Page 54 - Журнал Sozvezdye Review - «СОЗВЕЗДИЕ» #39

The availability of numerous entry points in the form of
seaports, had led to simultaneous emergence of a num-
ber of new-generation mining facilities.
The projects on Chukotka were later followed, also
through the network of responsible departments, by gas
projects on Yamal. Interestingly, the industrial activi-
ties – gas extraction and LNG production – have been
resumed here in Yamal, namely its northernmost part,
after forty years, but this time they employed maritime
logistics for cargo transportation and export.
That the industrial development of the ’90s start-
ed to rely in Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Yamal on
maritime logistics schemes became a real breakthrough,
even a ‘violation’ of the Soviet era’s tradition, when ge-
ologists and miners’ access path to Arctic resources was
slow, originating in the south. Here, the industrial devel-
opment unfolded through an unanticipated algorithm
initiated through extractive companies’ innovative so-
lutions.
Arctic industrialization relies on a network of ur-
ban settlements. Built by the integrated facility model
and maintained by the institution-led one, their number
was more than abundant, even over-excessive. Dozens
of small single-industry towns and settlements in Chu-
kotka Autonomous Okrug, Vorkuta Industrial Hub and
Norilsk Industrial Area had to be shut down in the re-
cessive 1990s. The reason why this trend was less evident
in Murmansk Oblast, Republic of Karelia and Arkhan-
gelsk Oblast was because these areas were promoting
their industrial development relying on their centuries-
old, traditional economies.
As for the Arctic part of Yakutia, its full-scale indus-
trial development is yet to be started. With exception of
Tiksi, there aren’t any other urban settlements for In-
dustrialization 2.0 to rely upon.
In its early years, the technological paradigm of in-
dustrialization varied greatly between regions within the
Russian Arctic and even more so between the Arctic ar-
eas of Russia and those of foreign states. Unlike the inte-
grated development of the early 1930s, which employed
poorly mechanized semi-artisanal industries that used
the muscle power of labor camp prisoners and hired
teams, the new spiral in Arctic’s industrial development,
which started in the 1950s, was to a much greater extent
kotka and Murmansk Oblast; industrial stagnation in based on machine labor. As to the industrialized societ-
the Arctic parts of the Republic of Karelia and Arkhan- ies of the Arctic areas abroad, they entered postindustri-
gelsk Oblast; introduction by extractive companies of alization even earlier, in the 1960s, demonstrating not
rotation system as a method for operating the promis- only quantitative growth in automation, but also knowl-
ing fields in Yamal and Nenets Autonomous Okrug; and edge-intensive technologies, almost unmanned business
sustainably managed mining of nickel in Norilsk, coal processes, and high level of their extractive industries’
in Vorkuta, and diamonds in Yakutia. labor productivity which seemed unattainable for So-
The founder of Soviet northern studies, S. V. Slavin, viet Arctic industrialization. It is obvious that the over-
differentiated between Far North and Near North, based seas countries’ level of technological capability had led to
on the degree of their infrastructures’ proximity to their industrial settlements (those were shift camps, not
mainland Russia. This dichotomy can be interpreted as stationary settlements) and external supplier relations
differences between the courses taken by the European following a different pattern of development.
and the Asian scenarios of industrialization in the Arc- Indigenous communities were of little concern to
tic. Launched in the 1930s, the European scenario built those responsible for the deployment of the Arctic in-
on the model of integrated economic development and dustrialization in the 1930s – partly because the areas
a uniform system for populating the industrial sites on under development maintained traditions of the Russian
the Kola Peninsula and in Komi. In Karelia and Arkhan- population (Pomors, Cossacks, Old Believers). But as the
gelsk Oblast, the industrialization followed a ‘smooth- industrialization efforts started to pick up and the min-
er’ course, relying on the use of industries that existed ing industry established itself firmly in the autonomous
there at the time. areas (Yamal, Chukotka, Taimyr), the issue of adjust-
Sixty years later, production started also in Nenets ing the traditional economies, dominated by reindeer
Autonomous Okrug, where the path of industrialization breeding and related artisanal industries, to the needs
SOZVEZDYE #39 was that of rotation shifts that served both onshore and of the extractive industry gradually came to the fore-
offshore hydrocarbon development projects. Paradoxical- ground. Compromise solution was not always the case,
ly, the thrust of industrial growth in this part of the Near involving large expenditures to assure the equilibrium
наследие North had, during the entire twentieth century, been between the needs of larger industries and those of in-
digenous communities.
legacy dominated by indigenous economy and reindeer herding. The late Soviet model of Arctic industrialization was
In the Asian part of the North, industrial develop-
ment first started in the 1930s on Taimyr, Norilsk In- marked by sectoral departments’ omnipotence in the
dustrial Area, relying on the ‘integrated facility’ model. industrial conquest of the North; fruitless struggle with
Twenty-five years later, its heart was moved to the coun- ever-increasing costs; and mass relocation of human re-
try’s remotest area, Chukotka, where all further indus- sources from manpower-surplus republics of the USSR.
52 trial development started to be administered through The challenges confronting the process at that time were
by-then established network of responsible departments. rooted in the persistent gap between the social infra-