Urbanization of Tuva: Dynamics of Key Indicators (1944–2020)

The article considers the main directions of urbanization development of Tuva from the time of its incorporation into the USSR until the demographic census in 2020.The author shows that throughout the period under study Tuva differed markedly from other regions of Russia in key indicators of urbanization.The analysis of the dynamics of demographic indicators of urbanization allows us to distinguish two main periods in the development of urbanization processes in Tuva in the studied chronological framework: co-Soviet and post-Soviet.The main factors in the transformation of the demographic structure of the urban population of Tuva in the period under study were external circumstances associated with deep social upheavals (the Great Patriotic War, the collapse of the USSR, the socio-economic crisis of the 1990s) and the specifics of economic development of the region, as well as the peculiarities of demographic development, characterized by high birth and death rates by Russian standards.The main lever of urbanization of Tuva in the Soviet period was the will of the state.The emergence of new urban settlements was a consequence of deep social and socio-economic transformations.In the post-Soviet period, the urbanization development proceeded by inertia.Small towns of the republic retained their status, rural-urban migration and high natural increase contributed to the increase in the urban population and the growth of the urbanization index.However, the formal and real level of urbanization in Tuva differ significantly.The majority of the population of the cities are from the countryside, the way of life in small towns and outskirts of Kyzyl largely retains rural features, the network of urban settlements is represented mainly by extremely sparsely populated cities with unclear development prospects.