rural depopulation

2025. Vol.10. №1.

Human dimension of rural history: Demographic losses and dacha revitalization in one Tver village

May 21 2025

Bogdanova L.P., Vinogradov D.M., Smirnova A.A. Human dimension of rural history: Demographic losses and dacha revitalization in one Tver village // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №1. P. 153-177.

EDN: OTGKMC

Annotation

The article reconstructs the history and key post-Soviet changes in the village of Denisovo located in Rameshkovsky municipal district of the Tver Region. The village is a part of the main settlement area of Tver Karelia that developed in the upper reaches of the Medveditsa River. Another feature of this territory is closeness to the Tver agglomeration and the Moscow Region. These features largely determined demographic changes in the village at different times. Based on various materials, including historical sources, the authors provide a brief overview of the Karelian colonization of the territory and of the ethnic structure of settlements in the Zamytskaya volost. Based on the zemstvo statistical data and censuses, the authors analyze the population dynamics in rural settlements that were a part of the former Zamytskaya volost from the late 19th century to the early 21st century. The article presents a schematic historical reconstruction of Denisovo based on the survey of old residents, which was conducted in 1999. This reconstruction shows the number of people in households from the 1930s to the 1990s and the demographic losses of the village in the 20th century. The repeated survey conducted in the summer of 2024 showed the dacha transformation of the village, i.e., that a significant share of households is seasonally inhabited. Based on interviews with one local resident, the authors provide a contemporary scheme of households, which shows that the dacha ownership in Denisovo reflects the traditional directions of rural migration — to Tver, Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Owners are mainly local residents or descendants of those who left the village in the 20th century. The authors suggest the significant influence of the ethnic-cultural factor on revitalization of Tver villages.

Keywords

Rural studies, population dynamics, rural depopulation, village transformation, dacha revitalization, Tver Karelia.

About the authors

Lidiya P. Bogdanova, DSc (Geography), Head of the Department of Social and Economic Geography and Territorial Planning, Faculty of Geography and Geoecology, Tver State University. P. Proshina St., 3, bldg. 2, Tver, 170021, Russia.
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Dmitry M. Vinogradov, PhD Student, Faculty of Geography and Geoecology, Tver State University. P. Proshina St., 3, bldg. 2, Tver, 170021, Russia.
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Alexandra A. Smirnova, PhD (Geography), Associate Professor, Faculty of Geography and Geoecology, Tver State University. P. Proshina St., 3, bldg. 2, Tver, 170021, Russia. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Additional Info

Submitted Thursday, 30 January 2025
Reviewed Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Copyright © Auhtors, 2025
Distribution Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

2023. Vol.8. №1.

Rural wastelands: Places of belonging and “ghosts” cartography of the rural depopulation landscape

May 29 2023

Korandei F.S. Rural wastelands: Places of belonging and “ghosts” cartography of the rural depopulation landscape // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №1. P. 23-44.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-1-23-44

Annotation

The interpretation of the walking interviews, which were conducted in the rural Iset Region in the summer of 2022, allowed the author to identify “places of belonging” (Yi-Fu Tuan’s term) in the rural depopulation landscape, which are hardly noticeable to any external observer but are extremely important for local residents. The author uses the post-phenomenological optics of social sciences, which defines the cultural everyday landscape as a single process of mutual transformation that generates both personal experience and forms of sociality. The second theoretical basis of the article is the cultural geography works on the connections between everyday landscape and human memory, in particular the “ghosts geography”, and the thin line between the present and the absent in both everyday landscapes and narratives about them. The author’s method is walking interviews with local residents in open areas. The article aims at showing the possibilities of the simultaneous transcription and subsequent mapping of the walking interviews’ archives. The cases considered in the main part of the article focus on the structuring role of “places of belonging” in the standard narrative. As walking interviews show, it is the presentation of local places to a newcomer as important for the daily life of local people but hardly noticeable to outsiders that forms the basis of the typical go-along narratives. Thus, places out of active everyday use but with great emotional and vital significance for local communities acquire the status of “ghosts” — fragments of the past involved in the today’s life of the depopulating rural settlement.

Keywords

“Places of belonging’, walking interviews, place, rural depopulation, everyday cultural landscape, “ghosts” geography, cultural geography, social anthropology.

About the author

Fedor S. Korandei, PhD (History), Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Historical Geography and Regional Studies, Tyumen State University. Volodarskogo St., 6, Tyumen, 625003.
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