Over the past two decades, Russia has been characterized by a demographic slump, a drastic decline in the number of school students, and, accordingly, a shrinkage of the system of education. The magnitude of shrinkage in rural areas is not 5-10 percent, something education could adapt to, but is about 30 percent, which requires systemic changes. Russia has accumulated considerable experience in the use of educational technologies for expanding systems, but it does not have any experience in the effective development of rural education under the conditions of the demographic slump and the rural population's intensive migration to cities. In the past ten years, this is why the problems and prospects of rural education development have been the focus of the educational policies of most countries with a transition economy. Research data show that the desire among young people in the villages of Russia is overwhelmingly to obtain a higher education, and to use this to enable them to move away from rural areas to more urban settings. This desire will hasten the already evident decline of the rural population in Russia. (Contains 3 notes.) [This article was translated by Kim Braithwaite.]