Course description
The Arctic is often imagined as a remote, timeless space inhabited primarily by Indigenous peoples living in extreme climatic conditions or, conversely, as a depopulated industrial resource frontier. This course challenges such representations by approaching the Russian Arctic as a densely inhabited, politically shaped, and constantly transforming region, where multiple social groups, infrastructures, and environments coexist and interact. The course explores how political projects, economic systems, and forms of knowledge have actively reshaped Arctic environments – and how, in turn, Arctic climatic and environmental conditions have shaped patterns of settlement, mobility, labor, and everyday life.
Combining historical and anthropological approaches, the course traces major transformations in the Russian North – from early imperial expansion, through Soviet industrialization and urbanization, to post-Soviet restructuring and contemporary extractive economies. Special attention is paid to how state policies and political ideologies have intervened in Arctic environments through relocation campaigns, collectivization and sedentarization of Indigenous populations, large-scale industrial projects, and the construction of transportation infrastructures.
The course is organized around different Arctic lifeways, including rural settlements, industrial towns, and shift-work regimes. It highlights the coexistence of diverse social groups in the Russian North and examines how people inhabit, navigate, and adapt to environmentally and infrastructurally shaped landscapes. By focusing on everyday practices, social networks, and modes of living, the course dismantles simplified narratives of the North. Throughout the course, students critically engage with popular imaginaries of the Arctic and examine how these representations shape policy, scientific knowledge, and public debates.

Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, students will:
• Acquire knowledge of the historical and contemporary social and environmental transformations of the Russian Arctic and Siberia;
• Critically examine the role of state policies, industrial projects, and infrastructure in shaping everyday life in the Arctic;
• Become familiar with key debates in anthropology concerning the Arctic;
• Critically evaluate popular imaginaries of the Arctic region, and assess their political, scientific, and social implications;
• Develop skills in academic writing and oral presentations.

Teaching and evaluation methods
Attendance and active participation in discussions – 30 %;
The reading responses – 20 %;
The final paper – 30 %;
Oral presentations – 20 %.

Each week focuses on a single thematic topic. The first class is organized as a lecture introducing key concepts, historical context, and analytical frameworks. The second class takes the form of a seminar, in which students analyze and discuss an academic text, a literary work, or a film related to the weekly topic. For each seminar, students are expected to prepare a short written response reflecting on the reading or viewing assignment.
For the final paper, each student selects a case study (such as a book, film, blog, or digital ethnography project) and analyzes it in relation to the themes covered throughout the course, demonstrating critical engagement with course concepts and readings. Students are expected to present their work in the final class. The paper (approx. 2,500 words) must be discussed with the instructor by Week 7, submitted by Week 10, and presented in Week 12.

Weekly structure
Historical module
Week 1. Introduction. What is the Arctic? Geography, climate and definitions. Representations of the Arctic. The Russian Arctic in a global context
Week 2. “Siberia and Russia”: natural resources, relocations, transportation infrastructure (17th - 19th centuries)
Week 3. Indigenous peoples of the Arctic: lifeways, migrations, engagement with the environment
Week 4. Arctic encounters: coexistence of Indigenous and settler worlds
Week 5. The city in the North. Soviet industrialization
Week 6. Soviet politics of collectivization and sedentarization
Anthropological module
Week 7. Modern Arctic city: environment and infrastructure
Week 8. Contemporary extraction industries in the Arctic: between Soviet heritage and international practices
Week 9. Rural communities of the contemporary Arctic
Week 10. Migration, social networks and coping with resource challenges in the Russian North
Week 11. Lifestyles in the Russian North
Week 12. Project presentations and final discussion

Readings
Bolotova, Alla. 2011. “Engaging with the Environment in the Industrialized Russian North.” Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 36 (2): 28–36.
Bruno, Andy, and Ekaterina Kalemeneva. 2023. “Creating the Soviet Arctic, 1917–1991.” In The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions, edited by Adrian Howkins and Klaus Dodds, 462–486. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chekhov, Anton. 2018. Sakhalin Island. London: Alma Books.
Demuth, Bathsheba. 2019. Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Dodds, Klaus, and Mark Nuttall. 2019. The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Habeck, Joachim Otto, ed. 2019. Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Introduction and Chapter 1, 1–104.
Habeck, Joachim Otto. 2013. “Learning to Be Seated: Sedentarization in the Soviet Far North as a Spatial and Cognitive Enclosure.” In Nomadic and Indigenous Spaces: Productions and Cognitions, edited by Judith Miggelbrink, Joachim Otto Habeck, Nuccio Mazzullo, and Peter Koch, 155–180. Farnham: Ashgate.
Humphrey, Caroline. 2020. “Rethinking Infrastructure: Siberian Cities and the Great Freeze of January 2001.” In Wounded Cities, edited by Jayne Osgood and others, 91–107. London: Routledge.
Krupnik, Igor. 2002. Arctic Adaptations: Native Whalers and Reindeer Herders of Northern Eurasia. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press.
Larsen, Joan Nymand, and Gail Fondahl, eds. 2015. Arctic Human Development Report: Regional Processes and Global Linkages. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers.
Rytkheu, Yuri. 2011. A Dream in Polar Fog. New York: New York Review Books.
Saxinger, Günter. 2021. “Rootedness Along the Way: Meaningful Sociality in Petroleum and Mining Mobile Worker Camps.” Mobilities 16 (2): 194–211.
Shalamov, Varlam. 1994. Kolyma Tales. London: Penguin UK.
Slezkine, Yuri. 1994. Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Thompson, Niobe. 2009. Settlers on the Edge: Identity and Modernization on Russia's Arctic Frontier. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Last updated: January 20, 2026