Social development of regional capital cities as the factor of republican identity (de)stabilization in estimations of the population and experts (based on research in Izhevsk and Saransk)

Based on the analysis of the results of qualitative and quantitative sociological research, the article characterises the influence of the center-peripheral stratification of regions on the stability degree of the social identity of the population in the capitals of the republics within the Russian Federation – on the example of Saransk, the administrative center of the Republic of Mordovia, and Izhevsk, the administrative center of the Udmurt Republic. The author evaluates the differences in the central-peripheral self-identification of the elites and the population of the republics, due to differences in the “scale effect” of the resource provision of the republics, as a significant component of the metropolitan identity of the central cities of the republics as “centers for the implementation of other people’s initiatives.” For example, the status of Izhevsk as the largest city is expressed not only in its comparison to medium-sized cities in the Udmurt Republic, but also in competition with large industrial cities in other regions. The contrast example of the negative impact of the scale effect is demonstrated by Mordovia as a relatively small (with a population of less than a million people) and low-resource region with its capital city of Saransk. The formation of a highly polarized population structure in such a region with a single large city in the absence of medium-sized ones does not prevent a negative comparison with the capital cities of more developed and large regions, forming an idea of their own non-competitiveness and periphery in relation to the largest cities, along with a willingness to join the administrative regions they manage, even at the cost of losing their central status. The results of the study explain the phenomenon of blurring the republican identity among the population of the capital cities of some republics and the dysfunction in their social development, which is expressed in their transformation from the “locomotives of modernization” of the republics into the donors of human resources for more developed regions.