This article discusses the main points of the formation and development of the concept«demographic potential» used for the purposes of management and forecasting in a changing environment. The need for demographic potential as an instrumental, supporting notion arose when researchers began to examine possible effects of demographic processes and their impact on the structure and size of population in the future, i.e. build population projections and population development models. Historically, researchers studied demographic potential separately for each component of the overall population growth. Beginning of the study of fertility potential is associated with the name of R. E. Fisher, life potential — with the work of L. Hersch, migration capacity — with the works of J. Q. Stewart, G. K. Zipf, S. A. Staufer and W. Izard. Attempts to assess the joint effect of different components of the overall population growth were episodic. Only in the 30s of the twentieth century the integrated synthesis indicators began to be used for describing the demographic potential. One of the indicators for capacity of population reproduction may be net reproduction rate. Modern interpretations of the potential of changes in fertility and mortality, migration capacity have a wider purpose and filling than at the time of these concepts’ formation. Demographic potential in a narrow sense is the potential population reproduction, including changes in fertility and mortality; in a broader sense, it is the total potential of population — potential of reproduction and migration potential, including possible changes in the population size and structure due to births, deaths, immigration and emigration.

The article discusses the migration situation in the Far East of Russia for 27 years the post-Soviet period. It is shown that during all these years there have been unforgiving interregional migration outflows of population from the Far East, poorly reimbursed by interstate migration growth and exacerbated by natural decline. Differences in the standard and conditions of living, in the development of infrastructure of the Far East regions and the old-inhabited European Russia do not add optimism on the issue of restraining migration outflows from the main geopolitical borderland and outstripping growth rate of its population. To estimate the intra-Russian migration capacity of the Far East population growth, the authors disclose and systematize the interregional migration connections of the Far East regions in 2006–2017. There are identified the Russian regions having the closest migratory connections with the Far East. In addition to those regions, in an exchange with which the Far East loses population, there are identified the areas having close migratory connections and roughly equivalent migration population exchange. They have the operational migration potential for increasing the flows of Russian population to the Far East. The article shows the structure of interregional migration losses of the Far East, from which 2/3 falls to 5 RF subjects — Moscow, Moscow oblast, Saint-Petersburg, Leningrad oblast and Krasnodar region. It provides the rationale for that without the economic and social policy reversal from West to East the task of re-colonization of the Far East cannot be solved. And interstate migration alone would not be up to the task. The conclusion contains suggestions for improving the situation.

The article deals with the demographic dynamics of the regions of Russia during the post-war Soviet period since 1959, and in the post-Soviet period of 1991–2017. It identifies the basic factors of demographic development of the country’s regions in these two historical periods. There is presented the grouping p of regions by the level of demographic dynamics and the ratio of two main components — reproduction and migration, are highlighted the leaders of demographic growth and problem regions. The authors show the dynamics of geopolitically significant territories of Russia, primarily in the Far East. They stress that in the post-war period, up to the collapse of the USSR, the demographic development of the majority of Russian regions was provided mainly at the expense of inner resources, i. e. due to natural population growth. The same is true for geopolitically significant outlying territories of the Far East, Siberia and the European North, where in 1970–1990 almost 7/8 of the total population growth was formed due to natural population growth and only 1/8 — due to migration from other regions of Russia, as well as from the former republics of the USSR. There is made a conclusion that to change radically the demographic situation in the Far East “de facto” only with immigration of compatriots, as is being done now, is not possible. To solve this problem, it’s necessary to use all demographic «leverage» — fertility, interregional migration, immigration of both compatriots and (selectively) representatives of the titular peoples of the former Soviet republics, as well as temporary (labor and educational) migration as a potential of permanent migration.