Russia wipes California from its map

MOSCOW (Reuters) – California will no longer exist on the Russian map.

Russia’s north-western region of Nizhny Novgorod has decided to eliminate the tiny village of California due to the lack of inhabitants, Itar-Tass news agency reported on Thursday.

The village was set up in the 19th century by a Russian landowner as a snub to the government for selling Alaska to the United States in 1867, Tass said.

The once vibrant village has been in decline since the Soviet collapse, with the last of its residents leaving in 2000 to seek better lives elsewhere.

It will now officially cease to exist as a geographical unit but it was unclear if its buildings, including a school, would also be destroyed.

Thousands of villages, abandoned by people moving to cities, are scattered across Russia, many in ruins but some frozen in time, their wooden huts unchanged for decades.