Rural-urban migration on the Crimean Peninsula

Despite the wide popularity of the Crimean region, its scientific descriptions are full of gaps. In the Soviet period, the research was limited by the unspoken prohibitions on the study of social processes and by the absence of a strong scientific school. After the collapse of the USSR, the Crimean region was considered only in the works on social aspects of migration and on artificial transformations of the ethnic-confessional composition of the population. The change in the status of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 made this region interesting for the Russian science: there are many recent articles on the features of the social-economic development of the peninsula, but a number of issues in the life of Crimea are still poorly understood. One of them is the migration on the peninsula: the historical ethnic migrations are sufficiently described but not the contemporary population movements. Historically, migration processes have played an important role in the social-economic development of Crimea. However, until recently, external migrations were the driver of this development, while since the beginning of the 21st century, migration movements within the peninsula have played this role, and their features should be taken into account in planning and financing the rural development. Rural areas of Crimea remain agrarian-overpopulated; therefore, it is necessary to identify areas promising for capital investment and areas that soon will be depopulated due to the lack of opportunities for human and social capital. The author considers the population exchange between urban and rural areas as an important factor for the demographic situation, and focuses on the reasons and features of the spatial mobility and migration of the Crimean population based on the analysis of statistical data and transport links between the city and the countryside.