From the Front Lines of Supply to the Margins of the State: Reimagining Infrastructure of the Northern Sea Route (NSR)

Keywords: Northern Sea Route, modernization, supply, state, infrastructure, imagination
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 59

Abstract

The town of Tiksi in northeastern Siberia was founded in the heydays of Soviet exploration of the Arctic and is still proudly called “the arctic sea-gate of Yakutiya”. The community reached its population and development peak by the 1980s, when the port received its maximal amount from around the world. As the state withdrew its support and reduced its investments into coastal infrastructures, the once bustling sea port of Tiksi turned into a peripheral navigation point and an assemblage of decaying port facilities and ship breaking yards. In fact, it only manages to survive due to sporadic transportation services and search and rescue operations.
The current modernization program of the NSR, widely propagated in official discourses and in the media, promises a new infrastructural and socioeconomic boom. According to this program, which appeals to the Soviet nostalgia of local residents, the reconstructed sea port would again become a central node for state-supported development, thereby ensuring prosperity for the community of Tiksi. However, the majority of these plans remains on paper with the population numbers continuing to sink and abandoned infrastructures left to decay. This paper is based on an ethnographic study of Tiksi in northeastern Siberia and argues for an understanding of coastal infrastructures as nostalgic objects and political projects filled with promises, through which the Russian state tries to reassert its presence on the margins of its power reach.