses increased by more than 6,000, and their total share exceeded 20% (mainly in the regions of Central Russia and the North). At the same time, from one to a hundred people live in more than half of the surviving villages.
Thus, the report notes, if in the coming years the reduction in the number of these institutions continues at the same average rate, then “literally in 17-20 years all rural schools and clinics will be closed, and not a single rural hospital will remain even earlier - within seven years." But even if this does not happen, then, as experts fear, in the coming years, “institutions social sphere in the village will continue to close. And this, the researchers warn, will become an additional, moreover, "one of the most important reasons for the further, even faster outflow of the rural population to the cities."
So, by “optimizing” schools and hospitals under the guise of a decrease in the population in the countryside, the authorities thereby actually contribute to the strengthening of this process on an increasingly significant scale, bringing this vicious circle to new and new rounds. And it is especially sad that, as noted in the report, the “optimization” of the rural social system is proceeding at a much faster pace than the rural population is decreasing and the villages are ceasing to exist.
Of course, we are not talking about the complete disappearance of the rural population in our country in practice. However, the point of no return, after which it will be necessary to start settling the vast territories of our country “from scratch”, is quite close, Nikolai Mironov, head of the CEPR, admitted to MK:
We have a very short time left - literally within 10 years. Meanwhile, the state continues the policy of "optimization" of the social sphere, perceived by the rural population as a signal - the state is not interested in people living in the countryside. And it is mainly the elderly who stay there, while the youth go to the cities, turning there from producers of real products into office plankton. Well, how else, if a young family wants to have children, and in the countryside there is nowhere to give birth to them, or to teach them: hospitals and schools are “optimized” and closed. Carry tens or even hundreds of kilometers? So roads are not everywhere. And people are leaving the village. And since the disappearance of social infrastructure is faster than the decline in population, we can state that the problem is largely man-made. True, the strongest surge in the optimization of schools and hospitals in the countryside seems to have been left behind: it fell on 2005-2010. However, a significant improvement in the situation, contrary to the assurances of the authorities, did not happen. The number of rural schools continues to decline, just not as fast as before.
If the state’s approach does not change, Nikolai Mironov warns, Russia will move not along the path of highly developed Western countries, bringing super-advanced technologies to the countryside that allow agriculture with a small number of workers, but according to the Latin American scenario: “Endless abandoned wastelands overgrown with weeds. And this is very bad! After all, in a few years, if we come to our senses, we will have to invest in these abandoned territories from scratch, losing everything that was invested before.”
How and why is the extinction of Russian villages happening? Especially with the systematic reports of those in power about the revival of the countryside and agriculture.
But over the past 15-20 years, the number of the rural population has been constantly decreasing - both due to the natural decline in the population (mortality exceeds the birth rate), and due to migration outflow. The process of depopulation of rural areas is so active that the number of abandoned villages is constantly increasing, as well as the number of rural settlements with a small number of inhabitants. In some constituent entities of the Russian Federation, the share of depopulated villages exceeded 20% - mainly in the regions of Central Russia and the North. Between the 2002 and 2010 censuses alone, the number of depopulated villages rose by more than 6,000. More than half of all rural settlements have between 1 and 100 people.
At the same time, the process of depopulation in the territorial context is uneven. There is a concentration of the rural population around individual "centers" while expanding areas of depressed rural areas, which are characterized by constant depopulation.
A resonant report by the Center for Economic and Political Reforms, published in 2016, is devoted to a comprehensive study of these issues.
We present the first part of the CEPR report, which will highlight the issues of depopulation of villages, the problems of natural decline and migration outflow of the rural population, spatial contrasts of population concentration contrasts.
The problem of the extinction of the Russian village is one of the acute socio-economic problems of modern Russia. Many researchers analyze in detail the genesis of this process, describing how the socio-demographic and institutional mechanisms developed that led to the gradual depopulation of Russian villages. In particular, it is noted that the beginning of this process was laid in the late 1940s - early 1950s, when a course was taken to enlarge the collective farms. The trend continued after the introduction of a policy of assessing the "prospects" of villages in the 1960s. Until the 1990s, the trend of the extinction of villages continued, and after that it was only strengthened by the neo-liberal policy of "optimization" .
The Center for Economic and Political Reforms has studied this issue, relying on statistical data, the results of sociological studies, as well as the work of demographic researchers. We tried to answer the question: how and why is the extinction of Russian villages?
VILLAGES "ON PAPER"
The total number of rural settlements in the country exceeds 150,000. However, as a result of the All-Russian population census of 2010, it was revealed that 12.7% of rural settlements at that time were not inhabited, that is almost 19.5 thousand Russian villages existed on the map, but in fact they were already abandoned.
A significant proportion of all rural settlements are small villages: in more than half of all rural settlements (54% or about 82.8 thousand settlements) live from 1 to 100 people. Only in 5% of rural settlements (about 7.8 thousand rural settlements) the population exceeds 1000 people.
The largest number of uninhabited rural settlements as a result of the 2010 census was found in the Northwestern Federal District and the Central Federal District- so, in the North-West Federal District, a fifth of all villages turned out to be abandoned:
In the Kostroma region - 34.1% (1189 rural settlements);
AT Ivanovo region- 21% (634 rural settlements);
In the Smolensk region - 20.2% (978 rural settlements);
In the Tver region - 23.4% (2230 rural settlements);
AT Yaroslavl region- 25.7% (1550 rural settlements);
In the Arkhangelsk region - 21.4% (848 rural settlements);
In the Vologda Oblast - 26.6% (2131 rural settlements);
In the Pskov region - 23% (1919 rural settlements);
In the Kirov region - 24.8% (1073 rural settlements).
A significant relative share of uninhabited rural settlements was identified in the Republic of Ingushetia - 62.7% (74 rural settlements out of 118).
The dynamics of the process of depopulation of villages is also noteworthy. According to the results of the All-Russian population census of 2002, about 13 thousand villages without a population were identified, which at that time amounted to 8.4% of all rural settlements. That is for 8 years from 2002 to 2010 the number of depopulated villages increased by 6330 and by more than 4%.
RURAL POPULATION: NATURAL LOSS AND MIGRATION OUTFLOW
According to Rosstat, as of January 1, 2016, in Russia as a whole, the share of the urban population in total strength population is 74.1%, share of the rural population - 25.9%, respectively. The number of rural residents per 1,000 city dwellers is 349.
In general, describing the process of urbanization in Russia in the 20th century, researchers point to its "explosive nature" characteristic of developing countries. Russia is characterized by an overconcentration of the population in the capital, combined "with a sparse network of cities and depopulation of the vast periphery". Researchers also note that the processes of suburbanization and counter-urbanization, characteristic of Western societies, are poorly expressed in Russia. stable, the rapid process of urbanization is a thing of the past - since the early 1990s, the ratio of urban and rural population has been fluctuating at the level of 73-74% to 26-27%. specific gravity the rural population in 1989 was 26.6%, in 2002 - 26.7%, in 2010 - 26.3%.
It should be understood, however, that one of important factors, formally slowing down the decline in the rural population, were administrative-territorial transformations when some urban settlements were given the status of rural settlements. For example, in the period 2000-2009, solely due to administrative-territorial transformations (without taking into account the natural loss and migration outflow of the population), the number of the rural population increased in all years, with the exception of 2007, when these transformations, on the contrary, led to a slight decrease in the number of villagers.
However, even despite this, the 2000-2010s are characterized by a constant decrease in the rural population. Moreover, if in the period between the population censuses in 2002 and in 2010, a significant decrease in the number of both rural and urban population was recorded in the country (although the rural population - to a greater extent), then in 2011-2015 the urban population grew, in while the rural population has been steadily declining, if we do not take into account changes due to the annexation of Crimea and the population of the KFO:
Rice. Growth (decrease) of the urban and rural population as of January 1 of the corresponding years (thousand people, excluding CFD)
It should be understood that the population changes not only under the influence of natural movement, that is, the ratio of births and deaths, but also under the influence of mechanical movement - that is, as a result of migration. Let's consider each component separately.
According to the 2015 Rosstat statistical collection “Health in Russia”, demographic indicators for the urban and rural population are characterized by a number of differences. Thus, in the period from 2000 to 2014, the following observations were recorded regarding the birth rate, mortality and natural population growth. In general, in Russia, in the period from 2000 to 2012, a decrease in the population was characteristic, and in 2013-2014, a natural increase was recorded. However, this happened at the expense of the urban population, for the rural population and in these years was characterized by a constant decline, including in 2013-2014. If we turn to the data of Rosstat, we can see that in 2015 natural population growth was again recorded due to the urban population, while for the rural population, on the contrary, a decrease was recorded, and the highest over the past 5 years.
In general, comparing the data of Rosstat, which characterize the birth rate and mortality for the urban and rural population, it can be seen that in the 2000-2010s the situation in rural areas was more unfavorable from a demographic point of view:
As for the mechanical movement of the population, in the 2000-2010s, constant migration outflow of the population from rural settlements, while in cities there was a constant increase in population in the same period:
The table reflects the overall results of population migration, including taking into account the migration exchange of population with foreign countries. It should be taken into account that the migration growth of the urban population is largely ensured by arrivals from foreign countries. For example, in 2015, an increase of 59% was ensured precisely due to migration exchange with foreign countries, and only 41% - due to the movement of the population within Russia. In the indicator of the migration outflow of the rural population, the migration exchange of the population with foreign countries, of course, is also taken into account. Without taking it into account, the decline in the rural population would have been even higher.
At the same time, the dynamics of the rural population is characterized by significant regional peculiarities.
For example, between the 2002 and 2010 censuses, there was a significant decrease in the rural population in the Central Federal District, the Northwestern Federal District, the Volga Federal District, the Siberian Federal District and the Far Eastern Federal District, while in the Ural Federal District, the Southern Federal District and the North Caucasian Federal District, there was an increase in the population, especially noticeable in regions of the North Caucasus Federal District.
In 2011-2015, in all federal districts, there was an almost constant decrease in the number of rural population (including in the Ural Federal District), and the North Caucasus Federal District became an exception, where a constant increase in the rural population was recorded. In the Southern Federal District, the increase was recorded in 2014-2015:
In this regard, many researchers point to the trend of "shifting the center of gravity" of the rural population to South of Russia. The historically relatively densely populated rural areas of Central Russia and the Volga region are becoming empty, depopulating the villages of the North and North-West of the country, while the southern rural areas, on the contrary, have been developing quite actively in recent decades.
As of January 1, 2016, the highest proportion of the rural population was recorded in the North Caucasian Federal District (50.9%), the lowest - in the Northwestern Federal District (15.8%):
The trend of a gradual “shift” of the rural population to the South of Russia can be seen if we compare the shares of the rural population in different federal districts from the total rural population of the country in different years:
The table shows that the share of the rural population of the Central Federal District, the Northwestern Federal District, the Volga Federal District, the Siberian Federal District is gradually decreasing, at the same time, in the North Caucasus Federal District, there is a constant increase in the share of the rural population of the district in the total rural population of the country. The drop in this share as of January 1, 2015 is explained by the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
For a clearer picture and to eliminate the distortion associated with the annexation of Crimea, let's look at what the shares of the rural population would be federal districts of the total rural population of the country as of January 1, 2015 and 2016 without taking into account the rural population of the regions of the former KFD:
Thus, the ratio of the rural population in different federal districts since the 2002 census has changed by 2016 as follows (excluding the rural population of Crimea): the share of the North Caucasus Federal District (by 1.63%), the Southern Federal District (by 0.74%; t i.e. in aggregate, the share of the regions of the Southern Federal District and the North Caucasus Federal District - by 2.35%), and the share of the Ural Federal District slightly increased (by 0.16%; but in general, the Ural Federal District has been characterized by a decrease in this share in recent years).
The share of other federal districts decreased: Siberian Federal District - by 0.74%, Volga Federal District - by 0.67%(although the rural population of this federal district still constitutes the largest share of the country's total rural population), Central Federal District - by 0.61%, Northwestern Federal District - by 0.43%, Far Eastern Federal District - by 0.06%.
POPULATION STRUCTURE: WORKABLE LEAVING TO CITIES
As of January 1, 2016, the rural population was about 37.89 million people. As far as age distributions are concerned, the proportion of people of working age among rural residents is comparatively lower- 55% (among city residents - 58.3%), and, accordingly, the proportion of people younger and older than working age is higher - 20% and 25% (among city residents - 17.3% and 24.4%).
For every 1,000 villagers of working age, there are 819 people of unemployable age(per 1000 inhabitants of the city of working age - 715 persons of incapacitated age), of which 365 are children under 15 years of age and 454 are people older than working age.
The youngest rural population is in the North Caucasus Federal District, the largest share of the population older than working age is in the Central Federal District and the Northwestern Federal District:
It is noteworthy that despite the fact that the proportion of the population under working age is comparatively higher in rural areas compared to the urban population, the situation with young people in rural areas is far from favorable. As can be seen in the graph below, the share of representatives of the most economically active age groups (from 20 to 44 years old) in the structure of the urban population is higher than in the structure of the rural population:
Rice. Age structure of the urban and rural population (in % of the entire population of the corresponding group)
It can be assumed that growing up, young people often prefer to leave the countryside for cities to work and get an education.
In addition, it should be borne in mind that the statistics of Rosstat, which we cite, is based on official information about the location of a person, registration of citizens at the place of residence, and by no means always can take into account all movements of the population. This may distort the real picture of the number of young people in the countryside. For example, after a young man leaves the countryside for a city to work or study, he often remains registered in his locality for a long time, and only after resolving the issue of housing in the city does he officially become a city dweller. During the transitional period, he formally belongs to the rural population, in fact already permanently living in the city. Unemployment in the countryside is one of the main incentives to move to the city. The unemployment rate in rural areas is higher than in cities.
For example, according to the latest Rosstat data for October 2016, the unemployment rate among rural residents (7.6%) exceeded the unemployment rate among urban residents (4.6%) by 1.7 times. In August and September 2016, the unemployment rate among rural residents exceeded the unemployment rate among urban residents by 1.6 times. Approximately the same ratio was recorded throughout 2016:
Rice. Unemployment rate among urban and rural residents
The same situation is typical for previous years: for example, in 2011 the unemployment rate among urban residents was 5.5%, among rural residents - 10.6%, in 2012 - the unemployment rate in urban and rural areas was 4.5% and 9.6%, respectively, in 2013 - 4.6% and 8.5%, in 2014 - 4.3% and 8.3%.
Unemployment is also significantly higher among rural youth: so, in 2014, the unemployment rate in rural areas in the age group from 20 to 24 years - 15.8% (for the urban population - 11.3%), from 25 to 29 years - 8.9% (for the urban population - 4.7%.
Rural areas are also more typical long-term (or long-term) unemployment. Of the 1.4 million unemployed rural residents, 35.5% during this period were in a situation of long-term unemployment (looking for work for 12 months or more). For unemployed urban residents, the share of such unemployed was 25.4%.
We also note that those who work in enterprises and organizations in rural areas more dependent on the state. Thus, according to the 24th wave of the Russian National Research University-Higher School of Economics Monitoring of the Economic Situation and Health of the Population, 58.9% of rural residents report that the state is the owner or co-owner of the enterprise or organization in which they work. In urban-type settlements, this share was 55.2%, in cities that are not regional centers - 40.9%, in regional centers - 40.7%. Thus, it is the villagers who suffer the most in the event of a reduction in public spending, insufficient attention to the problem of the labor market.
Separately, researchers, in particular T.G. Nefedova, single out a phenomenon that is extremely characteristic of modern Russia - the so-called. "otkhodnichestvo", i.e. return labor migration when "people own initiative temporarily leave their homes and families with a weekly, monthly, semi-annual rhythm for the sake of earnings in major centers and agglomerations." In this case, we are dealing with "prolonged, gradual urbanization," since many otkhodniks often end up in cities, moving to the city with their families.
In addition, this process actually involves the most active able-bodied rural population, which in turn contributes to further socio-economic stagnation and depopulation of rural areas.
As mentioned above, the processes of suburbanization and counter-urbanization in the form in which they exist in the West are not widespread in Russia, however, researchers note the prevalence in our country of another characteristic phenomenon - seasonal life "in two houses - in the city and in the country." At the same time, since people work mainly in cities, houses in rural areas are often preserved by former rural residents gradually migrating to cities only as summer cottages and personal garden plots, after, in fact, they finally move to the city.
RURAL POPULATION CONCENTRATION: SPATIAL CONTRASTS
In 2016, the All-Russian Agricultural Census was conducted, and some preliminary data have already been published. In particular, it was revealed that over the past 10 years - since 2006 - the number of main categories of farms has decreased:
At the same time, the average area of land per enterprise has increased (with the exception of micro-enterprises that are agricultural organizations, as well as non-profit associations of citizens):
Thus, it can be concluded that processes of concentration of agricultural activities over the past 10 years, concentrated within larger business units. It can be assumed, that economic crisis with insufficient support from the state, it stimulates this process even more: small enterprises and farms go bankrupt, monopolization in the industry increases.
The consolidation of agricultural enterprises with a decrease in their number, firstly, can lead to a reduction in jobs in the industry, and secondly, the concentration of enterprises leads to the concentration of jobs in certain territories, which can make an additional contribution to the migration processes of the rural population and to further reduction in the number of small rural settlements.
The problem of focal concentration of the rural population has long been noted by researchers. For example, T.G. Nefedova analyzes in detail the spatial contrasts in the settlement of Russians in rural areas, saying that the population migrated for decades not only to the cities, but also to their rural suburbs, which formed pockets of relatively more densely populated rural areas around cities: “Suburban-peripheral differences for a vast country with a relatively sparse population serve as a key parameter for organizing its socio-economic space.” Nefedova cites statistics proving that the rural population density within the regions of the European part of Russia is strongly decreases with distance from the centers.
Thus, in addition to the above-mentioned trend of shifting the rural population to the south of the country, researchers also distinguish the "suburb-periphery" axis. In reality, part of the formally rural population living in the suburbs of cities, in fact, has very close socio-economic ties with cities, but since the institution of agglomerations is not developed in Russia, statistically they are still classified as villagers.
The preliminary results of the 2016 All-Russian Agricultural Census indirectly indicate the continuation of this process - the concentration of agricultural enterprises and, as a result, the further concentration of the rural population around individual centers while expanding depressed rural areas, which are characterized by constant depopulation.
NOTES
See G.A. Nikitin. Extinct villages as a sustainable phenomenon of modernity (on the example of Udmurtia) // Historical ethnography: Collection of scientific articles: Issue 5, St. Petersburg, 2014. - P. 102-106.
The decrease in the number of uninhabited villages is most likely due to administrative-territorial transformations (for example, the elimination of rural settlements), and not their settlement. Between the censuses of 2002 and 2010, the rural population of the Far Eastern Federal District decreased by 24.1 thousand people.
See T.G. Nefedova, N.G. Pokrovsky, A.I. Treyvish. Urbanization, deurbanization and rural-urban communities in the context of the growth of horizontal mobility // sociological research, 2015. - S. 60-69.
See, for example, the article by A.G. Vishnevsky, E.A. Kvashi, T.L. Kharkov, E.M. Shcherbakova "The Russian Village in the Demographic Dimension" (World of Russia. Sociology. Ethnology, 2007), which states that only as a result of the transformations of 2004, 693.9 thousand citizens became villagers.
See, for example, A.A. Khagurov. On the state and problems of the Russian village // Sociological research, 2012.
For the regions of the North Caucasus Federal District, separated from the Southern Federal District in 2010, this indicator was separately calculated for 2002.
See T.G. Nefedov. Otkhodnichestvo in the migration system in post-Soviet Russia. Background // Demoscope Weekly, 2015.
There.
See T.G. Nefedova, N.G. Pokrovsky, A.I. Treyvish. Urbanization, deurbanization and rural-urban communities in the context of the growth of horizontal mobility // Sociological research, 2015; T.G. Nefedov. Otkhodnichestvo in the migration system in post-Soviet Russia. Background // Demoscope Weekly, 2015.
Regrouping - taking into account the current legislation on classifying economic entities as small and medium-sized businesses in 2006 and 2016.
TO BE CONTINUED
The Russian village is slowly dying out. This is relatively weakly noticeable in the south, quite noticeable in middle lane and obviously in the north. During a trip to the Vologda Oblast, I was personally struck by the huge two-story log houses, abandoned with all their utensils and already partly looted, standing in the middle of the wild gardens of old villages. The kingdom of desolation and silence. Dead village. And the neighboring village burned down in the spring with grass burning, when only one inhabitant remained in it.
Pal came from outside, and the remaining grandfather could not do anything. While trying to extinguish other houses, his house caught fire. I didn’t even have time to pick up my passport, so everything burned down. The remains of the furnaces - scrap bricks - were dismantled for construction sites, and in place of the houses there were only low, gently sloping mounds of earth, on which stand the bed frames that had fallen from the second floor, crumpled and burned. This grandfather greatly missed his once populous village. The children took him to the city, but for the summer he, not listening to anyone, returned. He set up a hut in his old garden under the apple trees, in the hut - a couch and a shelf, next to the entrance - a small hearth, under a canopy there are a smoked teapot and a saucepan ... As long as it's warm, he lives there every summer, wandering under his native tall poplars, under which he ran as a child , sits on the banks of the river and remembers the once big noisy village, and for the winter leaves for the city in a cramped apartment where there is no life for him, and only existence remains.
There are, of course, villages where two or three residential buildings in which the last grandmothers live out their lives. Someone was taken to the city by children and grandchildren, someone remains on their own land. Near cities, the process is not so noticeable, since houses and plots are often used as summer cottages. But for most of the year, silence reigns there too. And if you drive away from the cities and from the highway, then it immediately becomes clear that no one has been there for a long time: lonely leaning poles of outstretched electricity, rickety houses, streets overgrown with grass and ... silence ...
Why is this happening? Does the country need a village? Is it possible to stop the degradation process? We will try our best to answer these difficult questions.
Why the village is needed: agricultural products
To begin with, let's try to deal with the question - why do we need a village at all? Does anyone really need it?
There is a fairly widespread opinion that the population of rural areas plays a small role in the life of countries. At best, it is ignorance of important facts.
Ivan Rubanov ("Expert" No. 22 (611) for 2008) writes:
“Looking at agricultural statistics is like a headshot. Since the beginning of this decade, the cost of imported food has increased by about 30% per year, and by last year reached almost $30 billion. The once leading agrarian power now buys products no less than it produces itself..
In fact, we are "fighting" for the first place in the world in terms of food imports with Japan. At the same time, Japan is in unique situation- The Japanese, in a sense, have no other choice: the population there is greater than in Russia, and the territory is two orders of magnitude smaller. Those. it is physically extremely difficult for them to produce a large number of agricultural products. Ours a sharp increase net food imports is mainly due to the increase in oil prices. Below is a graph of growth in food imports by years:
It is interesting that if Japan ranks first in the world among developed countries in terms of supporting (subsidizing) its agriculture, then in our country it is supported rather poorly, and the level of support is constantly decreasing:
Source: "Expert" No. 22, 2008
Once upon a time, Russia was the leading agrarian power, and now more food is imported than domestically produced. In fact, this means the exchange of non-renewable resources for renewable ones. Agricultural imports are almost equal to the cost of Russian gas exported to Western Europe.
The depressingly low efficiency of agriculture and, in particular, high losses at the stage of processing agricultural products were often cited as one of the significant shortcomings of the Soviet Union. Only according to official statistics, more than half of the potatoes, for example, rotted on the way to the consumer. During the liberal reforms recent years the situation has deteriorated drastically. Firstly, direct state support has fallen by about 30 times (!) As a result, if in the mid-80s one could buy 3 tons per ton of grain diesel fuel, then in the late 90s - 10 times less. This had a dramatic impact on profitability, and hence on the interest of farms in the production of agricultural products. Imagine a situation if, for example, before you had an income that was not too big, but allowed you to feed your family, clothe, put shoes on, and buy a car, and go to relatives in other cities, and then your salary was reduced 10 times. What's the point of doing this kind of work? People stopped doing it. But when the former collective farms and state farms ceased to exist, this caused the degradation of the entire surrounding infrastructure. For example, there was no one to clean the roads in winter (indeed, there was no one to support the equipment that was able to do this). And to stay without a road in winter is not a test for every family. As a result, the remaining people left the villages en masse.
However, back to the state level. industrial production food was falling at an alarming rate. Since the situation had to be saved somehow, customs duties on food imports to Russia were drastically reduced, which caused a wave of imports. A large number of companies entered into this new business, the results of which can be seen today in any grocery store. Even in the countryside today Polish apples are sold in shops, Chinese pears and Finnish cheeses. Bananas have long been cheaper than cucumbers.
Russia is dying
Table 1. Comparison of customs import duties by country.
*Excluding cocoa — 50%. Sources: Serova E.V., IPC, APE
As you can see, only the U.S. has lower tariffs on average, but there are some very well thought-out agricultural support programs that make the U.S. the world's largest food exporter. Those. not only feed their own population, twice the population of Russia, but also export food on a large scale. In this sense, to be equal to the United States in the field of openness of agricultural customs barriers with a diametrically opposite domestic politics in the field of agriculture - an extremely unreasonable approach. By the way, even in such a situation, the United States uses prohibitive duties on agricultural products (more than 300%), while the use of prohibitive duties by Russia is clearly too strict a measure in relation to Western producers.
Since it has become fashionable for us to refer to the Americans, we will quote their scientist Marion Ensminger:
“Food is both a responsibility and a weapon. Responsibility because one of the most important rights is the right to food and its consumption in abundance. On the other hand, it is a weapon, because in politics and economics, food plays a huge role and has more power than cannons or oil.”.
AT recent times openly admits that the USSR was defeated by these weapons - food shortages seriously undermined people's faith in the viability of the government. The more surprising that modern Russia confidently follows the same path.
Often, trying to justify the low efficiency of Russian agriculture, they blame everything on the climate, they say, we have a zone risk farming. At the same time, they somehow forget that Russia is in 4th place in the world in terms of arable land (in the first place, by the way, the United States). Moreover, in our country about 40% of the world's chernozem area is concentrated - soils with the highest natural level of fertility (!). Also, when studying statistics, it is easy to notice that one of the world's largest food exporters is Canada, whose climate is very harsh, especially compared to the south of Russia.
Once I happened to fly by plane from Seattle (Northwest USA) to New York (Northeast USA). At some point, looking down, I was surprised by an even square grid of roads with a step of about a kilometer, between which there were plowed fields. In some places, as a rule, at the corners of neat squares, trees grew and farmers' houses stood. And such a picture stretched as far as the eye could see. I looked down and thought - what a powerful state will. In the same place, most likely, there were already some fields and houses. But someone came, said, drew the road on the map with a ruler - and everything was embodied on the ground over a vast territory. There was a convenient network of roads raised above the fields, passable at any time of the year, from which the fields are relatively easily accessible. And the picture went on and on. Near cities, farmland ended briefly, but soon continued along the same grid. One state succeeded another, but this only led to a change in the grid spacing (state laws allow themselves certain freedoms regarding general policy). And such a picture below continued for about an hour and a half, i.e. something like 1500 kilometers.
When you take off by plane from Moscow, a completely different picture opens up. Yes, there are also fields, but it is immediately noticeable that most of them are not plowed up. Moreover, plowed gravitate towards the roads. It is interesting that the state border of Russia and Belarus is remarkably visible from a height. Immediately upon leaving Russia, it is clear that literally everything has been plowed up, every piece of land. There are, of course, nuances related to the efficiency of agriculture (at the state level, everything is required to be plowed up), but we are talking about state policy, i.e. what the state wants. And three examples were given above, showing how you can see the cardinal difference in public policy, as they say, with the naked eye. It would be desirable simply to pay attention.
What conclusions can be drawn:
- In terms of national security, Russia today is in a situation that has never been before in history, and which is much worse than the situation at the time of the assassination of the USSR. More than half of the food is imported, there are no serious stocks of it. In the event of conflicts, it has become much easier to put pressure on Russia - it is enough to close the borders. Our position in this regard, compared with the United States and major European countries, is radically worse; in fact, in terms of food security, we are on the opposite end of the scale from them.
- The world's population is increasing by 80 million people a year, while the area of world agricultural land has not only stopped growing (all available land has been plowed), but has been gradually decreasing since 1985 (soil depletion, land drying up). As a result, the area of agricultural land per inhabitant of the Earth has been steadily declining for many years, despite the fact that the yield has not actually changed. As a result, a significant increase in food prices is predicted for the coming decades and, possibly, serious shocks in lean years (not all countries can afford to buy food). The United States in this situation, even if the dollar depreciates, will act as a country that chooses whom to provide food assistance. Russia - as a country that will seek opportunities to buy food (agriculture cannot be restored in a short time).
Village and land
In a situation where agricultural products began to cost less than the fuel needed to collect these products, the only value that large agricultural enterprises possessed was land.
With the adoption of the new Land Code, which allowed the trade in land, many farms located near highways and near cities were either immediately bought up or went bankrupt and bought up. At the same time, agricultural activity was either stopped or left only as a “cover”. The highest value in Russia is not agricultural land, but building land. Transferring land into a category allowing development is a complex procedure that requires time and money. At the same time, the law formally requires agricultural land to be cultivated, and if the land is not cultivated for 3 years, it must be withdrawn. The strictness of our laws is compensated by the flexibility in their implementation. As a result, only part of the land is plowed up (usually the fields that are visible from the road), which makes it possible to reduce the size of all types of costs and not think about the cultivation of fields located in the depths of the territory (i.e., most of the land). As a result, even in central Russia there is a large percentage of fields that have not been cultivated for 15, and in some places for 20 years.
The main blow in this situation was not even in agriculture, but in rural areas. If earlier there was a bad, but the owner here, now he has been replaced by an outspoken temporary worker. The land trade is the real Klondike. The rise in prices in some places near the cities amounted to tens of thousands of times. Under such market conditions, it turns out to be profitable to “hold” the land for as long as possible, which is what the vast majority of owners do. At the same time, they have current expenses- the same land tax, and some residents remained, workers of former farms. If they are not fed, they will start writing letters and so on. Therefore, it is desirable to give some kind of income. As a result, people are invited, for example, to cut down the remaining surrounding forests. Everyone, including workers, understands that there are no prospects for such an approach in the middle zone (where there is a lack of forests). The only consequence is that people are more likely to go on a drinking binge.
Conclusions:
- The vast majority of modern landlords, who own large territories through Moscow firms, are not interested in the development of these territories and behave like “temporary workers”, whose task is to somehow “change hands” before selling the land. The presence of local residents is rather a minus for them and a burden on the territory, which affects their priorities and decisions.
Village and administration
Contrary to popular belief, local administration at some point, she ceased to be interested in the development of the countryside. People, incl. enthusiastic about the creation of new rural projects, thanks to which the number of people in the villages will increase, they think that they should be supported. But it's not.
More precisely, at the level of personal relations, a specific head of a district or village administration can support a project, but one must clearly understand that from the point of view of the local budget, they, as a rule, are not interested in such projects.
As has been said above more than once, the production of agricultural products for the most part has long been below the level of profitability. This is not an accident, but a pattern due to a number of completely objective factors. Almost any head of the district has repeatedly observed another promising project, which, instead of the planned large return, either barely balanced on the verge of profitability, or was completely closed. Low confidence in new projects is based on real experience.
At the same time, villagers must be provided with schools, medical care, telephone, fire brigade, repair the road, hire equipment to clean the road in winter, repair the power line, pay for lamps burning in the village at night, pay for losses in the line and in the transformer, etc. And if the village ceases to be locality or everyone leaves from there, then these very tangible expenses for the meager local budget can be omitted. As a result, for the destruction of the village as a settlement, it is now enough that the village simply does not have a single registered resident, and the local municipality will be more interested in this situation.
In fairness, we note that this is not the first serious reduction in the number of villages. If in the 18-19 centuries peasants often settled near the cultivated fields in villages and settlements, then in the 20th century there were two waves. One was collectivization in the 1920s and 1930s, the other was the consolidation of collective farms in the 1950s. Small villages then ceased to exist. Now, after the catastrophe in Russian agriculture, which has lasted for 20 years, the villages are disappearing catastrophically.
Conclusion:
- The rural administration is placed in a situation where it has a financial interest in reducing the number of villages, which leads to a decrease in the number of rural settlements. When the former village ceases to be a settlement, it becomes noticeably more difficult to revive life in it, since the administration is not only not obliged to contribute to this, but often opposes it.
Conclusion
Someone not too familiar with the subject might say:
“Some kind of too gloomy picture has been drawn, this cannot be. After all, someone fed the 140 million people of Russia in the 90s, incl. after the default, when we couldn't buy groceries?"
What can be answered… Below is a diagram of the structure of agricultural production by categories of farms (in actual prices; as a percentage of the total).
