Tatiana Zaslavskaia, The Fate of the Small Siberian Village. September 12, 1980

This article challenged the late Soviet policy of concentrating rural life in "central" settlements while letting small hamlets wither as "futureless." Withdrawing schools, clinics, shops, and transport became a self-fulfilling prophecy: out-migration accelerated, collective farms lost workforce and local knowledge. The piece documents a rare public debate about whether administrative rationalization was eroding Russia's rural social fabric.

Original Source: Т. И. Заславская, Р. В. Рывкина. «Судьба малой сибирской деревни». «Советская Россия», 12 сентября 1980 г.

Over the past 20 years, the number of villages in Western Siberia with fewer than 200 residents has decreased by approximately 50%. Just about half of all the settlements established over the centuries by our grandfathers and great- grandfathers have disappeared from the face of the earth. There has been a great deal of controversy on this score. One of the principal arguments in favor of eliminating the small villages was the need to slow out-migration and keep people in the countryside. However, our research has shown that, in the first place, migration from the villages into the cities has increased. For example, in Novosibirsk Province in the early 1960s, when active consolidation of so-called "futureless" villages began, migration also rose. Whereas the rural population decreased by an average of 13,000 per year during 1939-1959, the average annual decrease was 16,000 in 1959-1970 and 22,000 in 1971-1976. In the second place, migration increased "in spite of consolidation," and to a substantial degree because of it. Our polls "tell the story": Moving to a new place of residence means considerable outlays of effort and money. Therefore, many residents of small villages decide that if they're going to have to leave the place they're used to anyhow, they'd might as well move directly to a suburb or a city.

Of course, one cannot judge the results of the consolidation of small settlements only by the migration rates that would be too narrow a basis. Certainly it also makes sense to approach this question from the standpoint of the functions that the countryside fulfills in the life of society. In other words, we should try to find out whether these functions are fulfilled better or worse when the small villages have been eliminated.

One must admit that from a social standpoint a definite positive result is achieved. People who move into large

settlements begin to live better, of course. As for the production function of the rural locality, that's not such a simple matter. Fields, hayfields, pastures and livestock sections are scattered throughout each farm's territory, and the grain has to be harvested and the cows pastured where the appropriate crops grow. The rural worker needs to have daily access to his workplace, just as the old-time peasant in the small village did. Yet roads between farms are poor, as we know, and in bad weather they often become completely impassable. Cows go unfed on the livestock section because people can't get to them.

Just a few days ago we polled the chairmen of the rural Soviets of Maslianino District in Novosibirsk Province (our base area), asking them whether the small villages should be preserved. Every last one of them replied: "Yes." And one added: "But it's getting late!"

It's very indicative that some executives, having had the bitter experience of seeing the damage done by the closing down of small villages, reoriented themselves before it was too late. One might say that a trend toward the deliberate preservation of such villages has emerged ...

Another new development, which no one anticipated, is becoming clear. A too widely spaced network of settlements, even though they are larger (actually, they're only average in population density), turns out to be unviable. The living environment in settlements with populations of 300 to 500 that are spatially isolated from one another has been found to be not better, but worse and less developed, than that provided by a dense network of villages. The population begins to move away, and what had initially been bigger settlements first become small again, then even smaller, and finally they disappear entirely.

The village is only one element of the settlement network; the second (or first) is the city. Therefore, the small village cannot help but exert a certain influence on the development of Siberian cities. And this influence is being felt quite acutely. For instance, in new cities (in the zone of the Baikal-Amur Main Line), builders and residents are experiencing difficulties because of the depopulation of the surrounding areas. Siberian cities lack a developed recreation system for residents' leisure-time use. The cities here are populated by former villagers; therefore, kinship ties are strong between Siberian cities and Siberian villages, including remote ones. This means that the preservation of small villages facilitates the preservation of economic ties with relatives. Unfortunately, we sociologists have given this problem almost no study.

No, we don't mean to say that the fate of the Siberian city depends entirely on the small village. But we're convinced that such mutual connections exist-to us, this is indisputable.

Our research on Siberian settlements has shown that the percentage of families engaged in personal farming operations is three times as high in small villages as it is in large villages. In small villages, the private plots (which are right next to the houses, as a rule) are substantially larger, and the numbers of cattle, hogs, sheep, goats and poultry raised are greater. This increases the volume of output produced, and, hence, the percentage of it that is sold outside the farm. In this way, the small village makes a definite contribution to providing district centers and cities with food products.

The resident of the small village values the good natural conditions and the opportunity to live in close contact with nature. This theme can be heard consistently in all our large-scale surveys. The statement "We're all one big family here" also recurs persistently as a characterization of life in the small villages.

Of course, the fact that the small village's way of life has certain advantages doesn't mean that it's "cloudless." Not at all. Today, this way of life is favored primarily by middle-aged and elderly people who were born in a village, have lived all or nearly all of their lives here and, as a rule, have not received much education ...

Is it realistic to preserve the great multitude of small villages? No, of course not. And it would be wrong to pose such a task. Universal secondary education, the growth of culture and the development of the mass news media will inevitably bring about a restructuring of rural residents' needs. Therefore, migration out of small villages into large ones and out of the large villages into the cities will outweigh the reverse flow for a long time yet. This is a natural historical process. But society, we believe, clearly does not need to have the process of consolidating villages speeded up artificially-and where population density is low, the process should even be "held back" as much as possible. This necessitates a policy of social protectionism with respect to the small village.

What do we have in mind here? A nice, spacious house with a local system of public services and amenities, assistance from the collective farm and state farm in farming the private plot, priority in the provision of personal transportation. An elementary school is extremely necessary, because it hardly makes sense to send a small child away to boarding school. It's no accident that when a school closes, the village it was in disappears shortly thereafter. Even though this will entail certain outlays, the norms that are holding back the development of all types of consumer services for medium-sized and small villages ought to be changed and transportation between villages improved. These outlays will inevitably pay for themselves in the long run, because it would be more costly to settle deserted rural localities all over again.

Everyone is quite familiar with the difficulties of attracting labor resources to Siberia and the North, in whose harsh climate the cost of building the infrastructure frequently runs as high as 17,000 to 20,000 rubles per person per year. Hence, it's clear that technical progress in these regions should be oriented as much as possible toward the extensive mechanization and automation of processes, the creation of "unpeopled" production facilities, and the use of aggregates with a high unit capacity. The comprehensive utilization of raw-material resources and a high concentration of production should become characteristic features of this progress.

One also must not overlook the close ties that exist among the specific problems of the development of Siberia's riches. For example, for many years there has been talk about creating equipment designed for use in the North. But then a specific task comes up-an extremely large gas deposit must be developed in the Urengoi region, for instance. And once again the question arises of special alloys with a high threshold of cold resistance and of industrial rubber items, lubricants and thermal insulating materials that can be used in low-temperature conditions. However, specialists estimate that a changeover to equipment designed for use in the North would make it possible to save as much as 1.5 billion to 2 billion rubles a year. And, most important, it would no longer be necessary to hire nearly 1 million additional people to maintain and repair equipment. The notorious economizing on housing and social, cultural and consumer-service facilities, which results in serious losses, should also be abandoned. It is essential that housing space per capita be raised to at least the nationwide average during the present five-year plan.

It's time for many of our economic managers, scientists and designers to recognize that what would be too expensive in the country's more habitable central and southern regions may prove to be the only economically justifiable solution in Siberia's harsh conditions. For example, the inexpensiveness of the electricity generated there permits developers to make wide use of the advantages of electrical-technology processes and of highly energy-intensive new methods of working metals. By the same token, "exotic" means of transportation--up to and including air-cushion vehicles and combination dirigible-helicopters--may prove indispensable there.

In short, Siberia and its problems require not a traditional but a creative approach to both technical policy and questions of organization and management ...

Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. XXXII, No. 37 (1981), pp. 5-6.