Alexander Pelyasov is the Director of the Center for the Arctic and Northern Economies, Council for
Research for Productive Forces, Moscow, Russia.
353
Commentary
Russian Strategy of the Development of the Arctic
Zone & the Provision of National Security until 2020
(adopted by the President of the Russian Federation on
February 8, 2013,
№
Pr-232)
Alexander Pelyasov
1.
To understand properly the context of the Russian document one needs to clarify the
specificness of the Russian Arctic. Russian polar territories are really vast even in comparison
with the other Arctic federations like US and Canada. Two third of the circumpolar wealth
are created in the Russian Arctic (AHDR-1). Because of this fact the whole document is
concerned with the internal problems of the Russian Arctic and much less with international
affairs. This is characteristic for the strategies of all Arctic federations. The Russian
difference is that this internally oriented document is preoccupied with how to answer the
challenges which face the country and its Arctic zone because of the deep restructuring of its
industrial economy.
The Russian Arctic has the thickest ‗layer‘ of industrial activity; and the scale of industrial
activity here is much more than that of the other polar states. Here we have the most
urbanized Arctic community in the world, the maximum amount of monoprofile cities and
settlements, and the most powerful resource sector of the Arctic economy in the world. Not
surprisingly then, the imperative of innovative modernization is set throughout the whole
text of the strategy. Large-scale industrial activity began in the Russian Arctic decades before
the other polar countries and therefore one can distinguish old and young polar industrial
territories.