From Northern Abundance to Crises Resistance: Strategies and Survival Practices in the Russian North in the Crisis of the 1990s

Abstract

The paper focuses on the analysis of survival practices in northern Russian settlements that developed in the 1990s. Most of the northern settlements were in a state of decline: changes in the socio‑demographic composition and population size, transformation of the local economy, degradation of transport infrastructure, deterioration in the quality of life. The reason for the decline was the decentralization of the northern regions of the country – the destruction of established economic and social ties and supply problems. It was in the 1990s that northern settlements began to notice their isolation from the central regions of the country and develop their own survival strategies and practices in difficult climatic conditions. For comparison, two cases were chosen: the agglomeration of Kirovsk-Apatity (Murmansk region) and Ust’-Kamchatsk (Kamchatka Peninsula); materials collected in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous District, Murmansk region, and Sakhalin are also used. The concept of resilience is used as a methodological basis. The basics for the analysis were the materials of field expeditions in a number of regions of the Russian North conducted in 2017‑2022.

Keywords

• russian north
• arctic
• crisis of the 1990s
• everyday life
• survival practices
• resilience
• infrastructure
• territorial isolation
• migration drift
• northern delivery