Permyakiya

   Formerly known as the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug (AOk) within the Perm Oblast, Permyakiya was downgraded to an okrug of the newly constituted Perm Krai in 2005. The 2002 census recorded a population of 147,800, of which a majority was Komi-Permyaks (60 percent). Permyakiya served as one of two ethnic homelands for the Komi, the other being the Komi Republic. Ethnic Russians comprise slightly more than one-third of the territory’s population. The district’s administrative center is Kudymkar, a city of 31,000; barely one-quarter of the population resides in urban areas. With few paved roads, almost no small businesses, and little industry, the okrug is one of the poorest and most underdeveloped regions in European Russia; much of the population still depends on small-scale farming, animal husbandry, and hunting. Permyakiya is heavily dependent on federal subsidies, though these have been reduced in the wake of its subordination to Perm. In 1996, the AOk signed a treaty with Moscow delimiting respective powers in the territory. Beginning in 1999, a movement to abolish Permyakiya’s autonomous status began to gain steam, reversing the post-1993 trend that saw the autonomous okrug and its “host,” the Perm Oblast, drifting apart. This came to pass under the new leadership of Gennady Savelyev, who supported Vladimir Putin’s goal of simplifying the federal structure of Russia. The results of the plebiscite in 2004 showed 83 percent of the electorate supporting unification of the AOk with Perm.