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Global Cities versus Rustbelt Realities: The Dilemmas of Urban Development in Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2020

Stephen Crowley
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Abstract

Following the argument of urban geographers that “superstar” cities are the engines of economic growth in a globalized era, Kremlin advisor Aleksei Kudrin and others have argued that Russia should invest in a handful of major cities including Moscow and St. Petersburg. That advice has now become part of official government planning. In stark contrast to the developed world, however, Russia's population is not concentrated in a few urban centers, but in several hundred medium-sized cities and towns, many distributed across Russia's vast territory, often far from other metropolitan agglomerations. These include more than a hundred officially-designated “monotowns,” whose fate is dependent on a single industry, which the government ranks according to the severity of their “socio-economic conditions.” This paper will explore the dilemmas faced by monotowns in particular, and the challenge to authorities of balancing the need for new economic growth from urban metropolises against preventing social unrest in declining industrial communities.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 79 , Issue 2 , Summer 2020 , pp. 365 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

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Footnotes

Research for this work was generously supported by a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Kennan Institute. It also benefitted from a research workshop on Urban Activism in Russia held by Indiana University in Berlin, and talks given at the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki, and at the Russian & East European Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Helpful comments were provided by, among others, Jeremy Morris, Andrey Semenev, Regina Smyth, Rudra Sil, Tom Remington, Mitchell Orenstein, Bob Orttung, Irina Olimpieva, Marina Khmelnitskaya, Markku Kivinen, and Alla Bolotova.

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24 Clifford Gaddy and Barry William Ickes, Bear Traps on Russia’s Road to Modernization (New York, 2013), 51.

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26 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 33.

27 Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold (Washington, D.C., 2003); Gaddy and Ickes, Bear Traps on Russia’s Road to Modernization.

28 The World Bank, “Special Topic: The Challenge of Monocities,” The Russian Economic Report, no. 22, June 16, 2010, p. 23.

29 Pavel Romanov, “The Regional Elite in the Epoch of Bankruptcy,” in Simon Clarke, ed., Conflict and Change in the Russian Industrial Enterprise (Cheltenham, 1996), 224.

30 Thomas F. Remington, The Politics of Inequality in Russia (Cambridge, Eng., 2011); Susanne A. Wengle, Post-Soviet Power: State-Led Development and Russia’s Marketization (New York, 2015); David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, 1999).

31 Graeme B. Robertson, The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia (New York, 2011).

32 Wengle, Post-Soviet Power, 92–93.

33 Timothy Heleniak, “International Comparisons of Population Mobility in Russia,” International Journal of Population Research, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/361497 (accessed April 6, 2020).

34 Wengle, Post-Soviet Power, 93.

35 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 41.

36 Clifford Gaddy and Barry W. Ickes, “The Russian Economy Through 2020: The Challenge of Managing Rent Addiction,” in Maria Lipman and Nikolay Petrov, eds., Russia in 2020: Scenarios for the Future (Washington, D.C., 2011), 165.

37 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 42.

38 Evgenii΄ Gontmakher, “Stsenarii: Novocherkassk-2009,” Vedomosti, November 6, 2008, 210.

39 Samuel H. Baron, Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962 (Stanford, 2001).

40 Dmitry Oreshkin, “The 2nd-Largest Potemkin Village in History: Opinion,” The Moscow Times, December 17, 2008, at http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/tmt/373229.html (no longer available, last accessed April 30, 2015).

41 Alena V Ledeneva, Can Russia Modernise?: Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance (Cambridge, Eng., 2014).

42 Pravitel΄stvo Rossii, “Ob utverzhdenii perechnya monogorodov,” July 2, 2014, at http://government.ru/docs/14051/ (accessed April 6, 2020).

43 See, for example, the many sources cited by N. Iu. Zamyatina and A. N. Pilyasov, Innovatsionnyi poisk v monoprofil΄nykh gorodakh: Blokirovki razvitiia, novaia promyshlennaia politika i dorozhnaia karta peremen (Moscow, 2015), at http://istina.msu.ru/publications/book/9716243/ (accessed April 6, 2020).

44 N. Iu. Zamiatina and A. N. Piliasov, Innovatsionnyi poisk v monoprofil΄nykh gorodakh, 7. See also Natal΄ia Zubarevich, Regiony Rossii: Neravenstvo, krizis, modernizatsiia (Moscow, 2010).

45 I. I. Il΄ina, “Strategiia modernizatsii monogorodov Rossii,” in A. V. Turkov, ed., Razvitie monoprofil΄nykh naselennykh punktov v Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow, 2012).

46 Zamyatina and Pilyasov, Innovatsionnyi poisk v monoprofil΄nykh gorodakh.

47 For an-depth look at how such variation can impact the likelihood of protest, see Allison D. Evans, “Protest Patterns in Provincial Russia: A Paired Comparison of Company Towns,” Studies in Comparative International Development, 51 (2016), 456–81.

48 Zubarevich, Regiony Rossii: Neravenstvo, krizis, modernizatsiia, 86.

49 “The Challenge of Russia’s Montowns,” 24.

50 Simon Commander, Zlatko Nikoloski, and Alexander Plekhanov, “Employment Concentration and Resource Allocation: One-Company Towns in Russia,” IZA Discussion Paper, no. No. 6034 (October 2011): 10.

51 Pravitel΄stvo Rossii, “O kriteriiakh otneseniia munitsipal΄nykh obrazovanii k monogorodam i o kategoriiaakh monogorodov v zavisimosti ot riskov ukhudsheniia ikh sotsial΄noekonomicheskogo polozheniia,” July 31, 2014, at http://m.government.ru/docs/14049 (accessed May 8, 2020).

52 Pravitel΄stvo Rossii, “O kriteriiakh otneseniia,” pp. 4–5.

53 For a short description of the FSO, see Sinelschikova, “‘Putin’s People:’ The Mysterious Agency that guards the President’s Life,” Russia Beyond, June 1, 2018, at https://www.rbth.com/politics_and_society/2016/06/01/putins-people-the-mysterious-agency-that-guards-the-presidents-life_599181 (accessed April 6, 2020).

54 “Soveshchanie po voprosam stabil΄nogo razvitiia monogorodov,” Prezident Rossii, April 28, 2014, at http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20873 (accessed May 8, 2020).

55 Ol΄ga Solov΄eva, “Zhitelei monogorodov prevratiat v predprinimatelei,” Nezavisimaia Gazeta, March 2, 2017, at http://www.ng.ru/economics/2017-03-01/1_6939_shuvalov.html (accessed April 6, 2020).

56 Ol΄ga Solov΄eva, “FSO i profsoiuzy pomogaiut sledit΄ za sotsial΄nym dinamitom,” Nezavisimaia Gazeta, December 16, 2015, at http://www.ng.ru/economics/2015-12-16/4_fso.html (no longer available).

57 Iana Miliukova, “FSO zafiksirovala ukhudshenie situatsii v monogorodakh,” RBC, May 17, 2016, at http://www.rbc.ru/economics/17/05/2016/573b493e9a7947a4eefec46b (accessed April 6, 2020).

58 Yelena Malysheva, “Krizis okhvatil monogoroda,” Gazeta.ru, May 18, 2017, at https://www.gazeta.ru/business/2017/05/18/10679105.shtml (accessed April 6, 2020).

59 Sergei Tepliakov, “Sergei Mukhortov: ‘Ia ne ponimal, naskol΄ko eto neprosto—sovmeshchat΄ biznes i politiku,’” Kapitalist: Zhurnal o biznese, February 5, 2016, at http://kapitalist.tv/2016/02/05/sergey-mukhortov-ya-ne-ponimal-naskol/ (accessed April 6, 2020).

60 “Fonda Razvitiia Monogorodov,” at http://www.frmrus.ru/ (accessed April 6, 2020); Solov΄eva, “FSO i profsoiuzy pomogaiut sledit΄ za sotsial΄nym dinamitom.”

61 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 18.

62 Ibid., 12.

63 David Harvey, “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 71, no. 1, special issue on The Roots of Geographical Change: 1973 to the Present (1989): 3–17, https://doi.org/10.2307/490503 (accessed April 6, 2020).

64 Zamyatina and Pilyasov, “Single-Industry Towns of Russia: Lock-In and Drivers of Innovative Search,” Foresight and STI Governance 10, no. 3 (2016): 60.

65 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 106; Natalia Zubarevich, “Geopolitical Priorities in Russia’s Regional Policies: Opportunities and Risks,” Russian Politics & Law 53, no. 5–6, special issue on The Impact of Russia’s Authoritarian Turn on Society (September–October 2015): 51, https://doi.org/10.1080/10611940.2015.1146060 (accessed April 6, 2020).

66 Vladislav Inozemtsev, “Russia’s Economic Modernization: The Causes of a Failure,” Notes de l’Ifri: Russie.Nei.Visions, no. 96 (September 2016).

67 “Dying Soviet ‘Monotowns’ to Be Repurposed! The Era of Bleak Industrial Rust Cities Is Over!,” Vesti.ru, August 9, 2019, at https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=3176985&cid=4441 (accessed April 6, 2020). The ratio of temporary to permanent jobs was left unstated. However, at least one government promise had been fulfilled: in 2011 then-Prime Minister Putin proclaimed that 200,000 new jobs would be created in monotowns by 2015. “Putin ozhidaet znachitel΄nogo snizheniia urovnia bezrabotitsy k godu 2015,” Izvestiia, January 12, 2011, at http://izvestia.ru/news/483926 (accessed April 6, 2020).

68 “Schetnaia Palata: Depressivnye monogoroda ne poluchali subsidii ot gosprogrammy s 2016 goda,” TASS, July 29, 2019, at https://tass.ru/ekonomika/6713799 (accessed May 8, 2020). For previous criticism from the Audit Chamber, see Solov΄eva, “Zhitelei monogorodov prevratiat v predprinimatelei”; Elena Malysheva, “Krizis okhvatil monogoroda.”

69 Kirill Iankov, “Monogoroda s problemami i bez,” Vedomosti, November 19, 2019, at https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2019/11/20/816677-monogoroda-problemami (accessed April 6, 2020).

70 “Strategiia razvitiia nekommercheskoi organizatsii do 2020 g.,” Fond razvitiia monogorodov, http://www.frmrus.ru/, accessed 8/16/2018 (no longer available).

71 Solov΄eva, “Zhitelei monogorodov prevratiat v predprinimatelei”; Malysheva, “Krizis okhvatil monogoroda.”

72 Cited in Malysheva, “Krizis okhvatil monogoroda.”

73 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 12, 34.

74 Ibid., 18, 34.

75 Ibid., 17.

76 Aleksei Kudrin, “Goroda vmesto nefti,” Vedomosti, July 19, 2017, at https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2017/07/20/724744-goroda-nefti (accessed April 6, 2020); Tsentr strategicheskikh razrabotok, “Tekhnologii umnogo goroda v Rossiiskikh gorodakh: Prioritetnye napravleniia vnedreniia” (Moscow, June 2018).

77 Kudrin, “Goroda vmesto nefti.”

78 “Kudrin: Moskva i Sankt-Peterburg k 2035 godu sostaviat 40% VVP Rossii,” Gazeta.ru, July 17, 2018, at https://www.gazeta.ru/business/news/2018/07/17/n_11800609.shtml (accessed April 6, 2020).

79 “Piat΄ tezisov Alekseia Kudrina o regional΄noi politike,” Tsentr strategicheskikh razrabotok (TsSR), at https://www.csr.ru/ru/news/pyat-tezisov-alekseya-kudrina-o-regionalnoj-politike/ (accessed April 6, 2020).

80 Tsentr strategicheskikh razrabotok, “Tekhnologii umnogo goroda v Rossiiskikh gorodakh: Prioritetnye napravleniia vnedreniia.”

81 Kudrin, “Goroda vmesto nefti.”

82 “Razvitie gorodov dolzhno stat΄ dvizhushchei siloi dlia strany, zaiavil Putin.” However, within days his campaign website revised the statement, promising to make sure that small cities and villages had access to all necessary goods and services: “Razvitie gorodov dolzhno stat΄ dvizhushchei siloi dlia vsei strany.”

83 Pravitel΄svo Rossiiskoi Federatsii, “Stratagiia prostranstvennogo razvitiia.”

84 Pravitel΄svo Rossiiskoi Federatsii, “Kompleksnogo plana modernizatsii i rasshireniia magistral΄noi infrastruktury na period do 2024 goda,” September 30, 2018, at http://government.ru/docs/34297/ (accessed April 6, 2020); Leonid Bershidsky, “Putin Turns Swathes of Russia Into Flyover Country,” Bloomberg, March 7, 2019, at https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-07/putin-s-development-plan-picks-favorites-among-russian-regions (accessed May 22, 2020).

85 Bershidsky, “Putin Turns Swathes of Russia.”

86 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 112.

87 Zubarevich, Regiony Rossii: Neravenstvo, krizis, modernizatsiia. Such estimates vary considerably, though they all point to substantial differences between the US and Russia. The World bank claims that the average American moves twelve times in his or her lifetime, whereas the average Russian moves only twice. According to Gaddy and Ickes, Russia’s internal migration rate is about 1.2 percent, compared with over 5 percent in the US and Canada. World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography”; Gaddy and Ickes, Bear Traps on Russia’s Road to Modernization, 56.

88 Mikhailova, “Where Russians Should Live,” 39; Timothy Heleniak, “Out-Migration and Depopulation of the Russian North during the 1990s,” Post-Soviet Geography and Economics 40, no. 3 (1999): 155–205, https://doi.org/10.1080/10889388.1999.10641111.

89 Gaddy and Ickes, Bear Traps on Russia’s Road to Modernization, 55–56.

90 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 25; Yuri Andrienko and Sergei Guriev, “Determinants of Interregional Mobility in Russia,” Economics of Transition 12, no. 1 (2004): 1–27.

91 “Chislennost΄ naseleniia Rossiiskoi Federatsii po munitsipal΄nym obrazovaniiam,” Federal΄naia sluzhba gosudarstvennoi statistiki, at https://www.gks.ru/folder/11110/document/13282?print=1 (accessed April 6, 2020); “Itogi Vserossiiskoi perepisi naseleniia 2010 goda,” Federal΄naia sluzhba gosudarstvennoi statistiki, at http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/perepis2010/croc/perepis_itogi1612.htm (accessed April 6, 2020).

92 Morris, Everyday Post-Socialism.

93 Remington, The Politics of Inequality in Russia.

94 Guglielmo Meardi, Social Failures of EU Enlargement: A Case of Workers Voting with Their Feet (London, 2012).

95 Sarah Ashwin, Russian Workers: The Anatomy of Patience (Manchester, 1999). According to a local housing official, explaining why people remained despite the dramatic loss of jobs in AvtoVAZ, the town’s city-forming enterprise: “over the years, people in Tol΄iatti have acquired comfortable apartments.” Maksim Tovkailo, Anatoly Tyomkin, and Katya Nazarova, “AvtoVAZ Workers Offered Chance to Move,” The Moscow Times, January 29, 2010, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/2010/1/article/avtovaz-workers-offered-chance-to-move/398474.html. Accessed 09/07/2014.

96 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 36.

97 Commander, Nikoloski, and Plekhanov, “Employment Concentration and Resource Allocation.”

98 Andrienko and Guriev, “Determinants of Interregional Mobility in Russia.”

99 Zamyatina and Pilyasov, “Single-Industry Towns of Russia,” 59. The authors argue, however, that “It is precisely the local community, and not abstract indicators, that determines the destiny of single-industry territories, including making radical decisions” for their future.

100 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 118.

101 World Bank, “Russia: Reshaping Economic Geography,” 26, 114, emphasis added.

102 Zamyatina and Pilyasov, “Single-Industry Towns of Russia.”

103 Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” The American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (November 1985): 481–510.

104 Zamyatina and Pilyasov, “Single-Industry Towns of Russia,” 56, original emphasis.

105 Zamyatina and Pilyasov, 57. Zamyatina and Pilyasov’s contention that “cognitive barriers” and “dependence mentalities” are the main impediment to resolving the challenge of Russia’s monotowns undercuts their earlier argument that any solution must be driven by the interests and concerns of residents themselves. Moreover, their research also points out that paradoxically the most isolated monotowns can become the most innovative, since they have little alternative. Zamyatina and Pilyasov, 57–58.

106 Morris, Everyday Post-Socialism.

107 Megan Dixon and Jessica Graybill, “Uncertainty in the Urban Form: Post-Soviet Cities Today,” in Edward C. Holland and Matthew Derrick, eds., Questioning Post-Soviet (Washington, D.C., 2016), 24.

108 Ironically, it appears that the very harshness of such locations can over time create a strong sense of community, and of mutual reliance and bonding with fellow residents. Alla Bolotova and Florian Stammler, “How the North Became Home: Attachment to Place among Industrial Migrants in the Murmansk Region of Russia,” in Lee Huskey and Chris Southcott, eds., Migration in the Circumpolar North: Issues and Contexts (Edmonton, 2010) 193–220. See also Bolotova, Anastasia Karaseva, and Valeria Vasilyeva, “Mobility and Sense of Place among Youth in the Russian Arctic,” Siberica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies 16, no. 3 (Winter 2017): 77–123.

109 As a result, relocation programs, initiated by the World Bank and carried out by the Russian government, have proven largely ineffective. Such programs have targeted “surplus populations,” that is, pensioners and non-working residents, with the ultimate goal of leaving behind only those engaged in profitable economic activity. However, whereas retirees in northern regions of the US often seek to move to Florida, in the Russian case pensioners in Artic industrial towns have done just the opposite: a significant number would take the government’s housing incentive and purchase a dwelling in the south of Russia, but transfer it to one of their offspring, and themselves remain in the Far North. Bolotova and Stammler, “How the North Became Home.”

110 Paul Goble, “Moscow Can’t Afford to Support Russia’s Villages or to Shut Them Down,” Window on Eurasia—New Series, January 17, 2017, at http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/01/moscow-cant-afford-to-support-russias.html (accessed April 6, 2020).

111 Goble, “Moscow Can’t Afford to Support Russia’s Villages or to Shut Them Down.”

112 The quotations are taken from the website “Invisible Cities,” which contains oddly beautiful pictures of a number of Russian monotowns, as well as some insightful commentary from the residents themselves. “Asbest The Best,” Nevidimye goroda, at http://monogoroda.com/asbest-the-best/ (accessed April 6, 2020). Interestingly, the very same language is used by Bolotova and Stammler’s informants in describing their attachment to towns in the Far North: “We built this city,” and the North “pulls us in” (sever tyanet). Bolotova and Stammler, “How the North Became Home,” 193, 200, 216.

113 Bryan Walsh, “Urban Wastelands: The World’s 10 Most Polluted Places,” Time, November 4, 2013, at http://science.time.com/2013/11/04/urban-wastelands-the-worlds-10-most-polluted-places/slide/norilsk-russia/ (accessed April 6, 2020).

114 Emily Buder, “The Toxic City of Norilsk, Russia: ‘My Deadly Beautiful City’—The Atlantic,” The Atlantic, at https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/545228/my-deadly-beautiful-city-norilsk/ (accessed August 22, 2018, no longer avilable).

115 Bershidsky, “Putin Turns Swathes of Russia Into Flyover Country.”

116 Greene, “Running to Stand Still.”

117 Konstantin Gaaze, “The Accidental Formation of Russia’s War Coalition,” Carnegie Moscow Center, at http://carnegie.ru/commentary/71340 (accessed April 6, 2020).

118 “President Appoints Railway Car Building Plant’s Workshop Manager Presidental Envoy in Urals,” ITAR-TASS, May 21, 2012, at http://en.itar-tass.com/russianpress/675842 (accessed April 6, 2020). Underscoring the regime’s dilemmas in maintaining legitimacy, Uralvagonzavod was subsequently faced with bankruptcy. “Al΄fa-Bank podal isk o priznanii ‘Uralvagonzavoda’ bankrotom,” Interfax.ru, June 10, 2016, at http://www.interfax.ru/business/512862 (accessed April 6, 2020).

119 Wolfgang Streeck, “Trump and the Trumpists,” Inference: International Review of Science 3, no. 1 (April 2017): 5, at http://inference-review.com/article/trump-and-the-trumpists (accessed April 6, 2020).

120 OECD, OECD Regional Outlook 2019: Leveraging Megatrends for Cities and Rural Areas (Paris, 2019), at https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/publication/9789264312838-en (accessed April 6, 2020).