Rural settlement in the steppe zone of Russia in the post-Soviet period: adaptation to the current challenges

Abstract

The rural population and settlement in Russia’s steppe zone, as on the territory of the country on the whole, continually is transformed. This transformation hastened and obtained new features in the post-Soviet period; it became more complex and heterogeneous. Based on the statistical analysis and GIS-technologies, in the paper, we attempted to reveal central tendencies and specifics of the rural population’s temporal and spatial dynamics in the steppe zone during the three post-Soviet decades of the country’s development. The authors detected a shift of the rural population of the country to the west and south-west. The process of territorial compression leads to a concentration of people in areas with a higher potential for effective development. The main area of the rural population increase and the amount of the rural settlements are North Caucasus. Significant areas of the rural population decline are located in territories less provided by agroclimatic resources in the European part of the steppe zone and its Asian part. Understanding total tendencies and territorial peculiarities of the rural population dynamics and settlement allows forecasting these processes and considering them in the frame of territorial planning and socio-economic development in regions in conditions of the current challenges.