Are All in Ulan-Ude? Transformation of Urban Settlement System in the Republic of Buryatia in the 1990s–2010s

Breslavskii Anatolii Sergeevich PhD in History Leading Researcher, Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 6 Sakhyanova str., office 314, Ulan-Ude, Republic of Buryatia, 670049, Russia anabres05@mail.ru Other publications by this author

1. Introduction

The temporary, but very long-term withdrawal of the state from the sphere of regulation of urban development in the 1990s clearly revealed all the weaknesses of both the administrative-command and the liberal model in urban governance in Russia, which we still have to study. At the same time, it is quite obvious that hundreds of urban settlements of the country at all levels, having lost a significant part of their industrial potential, support for city-forming enterprises, state social security, and resources for infrastructural development, have experienced serious socio-economic and demographic problems in search of new sources for existence and development. At the other pole of these processes are the country's sprawling (sometimes off–the-plan) urban agglomerations and separate, smaller, but attractive regional centers for internal and external migrants, in which researchers record both ongoing urbanization and unfolding suburbanization associated with the movement of population, capital, etc. from central urban neighborhoods to suburban ones (see Research review: ^{[12, pp. 105-151]}.

A comprehensive scientific understanding of the deep functional, demographic and structural transformation of the vast network of urban settlements in eastern Russia after the collapse of the USSR is still complicated by the lack of regional research ^{[13, pp. 17-51; 23; 24]}, including in the framework of historical demography, the disciplinary development of which is taking place with considerable difficulties ^[14]. In recent years, a few works in this subject field (within the specified chronological and territorial framework) have focused mainly on the regional centers of Siberia and the Far East (e.g. ^{[15; 20]}), while other urban settlements, with rare exceptions, remained on the periphery of academic attention, including domestic historical urban studies ^{[13, pp. 29-50]}.

In this article, we will present for discussion the main results of the post-Soviet transformation of urban settlement in the Republic of Buryatia in terms of its cities, villages and the metropolitan Ulan-Ude agglomeration. Note that this work is part of a larger study on the transformation of urban and suburban settlement in the regions of Transbaikalia and the Russian Far East in the 1990s and 2010s, which we have been implementing since 2018.

2. Historiography of the cities of Buryatia

Before proceeding to review the results of the study, we note that the study of the urbanization process in Buryatia has a relatively favorable foundation due to the efforts mainly of regional historians who highlighted in their works certain issues of urbanization, the formation of the urban population in the region in the pre-revolutionary (e.g.: ^{[17; 22]}) and the Soviet period (for example.: ^{[4; 6; 7; 25]}). The main attention of researchers of urban history was turned to the regional center: Ulan-Ude became the object of this kind of work, including a monographic plan, many times, which allowed local scientists in the mid-2010s to prepare a large two-volume scientific publication on the history of the city and the territory on which it is located, from the period of Antiquity to the beginning of the 20th century. XXI century. ^[26]. At the same time, the history of the remaining five existing small towns in the region (Babushkin, Gusinoozersk, Zakamensk, Kyakhta, Severobaikalsk) has already received noticeably less attention. ^{[5; 8; 9; 19; 21; 28; 29]}, with the exception, perhaps, of Kyakhta, due to its special historical significance ^{[18; 27]}. At the same time, for example, the same issues of demographic development of small towns in Buryatia in the 20th century remained poorly understood. At the same time, the history of urban-type settlements in the region is still poorly understood, of which there were more than thirty in the region by the end of the 1980s (see Table 1). In general, it must be admitted that the history of Soviet urbanization in the region has not received a comprehensive historical study, which to some extent makes it difficult to comprehend the post-Soviet transformation of urban and suburban settlement in the republic.

3. The results of urban settlement in the Buryat ASSR in the late 1980s.

Turning to empirical data, we note that in the Buryat ASSR (since 1992 – the Republic of Buryatia), according to the VN–1989, 61.5% of the total population or 640.4 thousand people lived in urban settlements (6 cities and 33 villages) (see Tables 1, 2, 3). According to this indicator, the share of the urban population, the republic occupied the last place among all the regions of Transbaikalia and the Far East, if we do not take into account the Aginsky Buryat Autonomous Okrug and the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, which at that time belonged to the Chita and Kamchatka regions, respectively.

The majority of the urban population of the Buryat ASSR (57.4%) – 367.7 thousand people. at the beginning of 1989, it was concentrated in the capital of the republic – Ulan-Ude (352.5 thousand people) and subordinate to its administration working settlements – villages Zarechny and Sokol (7.9 and 7.2 thousand people respectively). Having already had more than 300 years of history (starting in 1666) as a prison, fortress, county town, multifunctional capital of the autonomous republic, and its main industrial center, Ulan-Ude firmly occupied not just a central, but a prominent position in the urban settlement system of the republic. In the vast territory of the country from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean, it was the fourth largest city in terms of population among just over 80 cities in Transbaikalia and the Far East (after Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Chita).

Table 1. The structure of urban settlements of the Republic of Buryatia (Buryat ASSR)

according to the VPN data, 1989, 2002, 2010, 2020.

Comp. according to: VN-1989. The urban population of the RSFSR, its territorial units, urban settlements and urban areas by gender. URL: https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus89_reg2.php (date of access: 08/12/2024); VPN-2002. The urban population of the Russian Federation, its territorial units, urban settlements and urban areas by gender. URL: http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus02_reg2.php (access date: 01/14/2023); VPN-2010. The population of urban settlements of the Russian Federation. URL: http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus10_reg2.php (date of access: 08/06/2024); Results of the VPN2020. Vol. 1. The number and location of the population of the Russian Federation. URL: https://rosstat.gov.ru/vpn/2020/Tom1_Chislennost_i_razmeshchenie_naseleniya (date of request: 07/02/2024). Without taking into account the village of Goujekit in the Severobaikalsky district of the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which was listed in the 1989 census. It already has no population.

Table 2. Dynamics of the urban population of the Republic of Buryatia, the metropolitan agglomeration and the nearest suburbs of the regional center between VN–1989 and VN–2020

Comp. and calculate. by: VN-1989. The urban population of the RSFSR, its territorial units, urban settlements and urban areas by gender. URL: https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus89_reg2.php (date of access: 08/12/2024); VPN-2002. The urban population of the Russian Federation, its territorial units, urban settlements and urban areas by gender. URL: http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus02_reg2.php (access date: 01/14/2023); VPN-2010. The population of urban settlements of the Russian Federation. URL: http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus10_reg2.php (date of access: 08/06/2024); Results of the VPN2020. Vol. 1. The number and location of the population of the Russian Federation. URL: https://rosstat.gov.ru/vpn/2020/Tom1_Chislennost_i_razmeshchenie_naseleniya (date of reference: 07/02/2024); Population of the USSR, RSFSR and its territorial units by gender. VPN-1989. URL: http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus89_reg1.php (date of access: 04/09/2024); The population of Russia and its territorial units by gender. VPN-2002. URL: https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus02_reg1.php (access date: 01/14/2023); The population of Russia, the subjects of the Russian Federation, cities and districts. VPN-2010. – URL: https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus10_reg1.php (access date: 14.01.2023). Data on the number of inhabitants of rural settlements in the immediate suburbs of Ulan–Ude were obtained upon special request from Rosstat and its regional office in the Republic of Buryatia.

Table 3. Changes in individual indicators in the movement of the urban population of the Republic of Buryatia, the metropolitan agglomeration, and the immediate suburbs of the regional center between VN–1989 and VN–2020

Comp. and calculate. according to the same sources as Table 2.

The rest, 272.7 thousand people of the urban population of the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, were dispersed into small towns and working villages of the republic by the beginning of 1989. We are talking about Gusinoozersk (29.7 thousand), Severobaikalsk (28.3 thousand people), Zakamensk (15.5 thousand), Babushkin (7.2 thousand), Kyakhta (18.3 thousand) and 31 workers' settlements in 14 of the 20 districts of the republic that existed at that time. By the end of the 1980s, six districts of the Buryat ASSR had no urban settlements at all (Bichursky, Yeravninsky, Kurumkansky, Mukhorshibirsky, Okinsky, Tarbagataysky), although most of them had large villages, in particular, regional centers.

Returning to the small towns of the republic, we note that in the 1980s. Gusinoozersk (a city since 1953) has received additional development in connection with the construction of the Gusinoozerskaya GRES, which began a little earlier (before that it was considered as a coal mining center) ^[9]. Bamovsky Severobaikalsk, being the "youngest" city in the region (registered as a settlement in 1975, city status since 1980), by the end of the 1980s managed to acquire not only its modern outlines, but also to face the first problems of Soviet planning: departmental calculations on population, housing needs of citizens, etc. The figures were underestimated, which already affected the quality of life of the population ^{[28, p. 90]}. Zakamensk (a city since 1944) at that time continued to function mainly as a regional and industrial center at the Dzhida tungsten-molybdenum Combine ^[21]. Kyakhta, which received the status of a city back in the pre-revolutionary period, retained the functions of a regional center and a border point (with Mongolia) ^[18]. Another city with a pre–revolutionary history, Babushkin, remained a small railway station on the Trans–Siberian Railway with the least defined development trajectory ^[19]. It is significant that among all 6 cities of the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1979 to 1989, only Babushkin recorded an outflow of population, albeit insignificant (88 people), while the city's population continued to fail to meet the criterion of overcrowding (12 thousand people) imposed on cities in the RSFSR at that time (see Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of 08/17/1982). In the late 1980s, three cities had republican significance (Gusinoozersk, Severobaikalsk, Ulan-Ude), the rest were district–level cities (Babushkin, Zakamensk, Kyakhta). It should be noted that due to the remoteness of the cities of the republic from each other, neither during the Soviet period nor later, agglomeration links could form between them.

The total population of urban-type settlements (towns) of the republic, including the coastal towns of Zarechny and Sokol (near Ulan-Ude), at the beginning of 1989, according to our calculations, was 188.6 thousand people (almost 30% of the urban population – Table. 3) Among them there was only one settlement with a population of less than 1 thousand people (village of Chika), 7 settlements with a population of 1 to 3 thousand people, 10 settlements with a population of 3 to 6 thousand people, 9 settlements with a population of 6 to 9 thousand people, 4 with a population of 9 to 12 thousand. people and one village each with a population of 12 to 15 thousand (Taksimo village) and over 15 thousand people (Selenginsk village) (Table 1).

Among the 33 villages, 6 were district centers, mostly with an undefined industrial base (Barguzin, Bagdarin, Ivolginsk, Kyren, Khorinsk). Even before the collapse of the USSR, namely in 1990-1991, most of them, as we will show below, abandoned the status of a village in favor of the "snp" against the background of the proclamation of a new state policy to support rural areas, their economy and infrastructure. Similar processes took place in other regions, for example, in Kalmykia ^[16].

Selenginsk, which took shape in the second half of the 20th century, stood out among the industrial villages in the republic. as a village with a large pulp and cardboard mill, Onokhoy village with its timber processing complex of the same name, Kamensk village (Timlyu Cement plant), which is well illustrated by the history of the Soviet industrialization of the region ^[6]. By the end of the Soviet period, Taksimo village became the second largest village in the republic and the second most important center of the Buryat section of the BAM (after Severobaikalsk) ^{[3, p. 53]}, which underwent accelerated development in the 1980s along with such villages as Severomuisk, Novy Uoyan, Nizhneangarsk, Tunnelny and the smaller villages of Kicher, Yanchukan. In connection with the formation of the new Muisky district as part of the BURASR in 1989. [State Archive of the Republic of Buryatia (GARB). F. R-475. Op. 1. D. 3322. L. 9] Taksimo becomes its administrative center, which, in particular, allowed the local population to consolidate in it after the completion of the main stages of the railway construction. Two settlements of the Zakamensky district (Bayangol and Hotoson), part of the production and territorial system of the Tungsten–Molybdenum Combine in Zakamensk, as well as the village of Novokizhinginsk in the Kizhinginsky district, which flourished in the 1980s in connection with the development of the Ermakovsky beryllium-fluorite deposit, also important for the military industry, turned out to be associated with mining. In a significant part of the village, logging and timber processing remained both the main and one of the main sectors of the economy. Part of the village was also connected to the East Siberian Railway, the Ulan-Ude–Kyakhta railway line. We also note here that by the end of the 1980s, the republic maintained transport isolation of the settlements of the Buryat section of the BAM, including the city of Severobaikalsk, the village of Severobaikalsky and Muisky districts, from the main part of the region, which was typical, for example, for the neighboring Chita region (its Kalarsky district).

Thus, by the end of the 1980s, a relatively extensive network of urban settlements had formed on the territory of the republic, in the structure of which Ulan-Ude, the largest and most infrastructurally developed city in the region, occupied a central place. At the same time, as throughout the country and, in particular, in Transbaikalia and the Far East, urban settlements of the republic, including Ulan-Ude, were not devoid of chronic problems with housing, the development of social and household, engineering infrastructure, service, trade, etc., in short, all that was typical for conservative Soviet modernization.

4. Cities of the Republic in the 1990s and 2010s.

The internal contradictions of Soviet urbanization in the region were acutely manifested already at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, and most clearly in the first years after the collapse of the USSR. A sharp reduction in government orders, disruption of established industrial relations, a decrease in direct investments by the state and departmental enterprises in the development of urban settlements, contradictory results of the privatization of regional enterprises, a reduction in employment and income of the population, etc. led to an instant, by historical standards, crisis of the entire urban settlement system of the republic by the mid-1990s. This crisis, the severity of which noticeably subsided in the early 2000s against the background of stabilization of financial subsidies from the federal center, largely determined the development of cities and villages in the republic in the 2000s and 2010s.

Six cities (Babushkin, Gusinoozersk, Zakamensk, Kyakhta, Severobaikalsk, Ulan-Ude) that received this status in the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods retained it in the 1990s and 2010s. At the same time, the population dynamics in the post-Soviet period was excellent. In the regional center, Ulan-Ude, there was a general increase in the number of inhabitants from census to census (from 352 to 437 thousand people) (Table. 2), mainly due to the increasing concentration of the relatively large rural population of the republic in it ^{[26, pp. 226-234]}. It should be noted that by the end of the 1980s, 400 thousand people (38.4% of the population) lived in rural settlements of the region, who, as a result of economic reforms in agriculture that began during the period of Perestroika and became radical in the 1990s, found themselves in a difficult socio-economic situation.

The population growth of Ulan-Ude by almost a quarter in the 1990s and 2010s allowed it to take the second place after Yakutsk among the regional centers of the Far Eastern Federal District in terms of relative population growth during this period. At the same time, in the 2000s and 2010s, we observed a noticeable increase in population in the immediate suburbs of the republican capital, mainly caused by increased rural-urban migration ^[10], which, like the development of peripheral urban areas, initially assumed a predominantly spontaneous character. "Our mistake was that we did not immediately realize the scale of the disaster and its possible consequences and sounded the alarm very late [...] when people from the villages already felt the city as an alternative and began to move en masse. And it happened very quickly," the ex–mayor of Ulan-Ude, G. A. Aidaev, noted in his memoirs ^{[1, p. 111]}.

At the same time, in all five small towns of the republic, a general population decline was observed during the period under study, despite the compensatory role of rural-urban migration from the surrounding rural areas. Thus, the largest of the small towns, Gusinoozersk and Severobaikalsk, lost 17.9 and 14.5% of the population, or 5.3 and 4.1 thousand people, respectively, during the three inter–census periods. According to the 2020 census, their population was between 24.4 and 24.2 thousand people.. In 1998, Gusinoozersk ceased to be a city of republican subordination and was incorporated into the Selenginsky district of the Republic of Buryatia. At the same time, the largest enterprise, GRES, was preserved and partially reconstructed in it. After the completion of the construction of the Buryat section of the BAM, Severobaikalsk retained the role of its important center with large institutions and enterprises of railway transport, essentially becoming the local center of the north of Buryatia. Despite the long downtime of local enterprises in the 1990s and criticism of the BAM project before its revitalization in the late 2010s, Severobaikalsk recorded the lowest population losses (in relative terms) among all four cities on the main line of the highway from Buryatia to the Khabarovsk Territory (Severobaikalsk, Tynda, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Sovetskaya Gavan).

About a third of the population (27.1%) lost Zakamensk in three inter-census periods due to the crisis and the closure of the city–forming enterprise, the Dzhida Tungsten-Molybdenum Combine, in the second half of the 1990s, which left the city with complex environmental problems in addition to economic ones. The reduction of military-industrial production in the USSR in the late 1980s and early 1990s had a dramatic impact on this union enterprise even before the collapse of the country, and the crisis of the 1990s, the inability of administrative structures and new owners of the enterprise to ensure its restart with the necessary investments, new ones, including foreign consumers, only worsened the situation and we brought it to its logical conclusion.

The population of the city of Babushkin decreased by 40.1% (2.9 thousand people), amounting, according to VN–2020, to 4.3 thousand people (the main decrease occurred in the 1990s), including due to the crisis of the local forestry industry, which received major development during the Soviet period. At the same time, the city has retained its historical significance as a railway station on the Trans-Siberian Railway, which in general remains, in our opinion, the only significant reason why it retains the status of a city acquired back in 1902 (none of the subsequent censuses recorded a population of more than 9 thousand people in it).

The population of another historical, but much more famous city of Buryatia, Kyakhta, has decreased by only 0.4 thousand people (2.3%) over the past three inter–census periods, from 18.3 to 17.9 thousand people. This was facilitated by the city's continued function as a regional center, remote from other larger urban centers, and a border control point with a contingent of border troops on the Russian-Mongolian border.

In general, the population of six cities of the republic increased from 451.8 to 519.8 thousand people during the study period, i.e. by 68 thousand people (Table. 2), which was due solely to the increase in the number of residents of the regional center. Against the background of a decrease in the total number of villages and their population in the republic, the share of the urban population in the total urban population increased from 70.5 to 89.9% (see Table 3). At the same time, if 55% of the total urban population of the region (including the population of villages) lived in late Soviet Ulan-Ude, then by the early 2020s. – already 75.6%. At the same time, the share of the city's population in the total population of the region increased by almost 11 percentage points, but did not exceed 50% (44.7%) (see Table 3).

It is important to note that in the Republic of Buryatia, in the chronological framework under study, between VPN–1989 and VPN–2020, we observed a general decrease in the population of only 6% (62.5 thousand people). On the scale of the entire Far Eastern Federal District, it looked extremely moderate, as, for example, in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), which, in our opinion, was due to the historically greater rootedness of the local population and higher rates of natural population growth in these regions in the 1990s and 2010s compared with other subjects of the Far Eastern Federal District. At the same time, Ulan-Ude has further strengthened its role as the most important center of attraction for rural migrants and, in particular, rural Buryats.

5. Urban-type settlements

In the 1990s and 2010s, the total number of villages in the Republic of Buryatia decreased from 33 to 12 (Table 1). In 1990-1991, i.e. even before the collapse of the USSR, four work settlements from among the regional centers of the Buryat ASSR were transformed into rural settlements. On November 15, 1990, by a special decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the BURASR, they became the administrative centers of the Bauntovsky (Bagdarin settlement), Tunkinsky (Kyren settlement) and Khorinsky (Khorinsk settlement) districts of the republic [GARB. F. R-475. Op. 1. D. 3367. L. 4], and on October 04, 1991, the administrative centers of the Ivolginsk, Ivolginsky district [GARB. F. R-475. Op. 1. D. 3428. L. 199, 220]. The total number of their population, according to the VN–1989, was 25.5 thousand people. In the 1989 census, Goujikit settlement of the Severobaikalsky district was also mentioned without a population. Having fulfilled its historical function during the construction of the BAM (Baikal Tunnel) by the mid-1980s, the settlement had been preparing for liquidation since 1985 [Archive Department of the Administration of Severobaikalsk (AOAS). F. R-11. Op. 1. D. 49. L. 7], however, the settlement administration was decided by the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Buryat Region. The SSR was moved to the village. Solnechny (rural settlement) only in April 1992 [AOAS. F. R-1. Op. 1. 260. L. 77]. The proposal of the Severobaikalsky City Council of People's Deputies to transform Solnechny into a work settlement, which took place a little earlier – in February 1992, was rejected by the Supreme Council of the Buryat SSR as "unfounded" [AOAS F. R-11. Op. 1. D. 81. L. 1]. Note here that the new settlements on the territory of Buryatia in 1990the 1980s and later did not arise.

In the 1990s, in the course of economic transformations, the destruction of economic ties and the system of state support for enterprises, the vast majority of workers' settlements in Buryatia experienced a serious socio-economic and engineering crisis. Their demographic development was characterized mainly by negative indicators of natural growth and increased migration of the population. The total population of the workers' settlements in the region in 1989-2002 decreased by 26.3 thousand people – from 147.8 to 121.5 thousand people, i.e. by 17.8% (see Table 2, the calculations did not take into account the four settlements that became the villages mentioned above). Of the 27 working-class settlements in rural Buryatia in the inter-census period from 1989 to 2002, only five recorded population growth from 13 to 1093 people (Barguzin, Ust-Barguzin, Zaigraevo, Selenginsk, Ilyinka), in the remaining twenty–two - a decrease in numbers. The sharpest decrease in the number of residents relative to 1989 occurred in the workers' settlements – the railway stations of BAM in the north of Buryatia, which flourished in the 1980s. Thus, the population of the villages of Kicher, Novy Uoyan, Severomuisk, Tunnelny, Yanchukan decreased by 40-90% at that time. This was reflected in the structure of settlements in terms of their population (Table 1).

In 2002-2005, the villages of Vydrino (Kabansky district), Novokizhinginsk (Kizhinginsky district), Holtoson, Bayangol (Zakamensky district), Ilka, Novoilinsk (Zaigraevsky district), Barguzin (Barguzin district), Chikoy (Kyakhtinsky district), Selenduma, Goose Lake (Selenginsky district), Ilinka, Turka were transformed into villages. (Pribaikalsky district). In 2002, the total number of these villages was 36.1 thousand people; in the next census, these settlements were no longer counted as "urban". The transformations that took place were preceded by the reduction of "urban-forming" industries and their complete closure in some villages. For example, the village of Barguzin lost its status "due to the reduction of large-scale production and the proportion of workers in industrial enterprises and processing of agricultural products" [GARB. F. 2028. Op. 1. D. 1512. L. 56-57], as a result of which the employment structure in it ceased to meet the requirements for work settlements established above By decree of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. At the time of the transformations, production was significantly reduced or completely closed in Ilka – the automobile repair plant, the Zaigraevskoye PMTS, the regional base of mineral fertilizers and Agricultural chemicals [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. D. 1348. L. 124-125], in Novoilinsk – the Khandagatai timber processing plant [GARB. F. R-2028 Op. 1. D. 1348. L. 126-127], Bayangole – coal mine, power plant [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. D. 1344. L. 37-38], Holtosone – tungsten and molybdenum mines [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. D. 1344. L. 35-36], in Vydrino – timber processing base [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. D. 1183. L. 40-41], in Novokizhinginsk – Kizhinginsky ore management (at the beryllium-fluorite deposit) [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. D. 1183. L. 42-43], in Chikoe – tannery [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. 1503. L. 22-23], in Ilyinka – timber processing base [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. 1741. L. 164-165], in Turk – timber industry [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. 1759. L. 160-161], in Goose Lake – railway transport enterprises [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. D. 1516. L. 132-133], in Selendum – mechanical repair plant [GARB. F. R-2028. Op. 1. D. 1516. L. 130-131].

Two more villages, Sokol and Zarechny, subordinated to the administration of Ulan-Ude, were abolished in 2004, remaining part of Ulan-Ude (Decision of the Ulan-Ude City Council of Deputies No. 106-18 dated 11/25/2004). In 2010. they became microdistricts of the city (the Law of the Republic of Buryatia dated 09.03.2010 No. 1313-IV). And the village of Tunnelny, designated in the documents as "temporary", but received the status of a village "on an exceptional basis" in 1978 ^{[2, p. 98]}, in connection with the commissioning of the Severomuysky tunnel on the BAM in 2004 The city was declared closed, and in 2009 it was finally abolished (Resolution No. 1016-IV of the People's Khural of the Republic of Buryatia dated 07/01/2009). Also related to the construction of the tunnel P. Severomuisk, although it retained the status of a village, lost 90.5% of the population from 1989 to 2020 (from 9.6 to 0.9 thousand people).

Thus, in the inter-census period of 2002-2010, 15 more settlements out of 29 were excluded from the list of settlements in the Republic of Buryatia. The significant reduction in the urban population as a result of these transformations was offset by a more significant increase in the population of the capital of the republic, Ulan–Ude, due to the inclusion of the villages of Sokol and Zarechny, as well as a positive migration balance in some years. A slight increase in population also occurred in two villages of the republic – Dzhida (0.3 thousand people) and Onokhoy (0.016 thousand).

From VN–2010 to VN–2020, the number of villages in the region decreased from 14 to 12: in 2012-2013, the villages of Jida and Tankhoy were transformed into rural settlements, which, as in the case of their predecessors, was associated with economic reasons, the search for tax benefits, opportunities for inclusion in state programs for rural development, and rural support. population, rural specialists. In fact, in the early 2010s, the military left Jida, which was the most important life support for the village, and there were no large manufacturing enterprises in the village of Tankhoi and the population was also declining.

In all 12 villages that retained their status during the study period, there was a decrease in the population. In general, from 1989 to 2020, in four of them it ranged from 6 to 13% (Ust-Barguzin, Selenginsk, Zaigraevo, Onokhoy), in four more – from 30 to 50% (Kamensk, Taksimo, Naushki, Nizhneangarsk), in the remaining four (all on BAM) – from 66 up to 90.5% (Kicher, Novy Uoyan, Yanchukan, Severomuisk).

As a result of administrative changes, migration and natural population outflow during the study period, the population of the republic's villages decreased statistically from 188.6 to 58.6 thousand people, i.e. by more than 3 times (Table 2). It should be understood that a significant part of this "statistically" lost urban population continued to live in the studied settlements, but already in the status of villagers.

6. Ulan-Ude agglomeration and the nearest suburbs of the republican capital

After the incorporation of Buryatia and the Trans-Baikal Territory into the Far Eastern Federal District of the Russian Federation in 2018, Ulan-Ude became the third most populous urban agglomeration in it. According to the plan of the regional government, it included, in addition to the urban district of Ulan-Ude itself, four surrounding municipal districts of the republic: Zaigraevsky, Ivolginsky, Pribaikalsky and Tarbagataysky (see, for example: Decree of the Government of the Republic of Buryatia dated 05/22/2019 № 270-r). A very arbitrary administrative approach to the delimitation of the agglomeration, it must be said, was characteristic of the regional authorities of the vast majority of the Far Eastern Federal District regions ^{[11, pp. 24-26]}. Note that by VN–2020, as a result of the transformations described above, only three urban settlements remained within the boundaries of the Ulan-Ude agglomeration: Ulan-Ude and two villages of the Zaigraevsky district (Zaigraevo, Onokhoy), which, by the way, we do not consider to be among its closest suburbs.

From 1989 to 2020, the population of the agglomeration grew continuously from census to census, mainly due to the city of Ulan-Ude and the Ivolginsky district, the majority of whose settlements are located at a short distance from the capital of Buryatia. Thus, the number of residents of the Ivolginsky district increased 2.6 times over three decades – 162% (from 24.7 to 64.8 thousand people), which became a record "relative" indicator throughout the Far Eastern Federal District ^{[11, p. 28]}. No other decent municipal district or urban district in the 11 regions of the federal district showed a greater relative increase.

Tarbagatai district (7 thousand people, 38.5%) also demonstrated significant population growth in the three post-Soviet decades, especially the village of Nizhny Sayantui, which is closest to the city, the number of inhabitants of which increased from 2.2 to 12.2 thousand people from 1989 to 2020, i.e. more than fivefold. In the remaining two capital districts, Zaigraevsky and Pribaikalsky, the situation was different. Due to the transport remoteness of their main settlements from Ulan-Ude in the 1990s and 2010s. They were unable to maintain their previous population figures. The number of residents of Zaigraevsky district decreased during this period from 56.5 to 50 thousand people (10.2%), and Pribaikalsky, separated from Ulan-Ude on both sides by passes ("Pykhta" and "Mandrik"), from 31.1 to 24.2 thousand people (22.3%). In general, the share of the population of the Ulan-Ude agglomeration in the total population of the republic in 1989-2020 increased from 47.9% to 61.6% (see Table. 2), which was mainly a consequence of centripetal migration within the region.

We have included 12 settlements of the Ivolginsky municipal district among the nearest suburbs of Ulan-Ude (Republic of Buryatia) (Sotnikovo village, Oshurkovo village, Gurulba village, village of Poselye, village of Suzha, village of Nur-Selenie, Khoitobey ulus, village of Nizhnyaya Ivolga, Ulan-Ivolginsky ulus, Ivolginsk village, village of Krasnoyarovo, village of Tapkhar), four settlements of the Zaigraevsky municipal district (village of Erhirik, ulus Dabaty, ulus Naryn-Shibir, village Nizhny Taltsy) and six settlements of the Tarbagatai municipal district of the republic (village Nizhny Sayantui, village Voznesenovka, village Saratovka, village Verkhny Sayantui, village Sayantui, village Nikolaevsky). With this composition, the nearest suburbs of Ulan-Ude (22 rural settlements) showed phenomenal demographic and territorial growth for the Far Eastern Federal District in the 1990s and 2010s. Their total population increased during the three inter-census periods (especially in the 2010s) from 17.9 to 82.9 thousand people (4.6 times) (Table 2). Individual settlements have grown many times. Thus, the village of Ivolginsky district on the left bank of the Selenga River increased 80 times – by 15.4 thousand people, which became the second largest indicator of the absolute increase in the number of residents in a suburban settlement in the entire Far Eastern Federal District of the Russian Federation. The number of residents of the Tarbagatai and Zaigraevsky districts closest to the city has also increased significantly, while their more remote territories were already losing population. Of the 22 suburban settlements closest to the city, six recorded a general population decline, but everywhere it turned out to be insignificant in absolute terms. In addition, three of these six villages experienced a slight increase in population in the 2010s. In general, we tend to consider the rapid growth of development and settlement of the nearest suburbs of Ulan-Ude in the 2000s and 2010s as one of the regional manifestations of the so-called post-socialist suburban revolution ^{[30, pp. 7-15]}. In the case of Ulan-Ude, it was largely spontaneous, giving rise to many social, engineering, transport, environmental and other problems on the urban periphery ^{[10, pp. 164-175]}, many of which have not been resolved so far.

7. Conclusion

The Republic of Buryatia failed to avoid most of the negative consequences of the socio-political, financial and economic crisis of the 1990s, including in terms of urban and suburban settlement. The economies of the cities and towns of the region, and the life support systems of urban settlements rapidly entered a crisis situation by the mid-1990s. The severity of this crisis had noticeably subsided by the early 2000s, although its consequences do not seem to have been overcome to this day, despite the increasing support of the federal center and the efforts of the regional authorities. The urbanization process, which took place in the republic under the sign of continued urbanization (including at the expense of the northern BAM regions) until the collapse of the USSR, became noticeably more complicated in the 1990s and 2010s. The processes of deurbanization have developed in its structure, as well as suburbanization associated with the movement of population, capital, etc. from urban neighborhoods to suburban ones. At the same time, increased rural-urban migration did not allow urbanization to "fade away". The synchronous development of three processes – urbanization, deurbanization and the growing suburbanization – became one of the most important characteristics of the urbanization process in the republic at that time.

Statistically, the urban population of the region decreased by 9.68% (62 thousand people) during the period under review as a result of contradictory trends in natural and migration growth/decrease, as well as administrative transformations of urban-type settlements, which is relatively small by trans-Baikal and Far Eastern standards. By the way, the rural population of the republic has also decreased statistically slightly – by only 0.5 thousand people (0.1%). In fact, we observed a more significant decrease in the number of rural residents, which was offset by the transformation of more than half of the region's villages into rural settlements, as well as the migration of rural migrants and some residents of cities and villages of the republic to rural areas (mainly in the rural settlements of Ivolginsky, Zaigraevsky, Tarbagatai districts closest to Ulan-Ude).

At the same time, the outflow of population from small towns and villages, and the "relocation" of part of the urban population to the rural category as a result of administrative and territorial transformations of the village were significantly smoothed out by population growth in the republican capital, whose population share in the total population of the region increased from 33.8 to 44.7% (Table 2). Population redistribution in the republic, centripetal Rural-urban migration significantly manifested itself in population growth rates in the immediate suburbs of Ulan-Ude and in the Ulan-Ude urban agglomeration as a whole (see Tables 2-3). Thus, the share of the agglomeration in the total population of the region in 1989-2021 increased from a very significant 47.9% to 61.6%. The indicated transformation of urban and suburban settlement seems to have become a completely natural response of the region's social systems to the changed living conditions in the 1990s and 2010s, and the imbalances in the development of the main resource center, Ulan-Ude, and other settlements in the region. Given the continuing shortage of funds allocated for the infrastructural and economic development of small towns, villages, and surrounding rural areas, the concentration of the republic's population in the Ulan-Ude agglomeration is likely to increase in the coming years.