Skvortsova I. Rural settlements of Vinnytska and Khmelnytsky regions at the final stage of the Soviet period (1961-1991): status, problems and difficulties of development.

The dissertation is devoted to the study of pressing scientific topics. It is the first time in historiography when the tendencies of the development of the village settlement network were analyzed on the basis of wide range of sources.It was foundthatinthe 60-80sthenumberofvillagesintheregion wasintensively reducing, becoming devastated and disintegrated. As a result, traditional big settlement network in Podillya transformed into a small one, from agrarian overpopulation in the countryside to its devastation. The destruction of rural settlement network occurred primarily under influence of irrevocable mass migration of rural population to the cities. It was found that as a result of migration of villagers in Podilsky village, there started to develop destructive demographic processes associated with the deformation of age-sex structure of the rural population, which found its expression in aging. At the end of the 70-80sthe main entity in rural settlements of Vinnytsya and Khmelnytsky regions were people of pre-retirement and retirement age.