Ghosts of the Heartland.(Russia's northern population in decline)(Column)

The village of Nikolskoye isn't easy to find. Its nearest neighbors will tell you to turn right at the forest edge, follow the trees that ring a large field and hope for the best. If you do find the village, you'll see about two dozen houses, a pond and perhaps one of the three remaining villagers. One of them is Nadia Shipitsina, 63, who survives on a pension and guides visitors past abandoned houses of friends who have moved away. "That was Raya's house," she says, pointing to a boarded-up hut that she sees as an omen for her own. "The grass is starting to grow over my path. Once the path is gone, that's it. There aren't enough people here to start a new one."

Nikolskoye is 300 kilometers south of Moscow in once-thriving farm country. Now, on the local highway, a group of 8-year-old hitchhikers explain that their school has closed ("not enough kids") and there is no money for a school bus. While cash pours into Moscow, the fabled Russian heartland is emptying out. According to preliminary results of the first national Census since 1989, more than half of Russia's 155,290 villages are abandoned or populated by 50 or fewer stragglers.

The decline is most dramatic in far northern regions, such as Chukotka, where the population has shrunk to one third of 1989 figures, or Magadan, where it has dropped by half. Meanwhile, Moscow's population has grown by 16 percent. Zhana Zaionchkovskaya of the Institute for Economic Forecasting in Moscow says Russia is now undergoing the urbanization that Western Europe experienced after World War II. "In some ways this makes sense. There are no countries in the world, not even Canada, where 7 percent of the population lives in these faraway extremes."

The Soviet system of housing perks, discounts and high wages once made the far north livable. Huge factories, academic mini-cities and defense-industry plants were built in remote areas to keep scientists and laborers focused and, ...