ABSTRACT
As in other countries, urbanization in Russia has over the centuries signified more than just population growth and changes in physical structure. The city has been the locus of changes in political development, social organization, institutions, values, and behavior patterns. It has also been the product of practices by which urban inhabitants make the city in some measure their own place. The history of the Russian city and of the process of urbanization contains the chief antimonies of Russian culture: the West-Russia, official-unofficial, order-disorder, modernity-tradition, planned-spontaneous, autocracysociety, rapid growth-stagnation, monuments-transience.
