Pivovar G.A., Shirokova P.A., Prusikhin O.E., Alekseev A.I. Settlement types and settlement system along the eastern part of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (Amur Region and Khabarovsk Region) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №1. P. 123-152.
EDN: OQUDCL
Annotation
The construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), one of the largest “megaprojects” of the Soviet Union, left a significant mark in history. At the same time, fewer works consider villages along the mainline, their contemporary life and inhabitants. The authors make an attempt to describe the settlement system along the eastern part of the BAM (between Tynda and Komsomolsk-on-Amur) and provide a typology of settlements affected by the railway based on field and statistical data. The BAM settlement system is linear due to the policy of territorial development around the railway. Thus, the authorities gave priority to industrial development at the expense of social development, and the main decisions on the location of settlements, housing and infrastructure were made at the level of individual construction sites. They were supposed to form a highly urbanized settlement system with a developed infrastructure along the road (to attract employees), but the lagging development of settlements did not allow this. Moreover, the BAM settlement system incorporated the previously existing settlements, which allows to identify two waves in the development of this territory — the long-term pre-BAM and the BAM-period. Settlements can be divided into four types based on the time of establishment, ethnic-cultural and economic characteristics: premainline ethnic settlements of indigenous communities, pre-BAM fishing settlements that grew out of outposts of prospectors and hunters, BAM intermediate urban settlements, and BAM “failed cities” — settlements at the main stations, which were supposed to become key centers of the new territory. These differences determined different ways of settlement transformations in the post-Soviet period.
Keywords
Baikal-Amur Mainline, Eastern BAM, rural settlements, urban settlements, workers’ settlements, settlement system, transformation of rural areas, typology of settlements, Amur Region, Khabarovsk Region, geographical study of rural areas.
About the authors
Galina A. Pivovar, Independent Researcher in Human Geography. Novodevichiy Pr., 2, Moscow, 119435, Russia.
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Polina A. Shirokova, Independent Researcher in Human Geography. Sitnikova St., 2, Balashikha, Moscow Region, 143923, Russia.
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Oleg E. Prusikhin, PhD Student, Leading Engineer, Department of Economic and Social Geography of Russia, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Research Intern, Center for Spatial Analysis and Regional Diagnostics, Institute of Applied Economic Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Leninskie Gory, 1, Moscow, 119991, Russia.
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Alexander I. Alekseev, DSc (Geography), Professor, Department of Economic and Social Geography of Russia, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Leninskie Gory, 1, Moscow, 119991, Russia.
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Additional Info
- Submitted Wednesday, 11 December 2024
- Reviewed Saturday, 25 January 2025
- Copyright © Auhtors, 2025
- Distribution Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Lebedev P. S., Alekseev A. I. The area of farmland, the population density and their dynamics: A study of relationships (on the example of the Bezhetsk district of the Tver Region) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2021. V.6. №4. P. 87-106.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-4-87-106
Annotation
Many works consider the state of agriculture and the settlement system, especially the post-Soviet transformation of the countryside. The main patterns of its contemporary development are well-known—they are the center-peripheral and transport-geographical differences in the stability of rural settlements and the efficiency of agriculture. The article aims at identifying the relationship of two indicators —population density and agricultural area—on the example of the Bezhetsk district in the Tver Region. The authors describe the settlement system of the district, analyze its spatial changes during the last 160 years, compare the indicators of population density and the area of cultivated land. Based on the research results, the authors make conclusions about the evolution of the settlement system and the transformation of the territorial agricultural development, about the relationship between the population density and the area of agricultural land used, and about the factors of sustainability of rural settlements’ features on the Bezhetsk district.
Keywords
Settlement system, agricultural land, population density, factors of settlements sustainability, Bezhetsk district of the Tver Region.
About the authors
Pavel S. Lebedev, PhD Student, Faculty of Geography and Geoecology, Tver State University, Proshina St., 3, bldg 2, 170021 Tver.
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Alexander I. Alekseev, DSc (Geography), Professor, Department of Economic and Social Geography of Russia, Moscow State University. Leninskie Gory, 1, 119991 Moscow.
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