Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study the practice of planning and transformation of rural settlement in the Kuibyshev region in the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. The main attention is paid to the resettlement of “unpromising” rural settlements, which was the basis of the resettlement policy in the studied period. The chronological framework of the study is determined by this circumstance, as well as by the fact that the main regulatory and design basis of this policy in the Kuibyshev region was developed only by the early 1970s, and by the mid-1980s the state refused to divide rural settlements into “promising” and “unpromising”. In addition, it was during these years that the resettlement policy in rural areas was particularly active in the Kuibyshev region in general and in the Stavropol district (which provides the material for this study of the practice of resettlement of “unpromising” rural settlements). The reorganization of the rural settlement network and its rationalization were intended to become a significant factor in both the qualitative improvement of rural living standards and the growth of agricultural production. The regions began to develop schemes of district planning with the classification of rural settlements as “promising” and “unpromising”. Since the early 1990s, the most common view in Russian historical science is that the assignment of tens of thousands of rural settlements to the category of “unpromising” eventually led to intensive migration of the population. At this point the question arises whether such a relationship was characteristic of the entire territory of Russia. This factor was indeed significant for the Non- Black-Soil region, where the state financed the resettlement policy. However, its purposeful implementation was not carried out in all regions of the RSFSR, as evidenced by the situation in the Middle Volga (present-day Samara) region. The results of the study allow us to some extent reconsider the approach to the elimination of “unpromising” villages in our country in the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, which was adopted in historiography.