ИСТИНА

Studies of policy makers managing urban shrinkage identify various responses ranging from ignoring the issues to one of acceptance and active planning to manage the decline (Pallagst 2017) but the underlying assumption is that communities facing urban shrinkage would not refuse available growth potentials. One the other hand, studies of border cities generally focus on the factors impacting on interactions or lack there of between the border cities (Paasi 2010; Haselsberger 2014) but not urban shrinkage. This paper presents the case of a border city in a rapidly shrinking region and yet for decades failed to embrace growth potentials from across the border. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the population of many Russian regions and their cities have declined. The Russian Far East (RFE) endured a population decay of 22 percent between 1989 and 2010 (Batunova 2015) due to a combination of so called “Western drift” (internal migration from RFE to the European part of the country) (Zayonchkovskaya 2003) and demographic changes (decline of fertility rate and rising mortality). The underlying cause of this demographic shock and consequent shrinkage of economic activities was the post-Soviet dismantling of the monetary and non-monetary system of subsidies and social guarantees that aligned prices of goods produced in RFE and the maintenance of its standards of living with the national average (Cottineau 2016:5; Ishaev et al. 2015: 47-53). This paper examines the case of the RFE border city of Blagoveshchensk (Blago), part of Amur Oblast which has experienced significant population decline. Blago, located on the border with China across the Amur River (Heilongjiang) from the Chinese city of Heihe, reports a barely stable population in the decade leading to 2014, while over the same period, Heihe had tripled in size with a total population of 1.75 million and its urban core grew by 10 percent. In spite of the obvious differences in economic and population changes across the river, the city of Blago has, for the last three decades, been reluctant to take advantage of the growth opportunities available across the border. This paper examines the reasons for this seemingly deliberate strategy of spurning potential growth in the face of population and economic decline. This paper posits that post-Socialist national priorities, regional interests and the burden of border history frame the context of the decision space for the city. A cultural orientation of looking to European Russia for economic development adds to the conundrum. Furthermore, for some special segments of the city and region, resisting the Chinese growth impulses protect exclusive opportunities to further their own fortunes. Examples will be drawn from the ways policy makers frustrate closer economic ties, including the transportation connections between the two cities across the river. We argue that in the case of urban shrinkage in borderlands, in-depth studies of specific cities are necessary to understand the regional circumstances and local strategies for change.