Russia in the Context of Spatial Development: a View from the Mid-Northern Periphery

Book review: Pokrovsky N.E., Nefedova T.G. (eds.) (2014) Potentsial Blizhnego Severa: ekonomika, ekologiya, sel’skie poseleniya. K 15-letiyu Ugorskogo proekta [The Potential of the Near North: Economy, Ecology, Rural Settlements. For the 15th Anniversary of the Ugory Project], Moscow: Logos; Ilyin V.I., Pokrovsky N.E. (eds.) (2016) Gorozhane v derevne. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya v rossijskoj glubinke: Dezurbanizatsiya i sel’sko-gorodskie soobshchestva [Citizens in the Village. Sociological Studies of the Russian Province: Deurbanization and Rural-urban Communities], Moscow: Universitetskaya kniga; Pokrovsky N.E., Nefedova T.G. (eds.) (2016) Ojkumena Blizhnego Severa Rossii [The Ecumene of Russia’s Near North], Moscow: Universitetskaya kniga.

Abstract

Anatoly Dmitriev – Corresponding Member RAS, Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Chief Researcher, Head of the Group of Conflicts Migration, Institute of Sociology RAS. Address: of. 107, bld. 5, 24/35, Krzhizhanovskogo St., Moscow, 117218, Russian Federation. E-mail: mig@isras.ru

Viktor Voronov – Doctor of Science in Sociology, Professor, Leading Researcher of Centre Regional Sociology and Conflictology, Institute of Sociology RAS; Leading Researcher, Social Investigations Center, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Daugavpils University. Address: of. 509, bld. 5, 24/35, Krzhizhanovskogo St., Moscow, 117218, Russian Federation. E-mail: viktor.voronov@du.lv

Citation: Dmitriev A., Voronov V. (2017) Russia in the Context of Spatial Development: a View from the Mid-Northern Periphery. Mir Rossii, vol. 26, no 4, pp. 169–181 (in Russian). DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2017-26-4-169-181

More than 15 years have passed since the start of the Ugory Project – a unique project in Kostroma region led by the Russian sociologist Pokrovskiy and involving many other social scientists in reviving and reshaping the life of a northern Russian village. The project is built around the theory of ‘cellular’ globalization, which guides the participants’ numerous interdisciplinary studies of the heterogeneous processes and phenomena occurring in rural communities of the Russian Near North, and shapes the development of the region. The review focuses on the discussion of the results from a series of these studies published consequently in three monographs, which reveal the peculiarities of spatial development in the peripheral areas of the European part of Russia’s Near North in its socio-economic, socio-geographical, ecological, socio-cultural and demographic aspects. In particular, the monographs raise the issues of social degradation in rural communities (‘social desertification’). This is due to the sharp compression of agricultural production and the destruction of the socio-economic, socio-cultural and administrative infrastructure of rural settlements which leads to an identity crisis and social pessimism among local residents. The studies also point to some possible solutions for the degradation of rural communities which rely on the adoption of innovative economic patterns, and reveal new social phenomena and forms of social interactions (such as freelance, remote work, mobile public service) which evolve in response to those changes.