ИСТИНА

The present-day municipal structure in Russia started to form in 2003 according to the federal law. A unified system of territorial structure of local self-government was introduced all over the country. Municipalities refer to two levels – a higher one is a municipal district and a lower one is a municipal settlement. There are two kinds of municipal settlements – urban and rural ones. Rural municipality may include not only one village, but several nearby small villages, usually with less than one thousand residents in each. Formation of municipal structure itself (according to general principles) lies within the regional (i.e. of federal subjects) jurisdiction. There are currently more than 133000 villages in Russia. They are combined into less than 19000 rural municipalities and also included in many urban municipalities. The analysis of all of 83 regional municipal structures has shown that more than a half of them are far from being adequate to the features of settlement pattern of a given territory. The discrepancy between longstanding administrative division and introduced new municipal structure is large. In the northern and central regions of European Russia (especially in the Non-Chernozem zone) two, three, and sometimes ten or even more rural administrative units were integrated into one municipal unit. The process is going on, now municipalities themselves are being merged. As a result, territory of some rural municipal settlements stretches for more than one thousand square kilometers and municipalities do not refer to the real interconnections between different villages and central places within the territory. The problem can’t be easily solved. On the one hand, small municipalities really have too weak economics and will become smaller, because of ongoing depopulation. On the other hand, local authorities have neither information, nor resources for simultaneous work on matters of dozens of villages, which continue suffering from economic and social depression. As a result, municipal units, which have been integrated in order to increase their effectiveness, prove to be ineffective, because they do not rely on the existing settlement pattern and local communities. There is very large share of small villages in Russia (50% of them have 11–200 residents and 25% – even less) and very sparse network of villages in the north, so the existence of small municipalities is inevitable. In the south of European Russia situation is quite different. In most territories 35% of rural settlements have 2000–5000 residents and 47% – over 5000 residents. The majority of rural municipal settlements has growing agriculture and service sector and can provide the residents social and economic welfare. Population is characterized by natural increase and positive net migration. Municipalities are densely populated. The process of consolidation of municipalities is not as typical in the south regions, as in the north ones. But there is the process of centralization, which is characteristic for municipal structure both in the north and in the south. According to the federal law amendments of 2014, municipal districts may be turned into urban okrugs. In this case, villages don’t form municipalities though often there are dozens of villages with several thousand or dozen of thousand people living in the territory. In conclusion, it should be emphasized that 15 years proved to be enough for a system of local self-government to significantly affect settlement patterns in the regions. Ongoing process of merger of municipalities and new process of transformation of municipal districts into urban okrugs means that system of local governance in Russia becomes more and more centralized. Millions of citizens lose their constitutional right for local self-government and many aims of local development thus remain unachieved.