RUSSIA'S TINDERBOX - Belfer Center for Science and International ...

district guarding the international border with the new states of Transcaucasia—Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia, and Russia’s old imperial rivals—Turkey and Iran. It is Russia’s route for
pipelines from oil fields in the Caspian to its ports on the Black Sea and markets in Europe and the
Middle East. And it is Russia’s premier agricultural region, producing almost one quarter of all its
annual agricultural output. 2
The North Caucasus is also one of the most densely populated regions of Russia, with a
population density ranging from 27.7 people per square kilometer in Karachaevo-Cherkessia to 76.5
people per square kilometer in North Ossetia, in sharp contrast to an average of only 8.4 for the
Russian Federation as a whole. This unusually high population density is complicated by the fact
that the North Caucasus is the most ethnically diverse region of the Russian Federation, with as
many as 40 small ethnic groups spread across its territory. Although Russians are the largest of the
ethnic groups, accounting for 67.6% of the total population, they are unevenly spread with non-
Russian groups dominating in the east of the region toward the Caspian Sea.
In spite of its preeminence as a center of agricultural production, and indeed because of its
economic specialization, the North Caucasus region has experienced a severe economic decline
since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The seven mountainous republics of the region have been
especially hard hit. Prior to 1991, the North Caucasus had the largest rural population in Russia, with
43% of the total population living in rural areas as compared to 26% for the Federation as a whole.
Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Karachaevo-Cherkessia had the highest ratios of rural to urban
population in the region. 3 In the Soviet period, high rural birth rates and the generally high
population density in the region produced a labor surplus in the republics of the North Caucasus. Up
until 1991, this surplus was diverted by the local authorities to avoid destabilizing levels of
unemployment. In addition to permitting migration from impoverished and over-populated
mountainous regions of the North Caucasus to the lowlands and urban centers, local authorities
created construction brigades for seasonal work elsewhere in the Russian Federation, and actively
encouraged migration to other regions of the USSR. According to the 1989 census, as a result of
these initiatives, one in four North Caucasians lived beyond the borders of their national republics.
The dissolution of the USSR and the erosion of the command economy in the Russian Federation,
however, turned off this safety valve for local authorities in the North Caucasus leaving large
numbers of unemployed in rural areas and increasing pressure on land and housing.
Because of their asymmetrical population profile and a corresponding low level of industrial
development, the economies of the seven North Caucasus republics have been traditionally weak
2 Together with the Rostov Oblast, the North Caucasus Economic Region accounts for 50% of Russia’s vegetable
oil, 42% of Russia’s sugar, 33% of Russia’s wool, 25% of Russia’s grain, 20% of Russia’s vegetables, and 15% of
Russia’s meat. Krasnodar dominates this agricultural production and is also the major center for food processing,
while Rostov is the manufacturing base for agricultural machinery, producing 80% of Russia’s combine harvesters.
3 For example, in 1989, 75% of the Chechen population lived in rural areas, and 70% of the Karachai and Cherkess
populations. See Ol’ga Vasil’eva and Timur Muzaev, Severnyi kavkaz v poiskakh regional’noi ideologii, Progress
(Moscow, 1994), p.29. Other figures for the North Caucasus were obtained from EPIcenter (the Center for
Economic and Political Research) in Moscow.
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