Suschiy S.Ya. Population of Kalmykia: Main Geodemographic Trends of the First Quarter of the 21 st Century

Sergey Ya.  Suschiy
Federal Research Centre the Southern Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation

Abstract. The article analyzes the main trends in the quantitative, spatial, and settlement dynamics of the population of Kalmykia in the first quarter of the 21 st  century. It was found that migration was the main factor of geodemographic changes. The active outflow of population determined the increased rate of demographic losses in the republic (8.8% for 2002–2024 was the highest rate among regions in the South of Russia), despite the maintenance of a positive natural
growth rate until the early 2020s. A slight reduction in the scale of migration loss in the 2000s and its new growth in the 2010s make it possible to identify two periods in the demographic dynamics of the republic’s population, which generally coincide with the first two decades of the 21 st  century. The outflow of population was widespread, but its intensity varied significantly across the territory of Kalmykia. The maximum demographic losses (21–30%) in the first quarter of the century were suffered by the western and northwestern districts (Gorodovikovsky, Priyutnensky, Sarpinsky, Ketcherovsky), in which significant outflow was combined with a natural decrease in the population due to its national structure (high proportion of Russians). In the inter-regional exchange, all the territorial communities of Kalmykia, including the capital, lost their population. In the intraregional population circulation, the metropolitan agglomeration was the only significant center of population attraction in the 2000s–2020s. Moreover, the outflow from Elista was the largest, which compensated for this loss with an influx of internal migrants. This process contributed to the increasing concentration of demographic potential in Elista and its satellite village of Troitsk (in 1989–2024 their share in the population of the republic increased from 31.5 to 45.2%). A similar process took place at the local level – in 2024, 53.9% of rural residents were already concentrated in district centers (in 1989 – 42.2%). The limited scale of the republican labor market, due to small socio-economic potential of Kalmykia; difficult life conditions and economic activity of the population, determine the stability of the migration outflow, which will most likely maintain the republic in the position of the southern Russian region with the highest rates of general depopulation until 2040–2045.
Key words: Kalmykia, geodemographic dynamics, settlement system, natural population growth, migration outflow.

Citation. Suschiy S.Ya., 2024. Population of Kalmykia: Main Geodemographic Trends of the First Quarter of the 21 st Century. Regionalnaya ekonomika. Yug Rossii [Regional Economy. South of Russia], vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 152-164. (in Russian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/re.volsu.2024.4.15

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