ИСТИНА

The development of a regional policy framework and a spatial development strategy for the country towards sustainable development shifted the topic of the role of cities to the focus of the current scientific and political agenda. The purpose of the article is to analyze the stability of the urban system of Russia using the Zipf's law and assess the growth of Russian cities using the Gibrat’s law. The results will serve as the basis for the formation of political recommendations and allow us to evaluate the correctness and effectiveness of government regulation measures aimed at achieving a balanced and sustainable development of Russia's urban systems and the development of program-design mechanisms for managing urban structures. The analysis used archival census data of the XIX century in Russia. For the cities of Russia, a comparative analysis of demographic dynamics in the context of federal districts has not been conducted before, for the first time, the Gibrat’s law is empirically analyzed using non-parametric methods and is directly related to the results of estimates of the size of cities.