Abstract
Discourses over interregional migration at the time of the Soviet era have shown that, in the late Soviet era, the effects of incentive mechanisms including national investment became limited. However, the population influx was continuously seen in Far East or Extreme North regions even at the very end of the Soviet period, suggesting the possibility of effective governmental management on geographical redistribution of population. This chapter confirmed the effectiveness of the governmental control on population migration in the late Soviet era, using newly available data of migration matrix which identifies origin and destination of population flows. Region-based panel data analyses revealed that the analytical unit utilized in previous studies may involve problems so that the effect of various factors could not be accurately grasped. This shows the necessity of further verification of the results that have been obtained during the Soviet era. Additionally, the limitations and possibilities of governmental control on population re-distribution in a country are suggested.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Russian Government Archive of Economics RGAE website, < http://rgae.ru/arkhiv-rgaeistoriya-arkhiva.shtml > (“The history of RGAE”), accessed on June 18, 2018.
- 2.
“Establishment of unified passports for the Soviet Union and obligation to obtain a residence permit,” decision dated December 27, 1932 by the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union.
- 3.
Krechetnikov, A., Propiska: neperevodima i neistrebima, BBC Moscow Website, December 11, 2013. < https://www.bbc.com/russian/russia/2013/12/130304_russia_registration_history.shtml>, accessed on June 30, 2018 (in Russian).
- 4.
“Rules and approvals concerning the passport system in the Soviet Union,” Decision No.677, dated August 28, 1974, by the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union.
- 5.
The author examined interregional population migration matrixes (paper documents) from the 1950s to the 1960s at the Russian State Archive of the Economy, and found that there were only documents on migration between cities. There were no statistics at all recording origins and destinations for other forms of migration.
- 6.
Regions located above in the Arctic and regions with similarly harsh living conditions. These regions received favorable treatment in the distribution of goods and wage conditions. See “Rules concerning benefits for persons working in the far north of the Russian republic,” decision dated January 1, 1932 by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic Council of People’s Commissars.
- 7.
According to official Soviet documents, total gulag labor was predicted to peak at more than 2.5 million people in 1950. The figure remained higher than 1.32 million people in 1954, but had declined by more than a million people compared with 1953 (GARF, F-R9414, Op.1, D.1319, L.1-1ob., 4-4ob., 7-7ob., 10-10ob., 18-18ob., 21-21ob).
- 8.
“Economic regions” was a regional classification established for the purpose of economic planning and management in the Soviet Union. The Russian Republic, which covered an area more than 45 times that of Japan’s, contained 11 economic regions. In addition, the Ukrainian Republic, which had a population of over 50 million and a land area 1.6 times that of Japan’s at the end of the Soviet era constituted a single economic region.
- 9.
The population censuses for 1926 and 1989 basically only recorded place of birth and current residence. Normally, population migration analysis covers movement between the previous residence and the current residence, and this other sort of migration, namely when the “place of birth” and the “current residence” differ, is called “lifetime migration.” Lifetime migration cannot be explained in terms of short-term factors, so is unsuitable as a target for the type of analysis performed in this paper. Note also that the 1979 population census did not include any questions about interregional migration. See Demograficheskaya entsiklopediya, Tkachenko, A. A. ed., Izdatel’stvo Entsiklopediya: Moscow, 2013 (in Russian).
- 10.
This was used by Mitchneck (1991).
- 11.
At the time, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug was part of the Arkhangelsk Oblast, while the Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia was an autonomous oblast and included in the Stavropol Krai. Furthermore, the Republic of Adygea was an autonomous oblast in the Krasnodar Krai, and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug were part of the Tyumen Oblast. The Republic of Altai was the Mountainous Altai Oblast, which was part of the Altai region, and the Republic of Khakassia was an autonomous oblast in the Krasnoyarsk Krai. All these autonomous okrugs and republics, which are now independent administrative zones (federal subjects) are treated as though they are part of each oblast and region, and even this data could not allow records of interregional population migration to be obtained.
- 12.
“Expenditure on charged services” was an expenditure category that appeared frequently during the Soviet era. It refers to expenditure on transport, communication, education, travel, healthcare, cultural activities (museums, theatres, etc.).
- 13.
The types and number of explanatory variables used probably appear somewhat limited. However, this is due to the limitations imposed on research on the Soviet economy. In fact, very few economic statistics were published during the Soviet era, which has proved a hindrance to analysis. For example, Mitchneck (1991) asserted that the only explanatory variables were population size, distance, state investment, and service expenditures. The analysis in this paper is exposed to the same limitations, and so it will only be possible to draw tentative conclusions.
- 14.
Here, whenever possible, it would be desirable to recompile the data in formats employed in Mitchneck (1991) and other previous research, such as “inter-economic-region migration,” “inter-republic migration,” or “intercity migration,” and then, by performing additional testing of the previous research, show how the impact of the distance variable changes in comparison. However, none of the “economic regions” in previous research are limited to Russia. They cover the entire Soviet Union, which had a land area that was 1.5 times and a total population that was almost twice that of Russia’s, so they are not suitable for additional testing. When desirable results were obtained in accordance with the authors’ claims, it can be said that the claims were reasonable, but on the other hand, when only unexpected results could be obtained, it is possible to cite the difference in the coverage of the analysis as a reason. The author therefore decided to wait until there is an opportunity to obtain relevant data for the Soviet Union as a whole, so for this paper the author abandoned this investigation.
- 15.
In 1985, more than 60% of Japanese households owned a car, and there were 223 cars for every 1,000 people. In the same year in the Russian Republic (as it was in the Soviet era), however, there were fewer than 45 cars for every 1,000 people. This is lower than the number of cars per 1,000 people in Japan in 1969 (See Goskomstat Rossii, Pokazateli sotsial’nogo razvitiya Rossiyskoy federatsii i ee regionov, 1993, p. 367 [in Russian]).
- 16.
BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015, http://www.bp.com/genericsection.do?categoryId=92&contentId=7005893, http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html, accessed on July 1, 2018).
- 17.
This trend continued after that, with the 2010 population census revealing that flows toward the Central Federal District had become even more pronounced in relative terms (Kumo, 2017).
- 18.
The results are omitted here.
References
Ball, B., & Demko, G. J. (1978). Internal migration in the soviet union. Economic Geography, 54(2), 95–114.
Cole, J. P. (1990). Changes in the population of larger cities of the USSR. Soviet Geography, 31(3), 160–172.
Cole, J. P., & Filatotchev, I. V. (1992). Some observations on migration within and from the former USSR in the 1990s. Post-Soviet Geography, 33(7), 432–453.
Greenwood, M. J. (2019). The migration legacy of E. G. Ravenstein. Migration Studies, 2(2), 269–278.
Ishikawa, Y. (2001). Studies on migration transition. University of Kyoto Press.
Iwasaki, I., & K. Kumo (2020). Transformational recession and recovery: determinants of the J-curved growth path. In I. Iwasaki (Ed.), The economics of transition: Developing and reforming emerging economies (pp. 67–118).
Iwasaki, I., & T. Suzuki (2020). Transition strategy debate: Radicalism versus gradualism. In I. Iwasaki (Ed.), The economics of transition: Developing and reforming emerging economies (pp. 25–66).
Kalemeneva, E. (2019). From new socialist cities to thaw experimentation in arctic townscapes: Leningrad architects attempt to modernise the Soviet North. Europe-Asia Studies, 71(3), 426–449.
Kumo, K. (2003). Migration and regional development in the Soviet Union and Russia: A geographical approach. Beck Publisher Russia.
Kumo, K. (2017). Interregional migration: Analysis of origin-to-destination matrix. In T. Karabchuk, K. Kumo & E. Selezneva (Eds.), Demography of Russia: From the past to the present (pp. 261–314) Palgrave Macmillan.
Matthews, M. (1993). The passport society: Controlling movement in Russia and the USSR. Westview Press.
Mitchneck, B. A. (1991). Geographical and economic determinants of interregional migration in the USSR, 1968–1985. Soviet Geography, 32(3), 168–189.
Nykanen, N. (2018). Competing institutional logics in Soviet industrial location policy. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 59(3–4), 314–339.
Orttung, R. W., Anisimov, O., Badina, S., Burns, C., Cho, L., DiNapoli, B., Jull, M., Shaiman, M., Shapovalova, K., Silinsky, L., Zhang, E., & Zhiltcova, Y. (2020). Measuring the sustainability of Russia’s arctic cities. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01395-9
Oshchepkov, A. Y. (2007). Mezhregionalnaya migratsiya v Rossii. Higher School of Economics (in Russian).
Perevedentsev, V. (1966). Migratsiya naseleniya i trudovyye problemy Sibiri. Nauka. (in Russian).
Rodgers, A. (1974). The location dynamics of Soviet industry. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 64(2), 226–240.
Rowland, R. H. (1989). National and regional population trends in the USSR, 1979–89: preliminary results from the 1989 census. Soviet Geography, 30(9), 635–669.
Samorodov, A. (1991). Labor market problems and developments in the republics. In G. Standing (Ed.), The new Soviet labor market (pp. 145–163). International Labor Office.
Vakulenko, E. S. (2019). Motivy vnutrenney migratsii naseleniya v Rossii: chto izmenilos v posledniye gody? Prikladnaya ekonometrika, 55, 113–138 (in Russian).
Vorob'yev, V. V. (1977). Naseleniye vostochnoy Sibiri, Nauka: Nobosibirsk (in Russian).
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by Grant in Aid for Scientific Research B (19H01478) by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Japan, and the Joint Usage and Research Center Program of Hitotsubashi IER in 2021.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kumo, K. (2023). Interregional Migration: Reexamination of Population Redistribution in Russia at the Late Soviet Period. In: Martinat, S., Kumar, V., Torre, A., Lavrikova, Y., Kuzmin, E. (eds) Landmarks for Spatial Development. Contributions to Regional Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37349-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37349-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-37348-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-37349-7
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)