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Paradoxes of Population Accounting of Closed Cities in the USSR and Subsequent Urban Dynamics
https://doi.org/10.31857/S2587556624050111
EDN: AOMJTC
Abstract
In the post-war period, the USSR developed a unique practice for the world of hiding many cities and towns, whose activities were related to the country’s defense capability. More than 1 mln people lived in the nuclear industry cities in the Urals, Siberia and the Volga region, cities and towns at the bases of the navy, strategic rocket forces and the space industry, which were not marked on any map. This population was considered as belonging to other cities (acceptors) and even other regions. Therefore, the official data on the population of many cities in the postwar censuses of the USSR are not reliable, and the calculations of dynamics based on them are incorrect. Subsequently, the data from the Soviet population censuses were never recalculated. There are no publications estimating the population of the closed and acceptor cities in the Soviet period. The author developed a methodology for such an assessment and based on it calculated the population of 46 closed settlements and 89 acceptor cities on the territory of the RSFSR as of the dates of the 1959, 1970, 1979 and 1989 censuses. In addition to Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) data on the population, information from the Dom.MinZKH Online service on the number of apartments in closed settlements by year of commissioning was used. The analysis showed that most of the population of the closed cities in the nuclear industry was considered in other regions, and therefore the population of 8 regions was consistently overestimated, and 6 were underestimated. As a rule, the population was attributed to regional centers, but in some regions, it was attributed to other cities. The population of other closed settlements was considered in their regions: in nearby urban settlements or in regional centers. The result of this practice was an overestimation of the population of 21 regional centers of Russia and 68 other cities, as well as settlements located mainly in the Urals and Siberia.
About the Author
A. E. Raisikh
Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Moscow
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For citations:
Raisikh A.E. Paradoxes of Population Accounting of Closed Cities in the USSR and Subsequent Urban Dynamics. Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk. Seriya Geograficheskaya. 2024;88(5):770-786. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31857/S2587556624050111. EDN: AOMJTC
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