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Recent changes in the population of the Soviet Union. The preliminary results of the census carried out on January 15th 1970, put the number of inhabitants of the Soviet Union at 241,7 million against 209,8 million on January 15th 1959, with a relative increase of 40-46% for the Central Asiatic Republics, Armenia and Azerbajdzhan, and only 1-8 % for the three regions in the central part of European Russia. The differences can be ascribed, more than to a natural movement, to population moves towards the areas of more recent and complex geographic functional dynamism of Soviet Asia, the Caucasian isthmus and the districts along the Volga; the flow is, above all, from the country to the towns. Compared to the previous census, 21,4 million have left rural settlements. The towns which have benefited most from the rural exodus are those with more of 100.000 inhabitants, established as centers of coordination for the spreading of economic regionalization. The number of towns with over a million inhabitants has risen from 3 to 10, and today they are also to be found in Siberia, Central Asia and Caucasus.
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