The separation, somewhat arbitrary, of the ASSRs from the Russian republic's totals allows us to take a look at the Russian republic without its non-Russian autonomous subunits. This “purer” Russia had a population of 101,631,000 in 1959, which rose to 111,487,000 in 1970. This gain of 9.7 percent was lower than the RSFSR average and much lower than that recorded by the combined ASSRs. The Russian population in this “Russia proper” grew faster than the population at large, however, though still more slowly than that of the Russians out-36 Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union
Side Russia. The Russians in this smaller RSFSR gained 9,052,000 people (from 90,666.000 to 99,718,000), which virtually equals an increase of 10 percent. Their share in the population was high (89.2 percent) in 1959 and increased slightly by 1970 (89.4 percent).
Unlike the autonomous republics, only population totals are available for the provinces of the RSFSR. Since these oblasts were overwhelmingly Russian in 1959, however, it may be correct to assume that changes in their population after the 1959 census closely reflected the changes in their Russian population. The figures published in Sovetskaia Rossiia (May 20,1971) show that the growth of population in a majority of the “purely Russian” regions of the F. uropean RSFSR stood far below the republic’s average. Thus, in the Central Economic region, whose importance is conveyed by its name, population grew from
25,718,000 to 27,658,000; that is, by 7.52 percent in an 11-ycar period. If one subtracts from these totals the hgures for Moscow and Moscow oblast where growth was higher, we are left with 11 oblasts and a growth from 14,768,000 to 14,822,000, which equals 0.36 percent. None of these oblasts grew by more than 8 percent, most achieved less, while four (Kalinin, Kostroma, Riazan, and Smolensk) actually lost population. The population of Orel oblast gained 0.21, and that of Yaroslavl gained 0.28 percent over 11 years. Three of the provinces in the Northwestern region, Vologda, Novgorod, and Pskov, also lost population. (Leningrad, on the other hand, gained considerably.) The region of Volga-Viatka grew by just above 1 percent (this figure includes higher growth in the Mari, Mordovian, and Chuvash ASSRs), but the Kirov oblast in it fell considerably below its 1959 total. The Central Black Earth region, comprising five oblasts located to the south of the Central region, gained less than 3 percent, and two of its oblasts, Kursk and Tambov, recorded an absolute decline. The economic regions of the Urals and West Siberia were under the RSFSR levels of growth and so were two of the oblasts of the Volga (Povolzhskii) region. On the whole, however, the last-named region grew fast, especially its provinces of Volgograd and Astrakhan. The East Siberian region had a growth above the RSFSR average (15.3 percent) though not equal to the USSR average, and the Far Eastern increased even more (19.5 percent). However, the Far Eastern region’s population was low in absolute terms (4,834,000 in 1959, and 5,780,000 in 1970), and it decreased on the island of Sakhalin (loss of 34,000 from the 1959 figure of 649,000). In the late 1950s the two Siberian regions and the Far East had been expected to grow
The Nations of the USSR in 1970 37
Especially rapidly in the next decades, while North Caucasus had been thought of as one of the sources of migrants to the east. Just the reverse happened in the 1960s: In the light of the Soviet 1970 census (and in accordance with the earlier admissions in the Soviet press) the Far East and the Urals were providing population to Ukraine, North Caucasus, and the Baltic states. Migration from European Russia that had been anticipated to go to the east assumed unexpectedly large dimensions— and turned in unexpected directions, to the south and west. Scholars began to write about the depopulation of central Russian provinces brought about by emigration and (since the migrants were mostly young) by a continuing decrease in the birth rate.
World History
