Officials and scientists have compiled a rating of the attractiveness of Russian cities. According to New Izvestia”, the top five included Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Rostov-on-Don. They are followed by cities that have advantages in development - Vladivostok, Krasnodar, Sochi, Kaliningrad, as well as Tomsk, Omsk, Surgut, Tyumen, Irkutsk, Yaroslavl, Saratov, which are attractive from an investment point of view.

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The question is not whether the Russian hinterland will become empty, but how soon this will happen, scientists say

The depth is empty. This process did not begin yesterday, but has especially intensified in recent years. The less work becomes, the greater the desire of local residents to leave. They stretch to Moscow and the Moscow region, the centers of the oil-producing regions of Siberia, the pre-Olympic city of Sochi.

The saying "more people - more opportunities" has been true at all times, but it is especially justified now. A resident of a metropolis has access to something that an inhabitant of the hinterland can only dream of. Therefore, cities are growing at an unprecedented speed, changing life around and within themselves.

As associate professors at the HSE Institute of Demography Lilia Karachurina and Nikita Mkrtchyan found out, the desire to move to big cities is becoming almost an obsession for able-bodied residents of remote corners, Finmarket reports. And the question is no longer whether the Russian hinterland will become empty, but how soon this will happen.

Scientists compared the results of the 1989, 2002 and 2010 population censuses for small areas, analyzing data for 2341 settlements (cities and districts). Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan had to be excluded from the study due to a serious distortion of primary information. Moscow was also not taken into account.

The entire territory of the country was divided into seven zones, depending on the distance from the nearest center, and the number of their inhabitants was compared. As a result, it turned out that the farther from the regional center, the more intensively the population is declining. The areas that lose the most are located 30-50 and 250-300 kilometers from the nearest city, as well as very remote settlements 500 kilometers from the center.

According to this scheme, the population of the entire country is moving, but this is especially clearly seen in the example of the Central, North-Western and Siberian federal districts. From distant corners they flee even in the Southern District with a high birth rate.

It is interesting that although in the Volga and Ural districts residents leave the cities and go to Moscow, which is why the population of the latter is declining, the number of residents in the regional centers is increasing. However, these are different flows - from cities to the capital and from villages to the "district".

From the Far East and the European North, there is an outflow of population to the central regions of the country. The process is so intensive that the remote territories (about 500 kilometers from the cities) of these districts have lost a third of their inhabitants over the past twenty years.

On the other hand, almost all cities increased their own population over a ten-year period of time. In the Central Federal District, the growth was 4%, the population of even the cities of the Far East and Siberia increased. Most of all, this was influenced by young people aged 15-19 and 20-24, who arrive to study and then stay nearby.

In other works, Natalya Zubarevich analyzes large Russian cities and their attractiveness based on Rosstat data for 2011. Residents of the country choose four groups of cities for moving: oil development centers, capitals of agrarian republics with strong natural growth, largest agglomerations (Moscow region), regional centers of the south (Krasnodar, Sochi, Stavropol, Belgorod). These cities willy-nilly work like vacuum cleaners, devastating near and far neighborhoods.

Most major cities are similar in demographics, economic development and the opportunities they can provide for internal migrants, Zubarevich concludes.

At the same time, industrial centers account for no more than a quarter of all large cities. They are the focus of export industries: oil and gas (Nizhnevartovsk, Surgut), petrochemistry (Nizhnekamsk), ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy (Cherepovets, Stary Oskol, Magnitogorsk, Lipetsk, Nizhny Tagil, Novokuznetsk).

The most advanced in economic terms are 18 large cities out of 94 considered: the per capita volume of investments in them is higher than the average for Russia. But in half of the cities with a population of over 200,000 people, per capita investment is 2-8 times lower than the national average.

The unemployment rate in large cities is also not the same. The highest was recorded in Grozny (12%), the lowest - in Makhachkala (0.2%). Accordingly, Grozny receives the maximum specific amount of money from the federal budget to pay benefits to the unemployed population.

It is also interesting that in 60% of large cities the level of wages falls short of the national average (23,400 rubles in 2011), which casts doubt on the reliability of Rosstat data on average wages. Were they stretched in some cunning way?

On the other hand, Grozny is breaking the record for providing its residents with housing - 48 square meters per person, more than twice the average Russian figure (23 square meters). I wonder who gives Ramzan Kadyrov square meters? Probably, like money, Allah (we recall that when in 2011 journalists asked the head of Chechnya about the sources of financing of the republic, he answered them like this: “Allah provides. I don’t know. Money comes from somewhere”). Vladikavkaz occupies the second place in terms of spaciousness of housing (32 square meters per person).

Thus, in the not too distant future, Russia may be left completely without a population in the outback, when all able-bodied people will leave there, and the disabled will leave due to natural attrition. Not so long ago, by the way, in Serbia, where the same processes are observed, only with the exodus of the entire population to Europe, there was a joke: “Who will be the last to leave the country, let him not forget to turn off the electricity and gas.” It is also suitable for our outback, if we make an allowance for gas, which was never born there.

"Wherever we, Russian people, live, in whatever position
we have not been, we never and nowhere leave grief
about our Motherland, about Russia. This is natural and inevitable: this
sorrow cannot and must not leave us. She is a manifestation
our living love for the Motherland and our faith in it"
The great Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin (Why we believe in Russia).

Inconspicuous villages - a blurry spot behind the windows of cars rushing along the federal highways of Russia. Who ever looked inside these caskets? Who among you was interested in life there?
Driving off the M2 federal highway, I ended up in a completely different Russia, the Russia of that time. After reading this post, the atmosphere of sadness and loneliness will not leave you for a long time. Perhaps you will consider me a faulty pessimist, but in short, I can say this: life in Russia, to put it mildly, is not sugar; here it is bad everywhere and everywhere the number of minuses far exceeds the number of pluses ...
As you know, "the roots of any civilization grow from the village." I suggest you take a look at how today life is not in a distant village or farm, but in the villages, not some Siberian wilderness, but the most central region - the neighbors of Muscovites. It seems that this is just some other world in which time has stopped.

1. The village of Krapivna (Tula region). There used to be a city. The population is about 3000 thousand people.
At the very entrance to the village stands an abandoned state farm. Its size struck, it occupies about 10 hectares of land.
Photo 1

The only place where there is a revival all the time is the cemetery, black with fresh graves. There is a ruined temple in the cemetery.
Photo 2

Everything here is sad.
Photo 5

Photo 7
The village consists of 90% of these houses.

Photo 8
Russia has always been strong with its village, at all times it was the village that gave bread and strength to the country. Now the government prefers to import food, food raw materials for petrodollars, rather than to strengthen and develop the rural sector. Together with villages and villages, the so-called small towns wither and die, with city-forming enterprises that are closed and cease to give jobs to the city, while destroying infrastructure and the social sphere.

Photo 11
A typical picture of a Russian village (village) is terrifying. Here you can see overgrown with weeds up to the roofs of the houses. In some of them, pieces of plywood, cardboard or film are inserted in the windows - simply because there are no shops where you can buy glass.

Here they have a central street where they are located: administration, savings bank, hospital, post office.
Photo 13

There used to be a temple here, then a fire department, now there are mice and rats.
Photo 19

Thanks for warning.
Photo 21

Here is the hospital.
Photo 22

There are a lot of these wooden houses there.
Photo 24

There are also two-storey (apartment) houses.
Photo 26

Photo 27
The population of not only villages that simply disappear from the maps, but also small towns and villages has sharply decreased. You should not think that these are only regions of the Far East - these are also regions located 200 km from Moscow. It is enough to go not far outside this zone, and you will see what is happening there.

Photo 35
Historical building.

Photo 36
Now the local "Gazprom" is located here. Previously, there was a school here, L.N. was a member of the school council. Tolstoy.

At the exit is another temple, or rather the ruins of the temple ..
Photo 38

Photo 40
Previously, the local administration used to sit in this building, now there is no one there, well, almost no one. Next to the building there is also a ubiquitous pay phone, there are 3 of them (I remind you that the state spent 63 billion rubles on them and annual maintenance costs 4 billion). Who will call him? And did you ever call? Unlikely.

Photo 42
As it turned out, the Russian Post is located here. Hellish conditions.

Photo 43
In this building, every day from morning to evening, everyone drinks, both boys and girls ... To the question "why do you drink" I received the answer "What to do, there is no work, so bring us with you right now. We are ready to work as guards, drivers. We don't need a lot of money." The guys are young, about 30 years old. Earlier, by the way, there were apartments from the collective farm. There is no collective farm, no apartments. At the bottom left of the window you can see the silhouettes.

Photo 44
There are also two-storey apartment buildings in the village. There is no gas or water in the houses. There is nothing there, there is no life there, but people live. To conduct gas, it is necessary to collect 600 thousand rubles from each house. That kind of money has never been here.

Photo 45
How are you?
The housing stock is dilapidated and is not being repaired, but why, after all, everyone will leave for the city anyway, so there are no roads, no transport, the only regular bus or train routes are canceled forever.

Photo 45
Schools, paramedical stations, clubs, hospitals are closed, and finally, the store is the last to close. Everything, end. Go wherever you want, leave houses, gardens, graves of your ancestors, leave old people to die alone, because where to transport them, and why, when they grew up here, lived, gave birth to children, buried their parents. The village has lost the simple meaning of its existence. The land, the greatest wealth of RUSSIA, is abandoned and dying.

Photo 46
Residents repeatedly wrote letters to the Kremlin, Putin, hoping that they would be heard, but there was no answer ... They asked for gas, a road, and a bus to go three times a day. There is no hospital, the nearest hospital is 50 km away. There is one shop in the village, though there is vodka vodka vodka.

Photo 47
They burn wood here.

Photo 48
He has two sons, they drink together ... He says in 5 years there will be nothing and no one here. Some will die from drinking, others will kill each other from drinking. From the lack of work, from the meaninglessness of existence, the rural population is degrading at some unthinkable pace, and, first of all, this results in rampant alcoholism, and now also drug addiction among young people.

Photo 49
It has a bad effect on the health of residents and social disorder, which is why after 12 noon most of the residents are in a state of intoxication.

Photo 51
In 2005, the distillery was closed, many locals worked there. Now they are looking for work.

Photo 52
There was a huge collective farm, which occupied leading positions in Russia. Here's what's left of him.

Photo 53
Without city-forming enterprises and infrastructure, settlements are not only inefficient, but unviable, and their population is not even "consumable", but "waste" material. How people survive these "objective" processes, apparently, the authorities do not care. "Saving the population is the work of the population itself"!

That's it.
According to the most realistic demographic forecasts, the population of Russia in the next decade will not grow, but decline. At the same time, in large cities there is a problem of lack of affordable housing for the population. The state, on the other hand, accepts promising programs: to set records for the commissioning of housing, to overtake everyone and everything, and the like. The level of accessibility of medical care and education for the rural population has significantly decreased. The Accounts Chamber provided the following statistics: for the period from 2005 to 2010, 12,377 schools were closed in the country, the vast majority in rural areas (81%). The number of hospitals has decreased over 10 years by 40%, and polyclinics - by 25%. The process of dying of the village continues. No measures are taken to develop the village, and even the money that is allocated is stolen. All changes are only on paper, in reality I showed you how it looks.

Some kind of spiritual, deep-seated complaint about a huge injustice, when it seems that you haven’t lived yet, you kept hoping - tomorrow, then, and life has already been lived, and you can’t fix anything. you won’t change, you won’t return, and life turns out to be a big deception, but it’s not clear who is deceiving and why ....

The Russian province, of course, cannot be measured with a "common yardstick". “To understand with the mind” - you can try, but there is a risk of colliding with the fundamentally unknowable. I suggest you just watch.

... And in a nightmare I could not imagine that in the fourth decade I would be left without bohemian cafes and large bookstores - in a small, very provincial town N, in the Kirov region. When I came here, I was scared: I thought I was finished. In my “track record” there are philharmonic societies, galleries, universities ... But reflections are reflections, and I had to look for a job.

I got attached to the local newspaper, began to take interviews, and what? I met people whom I think I will never grow up to: I should not be so patient, restrained, knowledgeable - in a word, intelligent. These meetings were the first occasion for reflection on the topic "what defines - or measures - the province." Thinking is a big word, of course. Just during walks with a stroller, shopping runs, I began to pay attention to expressive details, remember something, compare

Those meetings

I learned about Alexei Petrovich first as a restorer. I was surprised by the very presence of a restorer in a small town. For many years our life was built around the plant, now shops have become another center - in their potential infinity. But the small museum has never claimed the central position.

Of course, self-taught, just an amateur. But sometimes a simple love is more valuable than a difficult education. All his life he worked as an installer, always remained - and remains - an artist. He paints landscapes: he has his own reserved paths in the vicinity of the city. Book lover, chess player, music lover. It seems to be quite earthly, not eccentric, but still special: bright, kind, sunny.

When we met, two things impressed me: firstly, Alexei Petrovich knows Russian artists by their first and middle names (I didn’t even remember Repin’s middle name right away), and secondly, the music. When he works at home, not in the open air, he puts on a record with Mozart's quartets and writes to this divine "purr".

Nina Ivanovna... By status - the first lady, by lifestyle - the most intelligent woman, modest, highly educated. She never exploited her husband's status, she was always in a noble shadow. Her stories about trips to Moscow are a chronicle of the capital's cultural life: queues for "Picasso", the first exhibitions of Tonino Guerra, performances of "Lenkom", the last concerts of Nikolai Petrov.

She is very tolerant of other people's mistakes, mistakes. She always listens very carefully to her interlocutors, sympathizes with them, rejoices for them, even if she herself needs support at this moment. It seems to me that this is a moral talent: it is akin to artistic. But maybe even rarer.

My teacher said about one scientist: "He soars on an unattainable moral and spiritual height." We, the students, giggled - the phrase seemed so implausible, outdated bookish. Many years have passed, and I believed in this unattainable height.

Book

Where to look for salvation? In the library, of course. Let provincial. I looked around for a long time with an arrogant "wow, and they read it here." Seeing a book about Rostislav Zakharov at the librarian’s chair, she was not too lazy and asked: “And who reads it with you?” As if in a small town they should be content with recipes and women's novels. Speaking of the latter. We had a dispute with the librarian about Ekaterina Vilmont. I, remembering Balmont, called her Vilmont, and the librarian - Vilmont.

A month ago, I was put on the waiting list for "Geographer ..." Alexei Ivanov. He got to me in such a form, as if he had been read, read, read for ten years. Falling asleep, dropped on the floor. They took from each other. Nice to say. The book volume became similar to its hero: the same shabby, unhappy and charming.

Walking among the bookcases, squinting short-sightedly at the book spines, at first she looked for errors in the placement. Then I saw Lotman's commentaries on Onegin, a luxuriously commented edition of Bryusov's Fiery Angel. I haven't let these books out of my hands for several months now.

We had a bookstore in the old days - a solid, Soviet one. This book supermarket: scientific literature, and children's, and art, and musical publications. Among other things, already in the 1990s, I personally acquired Chopin's nocturnes, almost the entire Bulgakov, Botticelli's album and other treasures there. Over time, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe store decreased, like shagreen leather. He was pressed by clothes and shoes, then household goods. Who won in a fair competition for a convenient retail space in the city center? That's right, not books. But this story has a happy ending.

For quite a long time, a private tiny bookstore lived on the territory of the former "Children's World". The assortment for several years was extremely democratic - detective stories, uncomplicated love prose, school books, coloring books. Then Pushkin returned to the shelves, followed by Selinger, Vian, Hesse. The owner of the shop for individual orders brought Dina Rubina, explanatory dictionaries, the Snob magazine. The store has recently acquired its own space. It is, of course, cramped for the literature of all times and peoples, but on the other hand, its own sign appeared on its own facade. The faces of Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Tyutchev (!) are turned to the crossroads: schoolchildren rush along it, adult boring citizens, city buses cross it. And the classics strictly look at everyone and everything through the stunted roadside foliage.

Lamp. Pharmacy

As the creative experience of the great masters of the word shows, the provinces are capable of turning the prose of life into poetry. With the same success, a lantern near a pharmacy that sometimes does not work at night deprives the symbolist urban landscape of poetic charm.

Often you have to get out to the pharmacy at a later time - either for milk formula, or for diapers. At the same time, the outcasts become active: their gloomy figures linger for a moment near the pharmacy cash desk and disappear into the darkness. Their goal is bluish boxes with tincture of capsicum. In the morning, a large number of boxes can be seen in the pharmacy bins. The issue price is 26 rubles: cheap and, apparently, effective.

It turns out that this tincture is pretty tonic. Some of those who came for her are ashamed - either of their poverty, or of their predilection. Even without a queue, "ordinary" buyers are let through. Sometimes, in order to look more decent in the eyes of the pharmacist girl and small visitors, they buy something else - like a plaster.

Yesterday I saw two boxes of tincture in the sandbox, next to it was a plastic cup. So, there is a semblance of drinking etiquette ...

Bulletin board

Each city has its own commercial plots. The bulletin board (not virtual, but real - wooden, with a metal visor) will tell everything about the tastes, priorities, social problems of the townspeople. If Ilf and Petrov were in the lead in the service sector of burial and haircut-shaving, in my city N there are no equal stretch ceilings and firewood (sawn, unsawn, varying degrees of humidity). The secret of leadership of the first, I never fully comprehended.

With firewood, everything is clear: a very large private sector, and universal gasification has not yet come. But what about gasification: there is no centralized water supply on some streets.

A more common option, of course, is "evon". It seems to me that the appearance of “theirs”, “Evonian”, “Evonic” is connected with the desire not only to lengthen too short pronouns, but also with an attempt to turn the pronoun into an adjective - a much more emotional part of speech.

In my immediate circle, the carrier of dialectal, or so-called vernacular, expressions is my mother. She has lived all her life here, in the city of N: this is her native, familiar. Something I inherited from my grandmother. A separate story is my old godmother, who still remembered that “they are gentlemen Sergeyevs”, from the Vologda province. Her speech was completely different, maybe not even so colorful. However, what she told about rural life, her religious ideas, was incredibly impressive. I'll save that for the next "memoir chapters."

It seems to me that the dialogues between the one who went out in a T-shirt to smoke on the balcony and those who leisurely walk downstairs are a genre of provincial communication. The Internet, cellular communications are not competitors to him.

Uncle from the balcony - to the men in overalls:

Hey, bitches! It is necessary to rob, but they walk!

Ah, we're on our way home from work.

In my youth, I heard how one woman from the window shouted somewhere down the recipe for fried mushrooms. Downstairs, they listened to her and asked clarifying questions.

So anyway...

... not tiny incomes, not terribly bad roads, not the absence of theaters and philharmonic halls distinguishes the province from the non-province. In a small town, the words “ambition”, “career”, “self-realization”, “motivation” and the like do not ring everywhere. Positive and negative manifestations of the capital's vanity fairs are useless here. The vegetable garden is a life-forming factor in the province.

Garden, he is also a summer cottage, the season begins in February-March with the purchase of seeds, fuss with seedlings. Seedlings gradually occupy all window sills in houses and apartments. Whoever has the opportunity, drawers and bowls with green sprouts are dragged to work. Then - dig up the garden, plow, prepare, sow, plant ... Fans purchase all versions of the special lunar calendars for gardeners and follow the prescribed. And so on until late autumn. Garden joys and sorrows crowd out all other topics of conversation. In news releases, the most interesting thing is the weather forecast.

On the one hand, this is a memory of scarce Soviet times, when it was impossible to buy vegetables in stores. This is a memory of the hungry nineties, when cash almost disappeared: wedding rings were exchanged for a bag of flour or sugar. And this is an opportunity to somehow live, having a salary or pension of 6-7 thousand. And on the other hand, the presence of a garden is a guarantee that, having planted everything in May, you will not die in the summer, you simply have no right: after all, in the fall you need to harvest, roll up the banks. Vegetable chores make you live, no matter how difficult it is.

One mother's friend, having been discharged from the oncology department after the operation, immediately rushed into the garden. Another, with a severe diagnosis, in moments of enlightenment fiddled with tomatoes. Often our elderly people fall in the beds with a stroke. Right from the gardens they are taken away by an ambulance. Someone - forever, like my neighbor Aunt Olya.

The garden has become a real, tangible substitute for the ideal meaning of life. After all, everyone needs meaning, always, everywhere.

... In general, everything that binds a person to the earth is relevant in a small town - household plots, sheds, cellars, caissons, garages, own bathhouses.

But someone rushes to the stars: he studies the structure of spaceships, sings naive songs on the street with a guitar, plays retro melodies in an amateur brass band, tells girls about phraseological units. Although this "someone", I have no doubt, also works hard in the garden.

... There is, there is a reason to think about the province, and think about it - with tenderness.

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In our world, most people tend to live in metropolitan areas, but living in a small city has a lot of advantages. Yes, small towns are not as interesting and beautiful as large ones, but there is still something special and attractive in them. Every time, thinking about moving to a metropolis, it is worth remembering the catchphrase: "It's good where we are not."

Living in a small town, especially if you were born there and where you have family, friends, home, pets, and favorite places, often helps to get through difficult times. It is one thing to travel, explore new places, try new things, learn about other cultures, and quite another to constantly live in the epicenter of business and tourism.

Here are some reasons to live in a small town.

1. Lower cost of living

Probably the most obvious reason for living in a small city is the lower cost of living than in a large city. Housing, food, clothing and many other things in small towns are cheaper. It is cheaper and easier to buy or build your own house here, you can buy a car without a long period of savings, and you can eat without spending your entire salary on it. It is much easier to save money in a small town.

2. Easier to raise children

Since the cost of living in small towns is cheaper, it is much easier to raise a family here. Of course, children can be brought up anywhere and the big city opens up more opportunities for our children and offers a more comfortable lifestyle, but to be honest, most urban children are spoiled and selfish. And the reason for this is a wide range of temptations. Most of them do not want to work or study. Often, the purpose of their life is entertainment and pleasure.

3. Nature

Of course, nature is better in a small town. The air is clean and fresh, especially in the early morning and late evening. There is a lot of greenery, parks, ponds and rivers, breathtaking landscapes and living creatures, fewer factories and plants. Not surprisingly, people living in small towns are healthier and live longer. Of course, it all depends on where you live. In some countries, factories and factories are built in small towns.

4. Easier to get around the city on foot

Communication in a big city requires either a private car or a considerable budget for public transport, while in a small city you can get to work on foot or by bike. Moreover, you can save not only time and money, but also improve your health and keep your weight under control. Hiking and cycling are ways to turn a routine process into a daily workout. In addition, you can forget about tiresome traffic jams.

5. Locals are friendlier

Many may disagree with this point, but often the people of the province are much more friendly and sociable than the ever-busy residents of metropolitan areas who do not have a minute of free time to talk with their neighbors. The problem with most people living in big cities is that they don't know their neighbors or the city itself. In small towns people know each other and help each other when needed.

6. Entertainment

In large cities there are shopping centers, museums, cinemas, theaters, spas, cafes and restaurants for every taste and budget. It seems that in a big city it is never boring. But even small towns have more to offer than many think. It also has parks, cinemas, theatres, restaurants, shops and markets. Yes, they are not as big and luxurious as in big cities, but you definitely won't get bored here.

Living in a small town has its perks. The only drawback is limited labor opportunities. In a small town, it can be difficult to find a job and build a full-time career. But, again, it all depends on you. If you want to work, you will find a job. If you want to be healthy, then be sure to be. Finally, if you want to be happy, you will be happy no matter where you live. Do you agree with the benefits of living in a small town?