Russia: From monotowns to pluritowns

Abstract

The crisis in Detroit, America’s Motor City, was splashed all over the international press when the city filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history, in July 2013. The stories about the fall and then, the renaissance of this once-great city, which had staked everything on the automobile industry, abounded. But we don’t hear as much about the monogoroda, Russia’s long-forgotten industrial towns, that share a similar fate. There are 319 of these singlefactory towns, where a single industry or factory accounts for most of the local economy. How are they faring?