New Russian Arctic
Authors: Pilyasov A.N. ,   Institute of Regional Consulting,   Lomonosov Moscow State University
Published: July 2024

Dear readers! We present to your attention a unique project of a thematic interdisciplinary issue of the journal devoted to modern problems of the development of the Russian Arctic. He brought together a team of several dozen professionals — scientists of different generations, from various fields of humanities (economists, geographers, demographers, sociologists), from academic institutes and universities in Moscow, Syktyvkar, Petrozavodsk, Vologda, Yekaterinburg, Khabarovsk and Magadan, who for many years have been passionate about the topic of studying the economic and social development of the Russian Arctic. Fifteen articles of the thematic issue are devoted to various aspects of this topic, which can be grouped into five main areas: general methodological, demographic, municipal, regional and transport studies of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation. Despite the difference in the plots, our issue also has a thread connecting all the articles: the theme of the new Arctic. New technologically, new in terms of research, in terms of the methods of study used, in terms of the databases and analytical tools used. For the first time on the pages of this thematic issue, our authors apply the theory of technical and economic patterns to predict the medium-term development of the Russian Arctic zone as a whole, its regions and municipalities, constructively use a scientometric approach to analyzing the flow of Arctic research in Russia and the world over the past decades, apply methods of multidimensional demography to assess the human resources of the Arctic and the North, use a new approach to measuring the sustainability of migration flows over time, Innovatively, using big data and web analytics tools, the boundaries of the Arctic and northern urban agglomerations are determined, and for the first time, the statistics of the Federal Tax Service are applied on a large scale to assess the monetary income of the population of Arctic municipalities. The first methodological block of the issue is formed by two articles. A. I. Terekhov devoted his work to a scientometric review of Arctic research in the world and Russia. In this sense, his article stands out from the rest of the articles in the issue, giving their authors a much-needed view from the outside. The Arctic in the world literature in recent years, from the point of view of the rapid growth of scientific publications (but not only: the topics of Arctic UAVs, industry 4.0 in the Arctic, artificial intelligence technologies in remote control of Arctic projects, monitoring of pipeline networks, etc.) are being developed as a certain analogue of a high-tech field of scientific knowledge. In the structure of this new scientific knowledge about the Arctic, the share of social sciences, which have always been in the minority in this stream, is increasing. Let's hope that our thematic issue will also contribute to this trend of humanizing Arctic research. Despite the quantitative leadership in terms of area, population, and output, Russia is only the third country in terms of the number of publications about the Arctic (after the United States and Canada, which are ahead by a wide margin). This means that our country has a place to grow and where to concentrate the efforts of Russian scientific youth, joining the ranks of domestic Arctic researchers. A. I. Terekhov writes that over the past two decades, the non-core component of Russian Arctic research has more than doubled, to more than a third. It seems that this trend towards decentralization should be assessed positively — the voice of scientists from the northern and Arctic regions of our country has become more audible. The scientometric view of the "high-tech Arctic" by A. I. Terekhov to a certain extent serves as a bridge to the next article of the first block by A. N. Pilyasov and A.V. Kotov, who characterize the technical and economic dynamics of the Arctic territories of Russia until 2035 based on the concept of technological structures by N. Kondratiev, S. Glazyev and K. Peres. The authors make a forecast for the development of the Arctic territories until 2035 based on the list of new resource projects of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia, which, according to A. N. Pilyasov and A.V. Kotova, differ in their structural impulse: it is maximal when new projects correspond to the rhythms of global economic dynamics determined by the evolution of technological patterns. The positive momentum from the development of new resource projects for the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation can be enhanced by the commissioning of graphite, antimony, and bauxite deposits, the global demand for which is characterized by favorable conditions in the forecast period. An analysis of the number of greenfield projects in the Russian Arctic introduced during the forecast period made it possible to differentiate all its regions into three groups in terms of the scale of technological renewal: marginal (4), partial (3) and minimal (2). It is important to emphasize that the current strong starting positions of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in terms of technological advancement do not guarantee the preservation of its status quo among the regions of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation by 2035. An assessment of the projected technological dynamics of 49 Arctic municipal districts with limited delivery times based on changes in resource specialization under the influence of new projects under implementation made it possible to differentiate them into four types: maximum, average greenfield development potential, active modernization of previously initiated projects and without explicit resource prospects for greenfield development. The ideology of the "new Arctic" is supported in the following demographic block, consisting of two articles. The work of V. V. Fauser and A. V. Smirnov is devoted to the assessment of human resources in 13 regions of the Russian North and the Arctic. The new approach of multidimensional demography made it possible to simultaneously analyze the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the population, to consider the change in the structure of human resources (the advancement of generations along the age pyramid during the period under review) in 13 northern regions of Russia for 2002-2020. simultaneously in six dimensions: the type of settlement, gender, age, educational level, labor force participation (employment status) and the year of the census. The authors are interested in the extent to which negative trends in the quantitative characteristics of human resources can be offset by qualitative ones — an increase in the level of education and employment of the population. They note that if in 2002-2010 negative demographic trends in the Russian North were compensated by an increase in the qualitative characteristics of the population, then in the future the potential for leveling them due to increased employment at older ages and an increase in the number of years of study turned out to be close to exhaustion. The following article of the demographic block, authored by A. O. Averyanov and I. S. Stepus, is devoted to the assessment of the interregional connectivity of the Arctic territories of Russia as a result of the use of population localization coefficients and the stability of migration links (calculated on the basis of data from the All-Russian population censuses and statistics of interregional migration of Rosstat). The authors conclude that the migration mobility of the population of the Arctic regions has decreased over the past 15 years, that there are stable "pairs" of the Arctic regions of migrant exit and the Russian regions of entry of Arctic migrants, that the Russian regions of migrant exit to the Arctic are more variable than the Arctic regions of entry, and that regions with stable, dynamic and unstable migration flows. The "middle" municipal block of the issue is formed by four articles, two of which are on the top popular topic of Arctic cities. The work of N. Y. Zamyatina and Y. V. Kulchitsky is devoted to the pioneering study of the structure of economic activity in Arctic urban settlements. The authors are interested in the question of how remoteness affects the structure of economic activity in Arctic cities. They draw a paradoxical conclusion about the decisive influence of geographical remoteness on the degree of diversity of economic activities in small (about five thousand people or less) urban settlements of the Russian Arctic. At the same time, the lack of year-round land transport links, which has traditionally been considered the most important factor for all economic parameters of such settlements in areas with limited delivery times, turned out to be less significant: settlements of the off-road zone, however, relatively accessible by off-road transport from larger populated centers (regional administrative centers, etc.), have indicators of species diversity economic activity similar to that of settlements on the year-round highway network. Therefore, the factor of geographical remoteness, according to the authors, can be regarded as a compensator for the small size of the market: in conditions of remoteness, small settlements of about 5 thousand inhabitants or less are forced to perform urban functions that are typical of larger cities in "normal" conditions. The article by S. A. Kozhevnikov, S. S. Patrakova and N. V. Voroshilov is devoted to the topic of highlighting the actual boundaries of the Arctic and northern urban agglomerations (using the example of Arkhangelsk, Surgut and Norilsk). The authors state that the actual borders of the northern/Arctic agglomerations do not meet the traditional criteria of delimitation according to the one-and-a-half-hour isochron of transport accessibility of the core city, and after that they undertake an intelligent three-stage journey to take into account the Arctic specifics in the delimitation of borders using GIS analysis, big data analysis, cartographic visualization of borders, economic and statistical analysis, etc.