Genetic Types of Kamchatka Rural Settlements

Abstract

The process and the results of Russian colonization traditionally attract the attention of specialists in various scientific fields. The development of the settlement system is both an important part and an indicator of this process. Based on data from various static and literary sources, genetic types of Kamchatka rural settlements. Although most of the more than 320 rural settlements in Kamchatka currently no longer have a population, their composition and geography are of interest for analyzing the logic of development and prospects for further settlement pattern transformation. In recent decades, it has been largely associated with the adaptation of the initial functions of rural settlements to modern conditions. During the Soviet period, the most important from the point of view of settlement development, there were multidirectional processes in Kamchatka: extensive quantitative growth associated with the development of local fish resources and agricultural areas has been replaced by several stages of “optimization” of the settlement network. Compared with other regions of Asian Russia, settlements associated with mining development were relatively poorly represented here. In the northern part of the region, after the elimination of most seasonally inhabited settlements of indigenous residents, a rare and not very stable network of stationary settlements was formed. All these processes have led to the formation of a fairly wide set of genetic types of rural settlements on the peninsula for territories with focal settlement pattern—from commercial and forestry to agricultural, related to agricultural development, and suburban. The further evolution of the region’s rural settlement pattern will depend on the preservation of viable elements of the original functions of settlements, the preservation of the social core of residents, and the maintenance of the housing stock and infrastructure created at previous stages.