Transformation of an Agricultural District into a Recreational District (a Case Study of Chemalsky District in the Republic of Altai)

— The article considers the change in functions of the mountainous rural areas that has been actively going on over the past 30 years in Chemalsky district of the Altai Republic. The objective of the article was to study the factors and consequences of socioeconomic and social changes in the rural areas of Altai in the post-Soviet period. On the basis of qualitative interviews and statistical data acquired during field works, the variability of the transformation is described and its impact on the lifestyle, population migration, and the district’s economy is revealed. The analyzed information led to the following conclusions. It was found that the transformation process has a stage-by-stage character and corresponds to the theory of diffusion of innovations, spreading from the center to the periphery along transportation routes. The change of functions is uneven: the authors identified three types of rural settlements according to the level of transformation. The main factors of the transformation process are the tourist attractiveness of the territory, attractiveness to business and the availability of unoccupied land. Along with tourists, these factors also attract migrants to the area, who create local communities here and are the main actors of transformation. The slow dynamic of the processes leads to competition between agriculture and recreation for the territory and land use conflicts, which, together with the predominant role of visitors in service of tourists, causes social tensions. The local population is poorly involved in recreational activities, in connection with which there is a process of replacing the indigenous population with visitors. The abolition of collective farms and state farms led to archaization of the district’s agriculture and its withdrawal into private homesteads, which simplified the inclusion of former agricultural land into recreational use. Nowadays, agriculture has been mainly driven out to remote villages, and the remaining farms in district’s central part are oriented towards serving the tourist flow.