Abstract <p>For more than 60 years, the use of nitrogen fertilizers in Russia has lagged behind the global average. At the same time, nitrogen uptake by crops from cropland soils of the Russian Federation with harvested exceeds the application of nitrogen fertilizers (mineral and organic) into the soil, which indicates the formation of crop yields largely due to the mineralization of soil organic matter and natural biological nitrogen fixation. Using Rosstat data, an analysis of the long-term dynamics of nitrogen budget in cropland soils under grain crops has been performed. Data on Belgorod oblast provide a positive example of maintaining a deficit-free budget of nitrogen and carbon in agriculture. The study of the dynamics of nitrogen budget in cropland soils revealed three different periods in the formation of the nitrogen budget structure: 1960–1990, 1995–2010, and 2015–2023. The period of 1960–1990 was characterized by a progressive increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers, which was accompanied by a shift in the budget from negative to positive values. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the nitrogen budget in cropland soils moved into the negative range, which is still preserved in the Russian Federation to this day despite a new increase in fertilizer application in 2015–2023. However, in the soils of Belgorod oblast, a surplus of nitrogen budget has been observed since 2005. A positive relationship has been established between the mobilization potential of soil nitrogen (<b>MPSN</b>) and the use of nitrogen fertilizers. From 1960 to 2022, the MPSN of cropland increased from 70 to 208 kg N/ha per year in the Russian Federation as a whole and from 117 to 347 kg N/ha per year in Belgorod oblast. Over the past 60 years, a negative nitrogen budget has been combined with a negative carbon budget in cropland soils of Russia.</p>