Spatial transformations of Russia's territories: trends and regional differences in resettlement

The population of Russia is unequally distributed over its territory: ¾ of the country’s inhabitants live on ¼ of the area and, on the contrary, ¾ of the area is inhabited by ¼. One of the tasks of the Strategy for spatial development of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2025 is to reduce the level of inter-regional differentiation in socio-economic development of the subjects of the Russian Federation by increasing the stability of the settlement system. However, the basic framework of settlement in Russia covers a small part of the territory, has gaps and is fragmented in places, which increases the polarization of the socio-geographical space of the country and regions. The purpose of the study was to identify trends and regional features of the changes in the settlement system in the context of spatial transformations of the Russian territories. Main methods are spatial and temporal analysis, methods of grouping and data visualization by cartography. Information base is the data from the 2002, 2010, and 2020 All-Russian Population Censuses. The study confirms the thesis of the contraction of mastered space in Russia and the accompanying polarization of the settlement system in both rural and urban areas. Regional specifics of rural and urban settlement have been revealed: pronounced depopulation of rural settlements in Central and Northwestern parts of Russia and its increasing; concentration of the rural population of the regions of the Center and Northwest in small settlements, rural population of the regions of the North Caucasus and the South - in large settlements; equal concentration of rural population of medium settlements in the European (except for the North Caucasus) and Asian parts of Russia; high contribution of the small town population to the total number of urban residents in the regions of the North and the Arctic, the Central part; concentration of the population of large and major cities in the regions of the Center and South, the Volga region and Siberia. It has been established that in most Russian regions the population decreased in 2002-2020, mainly due to a simultaneous loss of both rural and urban residents. The main share in the loss of rural population for the period between the censuses was contributed by the inhabitants of medium-sized rural settlements, and the loss of urban population by the inhabitants of small towns