A New Russian Heartland: The Demographic and Economic Dimension

Abstract: One of Russia’s leading geographers provides a detailed assessment of the demo-graphic and economic dimensions of the new Russian Heartland, supplementing and extend-ing the analysis provided in the preceding paper in this issue (Bradshaw and Prendergrast, 2005). He presents intriguing comparisons of Russia’s place in the world relative to other global powers for benchmark years during the 20th and early 21st centuries, before examin-ing spatial shifts in key indicators of Russia’s population distribution and economic activity over the same period. Subsequent sections of the paper address Russia’s shrinking “effective territory ” during the 1990s, and by extension the “overpopulation ” of its northern regions