Old-Developed Regions of Russia: The Main Evolutionary Outcomes

Abstract

This is an attempt to generalize the results presented in the series of articles and related to the evolution and the current state of the old-developed regions of Russia on the area from its western borders to the Urals inclusive. Contrary to declarations and strategies of spatial development, the existing institutions and trends promoted polarization and shrinkage of the developed space. About 60% of the country’s population lives on 5% of its territory. Shrinkage is stimulated by concentration of economic activities and social benefits within the country in the direction from east to west and from north to south, as well as from the periphery of regions to large agglomerations, with few centers outside. These gradients are objectively rooted in the history and development pattern of a vast country, its natural diversity, special role of its large cities and their comparatively sparse location. However, it is far from always possible to justify the scope and impacts of growing contrasts, which are unpleasant for both “poles,” condensing human activity in the centers and devastating the peripheries of the regions even at a relatively short distance from Moscow. Therefore, the article concludes with a review of possible attitudes to the processes of spatial shrinkage and the most suffering peripheries. Four policy options are being considered for such places: let the process flow, accelerate it in order to save money, slow it up through financial support for depopulating and depressed areas, and stimulate new waves of their development, for instance using the demand for second (dacha) homes.

EVOLUTION OF OLD REGIONS IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES: KEY RESULTS

Evolutionary preconditions and results are largely related to four types of spatial distinctions that pervade the old-developed Russia’s areas in various ways and at different scales: (1) natural-zonal, affecting the living conditions of people, rural settlement, agriculture, forestry and some industrial sectors, mining included; (2) macro-regional between the old-developed Center, the central black earth areas, the Volga region and the Urals, associated with their specific historical destinies; (3) interregional, due to economic specialization, ethnic composition, urbanization rate and other features of the region; and (4) intraregional gradients associated with uneven development under the influence of large cities (Nefedova et al., 2021). This made it possible to distinguish different types of regions according to socio-demographic, some economic and infrastructural attributes, and once again confirmed that endogenous forces, which shape the Russian space, such as natural conditions, history of settlement, and the gaps between the centers and peripheries, are stable and strong. They manifested themselves in different periods of the country’s development, often playing a more important role than political, economic, and institutional changes.

For all the importance of the northern and eastern Russian outskirts, the center–periphery problem of the old-developed area remains the most ubiquitous and socially significant, affecting the most people. Gradients in many socioeconomic indicators over a short distance can be dizzying. In the post-Soviet period, economic polarization has increased contrasts not only between regional centers and peripheries, but also between large and small cities or between municipal centers and backwoods. Many problems of northern and eastern Russia, related to accessibility, hard living conditions, and out-migration, etc., can be seen in Smolensk, Tver, Ivanovo, Kostroma oblasts and many other old-developed regions.

Perhaps the famous Leo Tolstoy’s words about families, that is, all happy families are alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, are misapplied to regions. Here, the unhappy may also be unhappy in a similar way. Polarization and shrinkage of space strike on both sides, central and peripheral, although for the second it is still more painful. The vector of polarization for the old-developed regions within the Russian historical core over time boiled down to “densification” of socioeconomic space towards Moscow and partly other large centers. An overconcentration of human and economic resources sooner or later causes various overloads and tensions. In fact, the centripetal trend has become a challenge to the sustainable development of not only this part of Russia, but the whole country.

Despite individual attempts to expand businesses activities beyond the boundaries of large cities and their suburbs, at this stage, it is not so much about progressive evolution of regional peripheries as about involution, associated primarily with strong depopulation and depletion of human capital. Therefore, the choice of directions that stimulate the development and modernization of problem areas at the municipal level is limited and variable. The chances and rudiments of successful development of each district are poorly visible from the federal center. The socioeconomic polarization of the old-developed areas is also connected with the specifics of current institutions, which, perhaps unwittingly, reinforce this process. Transformations of the municipal structures in recent decades, divorced from natural and historical prerequisites for the organization of space and settlement, also intensify polarization, contributing only to a more centralized management that is far from the needs of people. For most local authorities, the lack of funds and powers under the current budgetary policy is paramount. The threat of “misuse of funds” accusations when trying to solve the most pressing and sometimes unexpected problems kills initiative at the local level and encourages active people to leave.

With the spatial contraction of industrial output, many old-developed areas still remain industrial, although they change their sectoral profile. The recovery growth in production is observed more often in regional centers. The boom of the service sector is added to the industrial renewal in large cities, and both stimulate the growth of precisely these centers. There is a return to the stage of urbanization, when the largest centers even more actively pull population from the countryside and depressed smaller towns.

In agriculture, the same processes of strengthening the uneven development of regions and their parts are taking place. Meanwhile, Russian agriculture, unlike the Soviet, is an actively developing and modernizing sector today. Its crisis and reformation in the post-Soviet period promoted concentration of production in new large agro-industrial structures and shrinkage of the mid-size enterprises. Both institutional and technological modernization helped increase labor productivity and to a large extent solve the problems of food supply for cities, but sharply increased spatial contrasts. Agriculture has become selective-focal in the old-developed areas, with an underdevelopment of small commodity farms, which are most typical for the southern regions. This has led to undermining the economic base of many rural settlements in Central Russia, a sharp reduction in employment, shrinkage of land use and the number of livestock outside agricultural holdings. New buildings of large enterprises, especially in the Non-Chernozem zone, often neighbor with ruined farms and fields overgrown with forest.

In small peripheral towns and rural areas, the closure of one industrial or agricultural enterprise often leads to the collapse of the service sector; it has no one to serve or it is not affordable for jobless residents. The social degradation of such an “unfortunate” place can be called a funnel of depression, which intensifies depopulation. Even the replenishment of many old-developed regions in European Russia with migrants from the former Soviet republics and from the northern Russian regions, especially in the 1990s, if it did help, it was not for long.

As researchers, we register only the course of events and their possible options with pluses and minuses. We see that changing waves of development, key economic sectors and stages of urbanization generally reduced the stability of settlement, although it affected the dynamics of population differently in different areas. It is difficult to stop the processes because of their power similar to climatic and tectonic. However question arises if the stability of spatial structures is ever good, and variability bad? A certain answer is hardly possible. For nonequilibrium systems to “freeze” means, rather, to degrade. The pace of shifts and the ability of the economy and population to adapt to them are more important here.

The core value of stable settlement is its role as an accumulator of culture, ensuring the continuity of development. After all, the old-developed regions of Russia have a unique cultural heritage, which was left by previous wider waves of development. Now, in the conditions of polarization and shrinkage of active space, many heritage sites that were not included in the official lists are abandoned and turn into ruins on the depleting periphery. The preservation of cultural heritage is also a problem in the centers and their near suburbs, where they are under threat due to the powerful onslaught of business influenced by short-term interests. The same is true for natural landscapes.

In densely built-up milieu of large urban agglomerations, people are in dire need of nature, and on the periphery with excess of it, there is an acute shortage of people. For what? Does the wild need people? Many schemes of socio-ecological polarization are based on the division of the used populated area and the unused ecological reserve with minimal population or without it. This is easy to release in the vast expanses of Siberia, but in the old-developed highly accessible areas (even with poor roads) the situation is not so simple. Out of social control, the riches of nature are often exploited in a predatory manner, which is shown by the examples of the deserted areas of Kostroma, Tver, Vologda and other oblasts. Forests are mercilessly cut down, periodically burning, and former fields and forests are overgrown with weeds. This often turns out not to be an ecological paradise, but devastation, spreading wild and dangerous landscapes.

CONTRASTS WITHIN THE OLD CENTER OF RUSSIA

Most clearly, many of these contrasts manifested themselves in the old-developed regions of the Center. Even the strict Soviet limitations could bot halt the growth of Moscow and the cities of Moscow oblast. This is all the more difficult today. Of the two effects of the Moscow capital region on its surrounding, pumping out human and financial resources and spreading innovations and development incentives to the periphery, the first one clearly prevails. The same happens in almost all regions under the influence of their centers. The recent change in the level of development roughly corresponds to the pattern by which it expanded before, but now in the opposite direction of shrinking. At the same time, the largest cities do not create a uniform network of growth poles, being often shifted to the borders between their regions or close to the Moscow region. As a result, the zones of population outflow in the center of Russia are very extensive, which enhances the economic and social effects of spatial inequality. Migration losses are both a consequence and a cause of the local economic crises. The capitals of the regions, due to the new means of transport and communications, are “drawing closer” to Moscow and to each other, expanding their suburbs. The degrading periphery, in turn, is also expanding. Polarization of space eventually dissolves intermediate transition zones, that is, semi-suburban and semi-peripheral areas.

However, there have been changes in recent years. In some cases, agro-industrial complexes are also located in more remote areas of the Center with better natural conditions in the fields (opolyes) of forested regions with more fertile soils or in the sub-chernozem belt, if there is good transport accessibility. Selective restoration of livestock and agricultural land use gives a chance to some areas, but hardly ensures their rural development as a whole. Newly modernized enterprises are rarely rooted in the countryside, being managed from cities. With a high level of mechanization, they require fewer workers, primarily qualified ones, and they often use foreign migrants for auxiliary work.

The fact that the center–periphery structure of settlement and economy in the old-developed regions is reproduced under today’s institutional and economic conditions, which are fundamentally different from the Soviet, indicates certain invariants of the organization of the Russian space. The historical rut is so well-worn and deep, that it is hard to get out. Nevertheless, the outflow of human and other mobile resources to large cities can be at least slowed down. This requires support for any medium and small business given the fact that human capital in small towns and rural areas is depleted and few enthusiasts who are ready for entrepreneurial activity are easily distinguishable. It is necessary to preserve the transport and social infrastructure, especially where the local population still lives and where urban dachnics come in summer.

At the same time, transformations of authorities at different levels (municipal reform with its waves) is only partly determined by local demography, and more often by fiscal policy. One of the main results, the centralization of management in all its facets, is especially painful for the lower municipal structures, that is, the level closest to the citizens. The enlargement of municipalities and removal of the settlement level reduces the potential for their development and weakens the contact between local authorities and populations, making it difficult for people to access all types of services. This is especially true for depopulated areas. However, even if they are densely populated, the settlement is violated and the new centers of municipalities, due to their weakness, are hardly able to form some new systems. As a result, the continuity of spatial development and local self-government are disrupted and administrative chaos is growing.

The problems of the Far North and East of Russia are always heard and actively discussed, because there, unlike the old regions, there are resources for new development. The word “unlike” should be put in quotation marks, though. Are only oil, gas, diamonds, and gold resources? Does nobody need the land, landscapes, their nature and artifacts of historical heritage and the population of the old regions? They are needed, including by millions of townspeople–dacha residents and tourists from megacities. Although dachniks are mainly a seasonal population, the farther they penetrate (the zones of mass purchase of rural second homes by townspeople extend up to 500–600 km from Moscow), the more they need at least a few permanent residents. Both the economy and the new population would follow this wave of recreational and dacha renovation of recently abandoned places if it were not for the absence of the necessary conditions: paved roads, gas, reliable Internet, etc. Anyway, it is dangerous to deepen the polarization of space by developing few centers at the expense of the periphery. Its perception as a set of empty or vacant and unpromising areas should be overcome.

There are no places in the Center of Russia that are not in demand by any population or business. Moreover, there are enough cases of the secondary development of the seemingly almost empty periphery. This means that something hampers shrinkage and among these restraining forces, the labor, dacha and family (kinship) mobilities, which are not daily, but regularly recurring, stands out. Living in two houses helps people to cope with current problems and consequences of growing socioeconomic polarization, but causes inconvenience to the authorities, who lose a clear idea of the population under their care and control.

No matter how we tried to determine the real population in rural areas, it turned out that both in the suburbs and in many peripheral areas during the summer season and on holidays, it increases significantly. Thus arises a parallel unstated and unmapped network of pulsating settlement. It creates informal jobs for Russian citizens and foreign labor migrants, as well as the development of small businesses both in garden and summer cottages, and in small towns and villages. There are signs of a specific dacha economy, which restrains out-migration of the local able-bodied population, without which dacha residents cannot manage. On the other hand, it is the dacha tradition that slows Western-style counter-urbanization hidden in Russia behind weekly, seasonal, or less rhythmic mobility. At the same time, as surveys of the local and dacha population in different regions have shown, it is the summer dacha population, that is most interested in preserving local traditions and monuments of nature and culture.

Despite the fact that the Moscow agglomeration has been a driver and a testing ground for new models of economic growth during many years, spatial disparities are clearly expressed inside it. The areas with the most rapidly growing population are the sites of mass housing construction immediately behind the Moscow Ring Road. The nearest Moscow suburbs are imbued with competition between different land users. Thereof, industry and agriculture, which are pressed by urban housing and shopping, entertainment and logistics, are moving to more remote areas of the agglomeration, where they also come into conflict with the dacha developments.

In the regions to the northeast of Moscow, which were chosen for a detailed survey, including field work, a resumption of industrial development and the deployment of new industries have been observed. Many enterprises are gaining national significance and are looking for their own economic niches. Here, the contrasts between large and small cities and between suburban and peripheral rural areas are especially strong, which have intensified in the post-Soviet years with a sharp transformation of economic conditions. The example of Yaroslavl oblast confirms the importance of taking the accumulated traditions and results of Soviet industrialization into account. Nevertheless, there development is also typical primarily of the region’s center and few other areas, including agricultural, where investments usually come from Moscow to large agro-industrial complexes. Between them, even in such a relatively small area adjacent to the capital region, foci of economic and social desertification are formed. Even more clearly, these are manifested in Kostroma oblast located at the junction of the Center, the North and the Volga major regions. Its southwestern corner represents a “protrusion” of the Russian old textile core, while the vast Trans-Volga area remains a resource zone, mainly with timber industries that support the economy under the crises of other sectors. The history of one central district of the oblast and several rural settlements shows the unviability of the Soviet model of agriculture in similar regions with dramatic population losses. On the other hand, there are prospects for a symbiosis of focal agriculture with forestry or with the use of still strong log houses by townspeople, including Muscovites. The developed space is inevitably shrinking here, and this waits for management, diversification of activities and the encouragement not only of major actors , but also of any producers and any permanent or temporary settlers. It is these daily “small deeds” that become no less important than large projects. Not only the suburbs, but also remote areas have turned out to be a refuge for people crowded in cities, who left for summer cottages during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this did not spur mass year-round deurbanization, with the exception of the close Moscow suburbs. The main constraints are mentioned above, exacerbated by the reduction of social and economic infrastructure on distant periphery.

Small towns with traces of several historical eras also demonstrate how national and regional trends are localized in different ways. The Soviet industrial trend determined their structural crisis with the loss of a city-forming enterprise or a sharp reduction of its role. Given the impossibility of preventing new exogenous crises, local initiatives based on the restoration and use of the historical heritage, which was suppressed by Soviet unification, are becoming increasingly important in the revitalization of urban life.

SPECIFICITY OF THE OLD URAL REGIONS

The industrial development of the Urals began later and also proceeded in waves. Historical layers not only alternated, but could return with the next wave, and even after prolonged crises the “sediments” of former waves did not dissolve without a trace. The difference from the Center is that the Urals relied on the richest ore resources. This led to an increased economic share of raw materials and products of their primary processing. As a result, heavy industrial businesses working for export have become the main engine here. Large corporations control cities and entire areas.

The north of Sverdlovsk oblast is going through a difficult period after booming in the middle of the 20th century. Primary industries are more likely to function by inertia or have been dismantled. Auxiliary industries become city-forming, but they often shrink. An examination of individual cities of the Northern Urals showed that they had previously found new resources to overcome the crisis, but new development impulses are not yet clear.

Spatial economic trends in the Middle Urals generally correspond to post-Soviet trends in terms of concentration in places with the best competitive advantages. Hence, the growth of the largest centers and urban agglomerations of Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, with population losses in many surrounding territories. In this regard, the Middle Urals differ little from Central Russia, and Yekaterinburg, as an interregional center, attracts migrants not only from its region, but also from Chelyabinsk and Perm, etc. An analysis of the history and the current problems of selected cities in the mountain-factory part of Chelyabinsk Oblast showed a strong dependence on the state of key enterprises owned by large companies or by military-industrial structures, and this reliance is growing. At the same time, economic polarization is reinforced by an ecological one. The centers of an environmental disaster alternate with areas of clean and picturesque nature.

The predominantly flat area southeast of Chelyabinsk, now called the Southern Urals, Southern Trans-Urals, or even Southwestern Siberia, was and is a contact zone between forest and steppe, as well as a place of intensive cultural exchanges between ethnicities. It has also gone through several waves of development. The first fortified settlements were followed by trading ones with agricultural and transport functions. In Soviet times, coal was mined here. As in other regions of the Urals, the impetus was given by the evacuation of factories from the western USSR during the war. Subsequently, these territories formed the periphery of both Chelyabinsk and Tyumen oblasts. Nevertheless, as in other Ural regions, resources, geographical position, and the presence of a large company affect their current state.

Both in the Center and in the Urals, the authorities often rely on large producers, trying to solve the problems of the region’s economy and budget in one fell swoop. Besides, the roles of large cities and their influence zones everywhere depend not only on the size of the city, but on many factors, such as natural conditions, historical and ethnical roots, age and stage of urbanization in the region, and its economic specialization. The most acute problems of employment, social infrastructure and growth, etc. arise in old-developed areas at the municipal level. It was the study of local territories that made it possible to see what really stands behind the figures of official statistics. Both in cities and in the countryside specific individuals play a significant role, not only the heads of municipalities and enterprises, but also local residents.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

Here we try to reveal how it is possible or necessary to relate to the polarization and shrinkage of the developed space asking traditional Russian question, “What is to be done?” and casually touching others: “Who is guilty?” and “Should something be done?”. Moreover, the results of the 2020–2021 population census published in 2022 showed an even stronger polarization of settlement pattern than the current statistics which were used in our research.

There is a negative attitude towards both processes at both poles. Losing population, land and money, the periphery sees in this a catastrophe of social desolation and oblivion (“we are abandoned,” “Moscow is not up to us”), the loss of heritage in its broadest demographic, economic and cultural sense. Hence, the calls in some media to “de-Moscow” Russia, because the country is much larger and more important than the capital. The centers also feel upset as human nests overcrowded by both too rich and too poor. In this regard, another slogan “de-capitalization of Moscow” is suggested with the hidden hope that without the functions of the capital it will stop “swelling.” Experts and officials, unlike the general public, have more different opinions.

There are four main options for assessing the situation, the scenario of events, and the corresponding policy (Nefedova, Treivish, 2020).

First: do nothing. In French, this is laissez-faire, or let it go: life will figure it out, and perhaps turn back. It is known that urban areas use to sprawl and the city grows into an agglomeration, which in turn, grows into a larger formation such as a megalopolis (Makhrova et al., 2016; Treyvish, 2022). On the other hand, with a shortage of demographic resources, a leveling of living conditions and accessibility of places, urbanization sooner or later fades, turning into its opposite, counter-urbanization. Thus, let us wait until one, the other, or all together happen on their own.

The problem is that the network of large cities in Russia is sparse. The estimated average distance between the nearest neighbors exceeds 300 km. Even in the Central Federal District, it is more than 100 km. Without the Moscow region (which contains 44% of all cities in the district), it is 160 km. In the core of the European Union, it is half as much: 80 km, from 45 km in the Netherlands to 115 km in France. What is the difference between 80 and 160 km? The radius of a close suburb is near 30 km, for a semi-suburb (more distant satellites), it is 60 km, and on average, it is about 40 km. Therefore, in core Europe they normally meet in a straight line between large cities. In the core of Russia, half of the 160 km journey remains outside the zones of population concentration and development, but people still live there. In the Central District outside the Moscow region, at least 10 large cities are missing to cover these gaps, and in the developed part of the whole of European Russia the shortage amounts to 64 cities (Nefedova, 2013). What about the USA, China, and other vast countries where large cities are separated by at least 100–150 km? Transport is very important here. There is high-speed land traffic in Russia between Moscow and St. Petersburg but few other places. High-speed roads are not sufficient, there must be accessible entrances to them and, in general, good roads between settlements, which cannot be said about Russia and even its Center. Since 1990, air traffic has also shrunk to the Moscow hub (Tarkhov, 2018). Thus, the first issue that requires urgent action is not just the sparseness of the urban socioeconomic space, but also its weak connectivity.

Another issue is the centralization of management, as well as the special role of administrative and metropolitan rent, as a result of the concentration of elites and benefits for business, political, creative, and other careers. Even ordinary life can be associated with proximity to decision-making centers (Zubarevich, 2012) and services. As long as this continues, mainly regional centers, and the Moscow capital region in the country as a whole will grow.

The third issue is that since some time Russia has not exactly repeated the western stages of urbanization and may not wait for its reversal. Mass counter-urbanization, along with the concentration of permanent residents in primate cities, has been going on in our country in a special dacha, i.e. in a temporal second home form (Second…, 2013; Between home…, 2016; etc.). This is due to the seasonality of the climate, the depth of the dacha tradition, the cramped apartment space in cities and the functional variety of dachas, including auxiliary agricultural use by households, if products are in short supply or rise in price sharply. Dacha as both residence and land plot means real estate, that is, property, as well as recreation close to nature, a place for basic or alternative (hobby) activities in an exurban environment, and a refuge from the bustle, rhythms, and risks of megacities, which is clearly confirmed by the facts of temporary self-isolation of urban families at their dachas during the 2020 spring–summer–autumn period of the COVID pandemic.

The second option, even more radical in relation to the weakening periphery, is acceleration of its depopulation, at least for budgetary savings. A version of this approach is a bet on the development of only large agglomerations, because “periphery is hopeless and no one needs it.” In theory, this is embodied in the concept of a polarized biosphere (Rodoman, 1974, 2004), when the inner periphery between large cities is designed to natural landscapes with an increase in the proportion of natural vegetation at the interregional boundaries. In offices they also can think this way and are already beginning to talk, and this strangely makes their inhabitants close to the “green” extremists. They both state that it would be better for wild nature to return to the periphery, so let us create specially protected areas, which will strengthen Russia’s position as a great environmental power, a donor of the planet. Although this asset is poorly capitalized and economically insignificant, something has changed (since the Kyoto Protocol), and events are gradually moving towards the possibility to earn money based on natural capital and eco-services.

In practice, this option, justified fiscally or in other manner, has essentially been implemented. Rural settlements are being enlarged, urban and municipal districts are being created, which leads to the elimination of social infrastructures: small schools, clinics, and clubs. Moreover, in the wooded north (from the Moscow region), the local authorities sometimes act as if the population is no longer there. With a salary of 25–30 000 rubles. even the head of a typical rural settlement lives hard with his family, so he moonlights in forestry and crafts, organizing logging, elite hunting, and fishing, etc. It doesn’t take a large number of people to do this.

Of course, this scenario is met with criticism, and opponents say that the country cannot have and does not have unnecessary land, although we don’t know when and who will need it. These are not just territories, but bearers of culture and traditions, which, by the way, were once innovations that glorified cities, regions, and the whole country. Historical small towns still exist, and millions still live there. It is better to keep them, because ruins and wastelands without social control run wild, and this is dangerous for inhabited near housing. For an indefinite time they are no longer cultural elements of the area, and not yet natural, but a haven for outcasts, homeless people and animals. They are ugly, fire-prone and should be defined as empty or garbage landscapes.

The third option: since such desolation is not good, it is necessary to slow it down, somehow restrain it, mitigate its costs, and not “run ahead of the locomotive.” Generally, there are tools for this. They can be costly, like the introduction of peripheral benefits and allowances such as the northern ones, invented in the USSR, so that the population not only goes to the North to earn money, but also stays there. Peripheral benefits are as well appropriate, because living in the outback is also hard, but the state need someone to live there. After all, just 100–150 km from Moscow one can find areas of real wilderness. However, this takes a large amount of money.

There are low-cost measures, including for the preservation of the social services. The experience of recent years has shown that the closing of schools and hospitals, etc. when merging settlements and creating large urban okrugs does not solve the problems of local residents with Russian distances, roads, lack of the Internet, etc. Parents are not happy to send small children on a school bus, which, however, is often the unique transportation mean for everyone, for 20–30 km. In addition, juniors often have to wait until the end of high school classes in order to go home. Such fatigue is difficult for an adult. Meanwhile, in the villages where schools did exist, retired teachers often live, who can teach local kids to read, write, and count for minimal pay as well, if not better, than schools do. It is practiced in places, for example, in Tatarstan, but not in most regions. As for the school, it may control the results like during an external study. In general, all kinds of flexible and mobile services look promising there.

The fourth option: to seek and maintain any return wave. It is unlikely that the remote rural areas of the Non-Chernozem zone will show economic growth. At the same time, dacha development, as something like Reconquista of the emptied land by the townspeople, though seasonal, does not allow it to be written off and proves the demand for such areas, especially those rich in attractive landscapes. Without repeating past agrarian or industrial waves, this dacha wave reaches places that are remote and, so far, really of little interest to anyone, except for the summer residents. It is important here that dachas are accessible to different social strata due to diversity of their types, locations, and prices. Here, too, huge state expenses are not needed: people bear them themselves, while roads and other infrastructures have to be developed anyway, with or without summer residents, whose requests nevertheless are to be known and taken into account by planners. The dacha boom, like any other, has its shadow sides, which need to be discussed separately, but this is not a reason to avoid its studying. Unfortunately, it is actually ignored by strategies and development programs at various levels, especially the federal and regional. The authors of these documents write a lot about tourism, but as a rule, nothing about dachas. They are generally taken lightly. The second house is not the first, it is something non-binding and auxiliary. However, where there is a population and demand, let it be seasonal, businesses appears, including small businesses in trade and services, construction, and repair. Behind them, retail chains and services come to small towns and other centers of dacha areas. Together with the islands of small-scale agriculture of individual townspeople who are ready to live in the countryside all year round, with enthusiastic farmers, folk craftsmen, hunters, fishers, and wild plants pickers, etc., all this is a new post-Soviet peripheral economy. It also contributes to the development of tourism, especially if the place is rich in cultural heritage, often in the form of initiatives by permanent and summer residents to create museums, design places of interest, organize excursions to memorable places, and so forth. They can retain part of the middle and younger local generations and attract city dwellers for longer stays. For how long depends largely on the policy of the federal and regional authorities.

As is well known, new is not yet a synonym for good and old does not necessarily mean bad. The old-developed areas with their heritage and often with the second, third, and fourth youth confirm this truth in their own way. These old areas need to be known, understood and, let’s not be afraid of this word, respected more than new places, even the most promising ones.

FUNDING

The work was carried out at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences within the framework of the project of the Russian Science Foundation no. 19-17-00174 and within the framework of the state task of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences AAAA-A19-119022190170-1 (FMGE-2019-0008).

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.