Young Curly Blonde Girl Wearing A Red Dress In The Village

In Russia, the bulk of the rural population are concentrated in rural localities. Two most common types of rural localities are derevnya (деревня) and selo (село). Historically, the formal indication of status was religious: a city (gorod) had a cathedral, a selo had a church, while a derevnya had neither.
The lowest administrative unit of the Russian Empire, volost, or its Soviet or modern Russian successor, selsoviet, was usually headquartered in a selo and embraced a few neighboring villages.
Between 1926 and 1989, Russia's rural population shrank from 76 million people to 39 million, due to urbanization, collectivization, dekulakization, and the World War II losses, but has nearly stabilized since. During 1930–1937, mass starvation in Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union lead to the death of at least 14.5 million peasants (including 5-7 million in the Holodomor).
Most Russian rural localities have populations of less than 200 people, and the smaller places take the brunt of depopulation: e.g., in 1959, about one half of Russia's rural population lived in villages of fewer than 500 people, while now less than one third does. In the 1960s–1970s, the depopulation of the smaller villages was driven by the central planners' drive to get the farm workers out of smaller, "prospect-less" hamlets and into the collective or state farm's main village, with more amenities.