NEWSLINK: Shrinking Siberia: Why young people are fleeing Russia’s Far East.
Newsweek.com – September 17, 2012 – Shrinking Siberia: Why young people are fleeing Russia’s Far East. – By Anna Nemtsova – click here to read more from original article
After first profiling a Siberian policewoman fashion model, Anna Nemtsova addresses Siberian population decline. Within a generation, Siberia, which is larger than China, will have less people than Moscow or St. Petersburg:
Siberia’s population is disappearing. In a generation, if current trends continue, the vast landone and a half times the size of Chinawill have fewer inhabitants than Moscow or St. Petersburg. Today, only 38 million people live in Siberia2 million fewer than 20 years ago, according to Russia’s Institute of Demographyeven though the region constitutes up to 77 percent of the nation’s landmass. Almost three quarters of Russia’s population is crowded west of the Ural Mountains, where the best and brightest of Siberia are flocking, too, away from the crumbling infrastructure, widespread corruption, and lack of opportunities in their homeland. Siberia “shows no sign of becoming the secure, modern, self-sufficient [state] that young people wish they could live in,” says Yekaterina Sokirianskaya of the International Crisis Group.
The Kremlin has been pumping large amounts of funds into the Russian Far East, including in or near Vladivostok for the APEC summit, such as a billion-dollar bridge to a now sparsely-inhabited island …