The Countryside in the Remote Outskirts of Moscow

Abstract

The article deals with the impact of the Moscow agglomeration on the rural areas of the surrounding regions of the Central Federal district by various parameters related to spatial disparities in population change, economic activity, employment and mobility of the population, land use and secondary suburban development. The settlement patterns around the Moscow agglomeration and its change due to the ongoing urbanization are analyzed. The invariance of the suburban-peripheral organization of this territory is shown. The post-Soviet transformation of agriculture in Russia has led not only to shrinking land use around the Moscow agglomeration, but also to selective local developments of industrialized agriculture with a small number of employees, aimed at supplying Moscow and other large cities. At the same time, small-scale private economy with the depletion of labor potential, on the one hand, and the possibility of earnings outside agriculture, on the other, collapses. Оne of the adaptation options of the local population to unemployment in rural areas was regular labor migration to the Moscow agglomeration, which still retains the population in villages. In summer, the regions around Moscow Oblast are filled with urban residents, whose number in many areas exceeds the number of the local rural residents. The combination of the local industrial rural economy with mass development of seasonal second home recreation at this stage is the main way of development of rural areas in that large territory.