Liv­ing or Leav­ing? Youth and the live­ab­il­ity of single-in­dustry towns in the Rus­sian Arc­tic

 

Alla Bolotova, Post-doctoral researcher in the Wollie project, wrote an article for the new issue of Aleksanteri Insight. Aleksanteri Insight is a series of expert opinions, published by the Aleksanteri Institute quarterly and edited by Kaarina Aitamurto and Dmitry Yagodin. The latest issue of the series is titled “Liv­ing or Leav­ing? Youth and the live­ab­il­ity of single-in­dustry towns in the Rus­sian Arc­tic” and provides results of Alla Bolotova’s work within the Wollie project.

The article is available in both English and Finnish online.

Alla Bolotova took part in “The global life of mines: Mining and post-mining between extractivism and heritage-making” workshop at the University of Cagliari in Italy

On 21-22 of November “The global life of mines: Mining and post-mining between extractivism and heritage-making” workshop was organised at the University of Cagliari in Italy. The aim of the workshop was to bring together anthropological perspectives and ethnographic studies on mining and post-mining across a broad range of geographical contexts. The contributions explored links, interconnections and scales of articulations between the current booming of extractive industries, projects, and operations worldwide – along with the new rhetorics of
sustainability, ‘green’ and ‘blue’ economy etc.. – and the diversified consequences of
mine closures, ranging from abandonment and dereliction to new extractive processes
(heritage-making, ‘green’ economies etc).

Dr. Alla Bolotova took part in the workshop and presented there her paper “Living or Leaving? Youth and place marginalization in mining towns in the Russian Arctic” at the ‘Im/mobilities’ session.

Many young people finishing schools in mining towns in the Russian Arctic express their dreams to escape from their hometowns. Among main complaints are a lack of recreational opportunities, boredom, and soviet appearance of urban space in their localities. In this paper, I analyse lived experiences of young adults dwelling in the soviet-style urban space of Arctic mining towns and dealing with place marginalization. The new towns were built by the soviet state next to mineral deposits and were populated by incomers, stimulated to resettle up north by material benefits. Arctic mining towns became prosperous communities where town-forming enterprises were responsible for place maintenance. During the post-soviet period, international mining companies became owners of town-forming enterprises. Despite of successful internationalisation of mining enterprises, towns are still rooted in th­­e soviet past, which continues to shape lives of contemporary youth. The territory around mining towns often looks devastated, due to industrial ruins, abandoned mines, destroyed buildings. Infrastructure of single-industry towns does not fulfill needs of modern young people that contributes to large-scale outmigration of youth. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Murmansk region, I analyse experiences and strategies of young adults coping with place marginalization and numerous problems in northern declining towns.

Wokrshop’s programme can be found here.

 

Arctic Spirit Conference

On 12-13 of November the Arctic Spirit conference was organised in Rovaniemi. The Conference is an official side event of Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Thus, the Conference also enhances Arctic discussion during the Presidency.

This year the conference focused on climate change, especially from the viewpoint of young people and future generations living in the Arctic. The first conference day consisted of invited keynote speeches and panel discussions focusing on the voice of Arctic youth and the different levels of climate-related decision-making. From our research group, Sanna Kopra participated in the panel discussion “Climate Decision-Making – Why Is It So Difficult?”.

On the second day, the parallel thematic sessions looked at the main theme from various angles. Alla Bolotova and Elena Gorbacheva participated in the “Live, Work Or Leave? Youth-Well-Being And The Viability Of Arctic Towns And Cities” session and gave a presentation “Recycling initiatives of youth in industrial cities in the Russian Arctic: environmentally responsible behaviour in the absence of structural opportunities”. The session was arranged by the Wollie project, and many of the project’s participants from Russia and Finland shared their current results. The session lasted all day and culminated with a fruitful discussion on what is special about the Arctic youth in different states – or is there anything special about it at all?

More information about the Arctic Spirit can be found on the conference website.

Wollie meeting in Murmansk Oblast

From 26th to 30th of August Wollie project participants had a work meeting in Kirovsk, Murmansk oblast, Russia, where they discussed the current results and plans. From our team Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen and Alla Bolotova participated in the event. Within the framework of Wollie, Dr. Bolotova and Lukas Allemann are conducting their fieldwork in the region and during the researchers’ visit they showed them their fields in Kirovsk and Revda, respectively.

Photo by Tanja Leena Joona

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trip to Novy Urengoy

From 20 to 26 of May four researchers of our group, Sohvi Kangasluoma, Elena Gorbacheva, Francesco Durante, and Stephanie Hitztaler, were in Novy Urengoy, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of Russia. Novy Urengoy is an industrial city located in the Russian Far North with one of the largest gas fields in the world, and is one of the towns included to the study of Wollie project. Together with the researchers of our group, Professor Florian Stammler, Principal Investigator of the project from Finnish side, and Associate Professor Aytalina Ivanova, Principal Investigator from Russian side, also traveled to Novy Urengoy to study youth welfare in the city.

Continue reading “Trip to Novy Urengoy”

Alla Bolotova’s field trip to Kovdor

From 17th of February to 2nd of March this year our postdoctoral researcher Alla Bolotova was on her second field trip within the Wollie project to Kovdor. Kovdor is a small industrial town with 16 thousand inhabitants, located in Murmansk Oblast of Russia, some 20 kilometres away to the East from the Finnish border. Previous fieldwork was conducted in an urban-type settlement Revda, which is also in Murmansk Oblast, but this trip was a special one – Alla Bolotova herself was born and grew up in Kovdor. Now, returning to the town after many years, Alla was interviewing young people aged 15-30 that are facing same dilemma that she had – stay, leave, or return to Kovdor after getting higher education elsewhere?

Education is one of the important factors determining youth’s motivation to leave the town – school graduates can only get vocational training in Kovdor with very limited choice of professions available. Most professions are men-oriented, preparing for work at the mining industry, so girls and boys with different interests are pushed to leave the town. Lack of education, relevant for modern youth, is a general problem for most northern single industry towns, and Kovdor is no exception here.

Kovdor indeed resembles many other industrial towns in the Russian North: a large carbonatite mine is located next to the town, and Kovdorians are employed at the “Kovdor’s Mining Plant” (Kovdorsky gorno-obogatitelny kombinat, or Kovdorsky GOK), currently owned by the EuroChem, a large nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer company headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. The enterprise is quite successful, but still the population of Kovdor is rapidly decreasing every year. According to Alla Bolotova, most school pupils, interviewed for the Wollie project, are eager to leave the town after finishing school. However, there are also some young people returning to the town after getting education elsewhere and starting the families: Kovdor is a rather compact safe town, with cheap apartments, while salaries in mining sector are relatively high. Also, help of grandparents and other relatives becomes quite important when young families get children.

But what is in Kovdor for the youth? There are several state sport clubs and schools, associations at the vocational training college and schools, various dance and other interest clubs at the local House of culture and libraries, however, many of them encounter problems trying to attract young people to their formalized activities. There is a youth club formed as a grassroots initiative called “Prityazhenie”. It appeared in 2015 as result of cooperation of several young workers wishing to create an alternative leisure place for working youth, and later got registered as an NGO. This independent youth centre organises variety of events, such as music concerts, film screenings, language clubs, meetings for playing board games, etc. The centre and its activities are funded mainly by the young working people themselves, but for several activities they also got small-scale support from the Eurochem company and from the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs. 

Alla Bolotova at the open discussion about Kovdor and its attraction for youth.

As was mentioned earlier, Kovdor is situated indeed very close to the border with Finland, but there is no border checkpoint, therefore Kovdorians have to take a long bypass route to the East to Kandalaksha and then to the South and back to the West to Allakurti and Salla border crossing point, which adds extra 300 kilometres to the ride. Many residents of Kovdor believe, that creating a new border crossing would significantly change the life in the town, releasing it from the plight of the dead-end location. At the moment Kovdor is also not so inviting for local tourism because it is one of the most distant towns from the regional center Murmansk: it takes 4 hours to drive from Murmansk to Kovdor by car, while very attractive Khibiny mountains with well developed tourist infrastructure are situated twice closer to Murmansk.

And yet, there have been positive changes in the town recently, which many Kovdorians attribute to the change of the city leader: according to their opinion, in a short period of time the new head of Kovdor district Sergei Somov succeeded to get streets regularly cleaned from snow, to renovate and decorate the parks, to make public events and celebrations more interesting. In 2019 an agreement was made to create a “Territory of advanced socio-economic development” in Kovdor. In the future that will make the town more attractive for new investors, who can get tax benefits, if they locate their business in Kovdor and provide work places for locals.

In cooperation with Eurochem Sergei Somov also supports the initiative “Kovdor – the capital of Hyperborea” (Kovdor – stolitsa Giperborei). The project is aimed at developing tourism in the Kovdorskii district, where several megaliths were found. Supporters of this project suggest that the megalithes and other artifacts indicate that Kovdor is located in the centre of the mythical land Hyperborea. Many young Kovdorians are in favour of the project too; however, for some locals it is unclear what actually Hyperborea means and how can young people relate to it. Alla Bolotova thinks that EuroChem should pay more attention to make this project understandable and attractive for the local population instead of focusing predominantly on the external PR. Another challenge for “Kovdor – the capital of Hyperborea” is Russian Orthodox Church’s condemnation of the initiative, as it belongs to pagan culture.

Kovdor, like all other single industry northern towns, has its own ups and downs. For now it seems that both the young people and the administration are doing their best to bring more diversity to the activities in the town, and their efforts can be seen.

ARKTIKO final seminar

These days, on 20th-21st of November, Arctic Academy Programme (ARKTIKO) has its final seminar “Arctic Research Leads to New Solutions” in Helsinki. Our team members involved in the “Assessing Intermediary Expertise in Cross-Border Arctic Energy Development” project – Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen, Hanna Lempinen and Hilma Salonen – are presenting the results of their 3-year work. During the project, the group has been researching Arctic Energy Futures, as energy is a top policy priority across the Arctic states. In Russia, the context of focus, Arctic is seen as a central natural resource base. The group’s topical focus was twofold: we concentrated on energy inequality, i.e. how resource riches are distributed and how vulnerable communities are (un)protected; and how renewables could promote socioeconomic development.

On 21st of November, Wednesday, Hanna Lempinen is presenting her research in a talk “Intermediary expertise and Arctic energy development: Science as a case study”.
Besides, during the both days Hilma Salonen’s and Alla Bolotova’s posters are presented at the poster sessions.

Hilma Salonen’s poster title is “Russian Arctic Energy transitions: links across an open space”. Within the project Hilma found that “transitions towards low-carbon systems in the Russian Arctic are represented by niche projects, but success depends on networks formed at a deeper structural level”.

Alla Bolotova is representing Wollie project at the seminar – while it is the final seminar of ARKTIKO,  Finnish-Russian joint projects continue the work. Her poster “Sense of place among youth in Russia’s Arctic cities”. The Wollie project has just started this year, so more finding will be available in the future.

More information on the seminar can be found on the Academy of Finland website.

Making Home in the Industrialized Russian Arctic

A new special issue “To be at Home. House, Work, and Self in the Modern World” with a contribution from our postdoctoral researcher Alla Bolotova has been published this September. The issue is part of “Work in Global and Historical Perspective” book series published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

Alla wrote a chapter for the volume titled “Making Home in the Industrialized Russian Arctic”:

Before the Soviet period, the Russian Arctic was scarcely populated, with very few cities. Today, the Russia Arctic is the most industrialized and urbanized polar territory in the world. Numerous industrial towns were built in the Russian Arctic during Soviet industrialization. Their populations comprised voluntarily and forced migrants and their descendants. In this essay, I present the family histories of two women who settled as children in newly established towns in the north. They grew up in very different historical periods. My aim is to look at the history of the towns of Kirovsk and Apatity through the life stories of women from different generations. I explore how these women and their families adapted to new places in different historical and social contexts, paying special attention to the beginnings of their life in the north.

This essay is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Kirovsk-Apatity urban agglomeration in Murmansk Oblast. Kirovsk and Apatity, fifteen kilometres apart, were founded at different stages of Soviet industrialization. Kirovsk started to grow in the 1930s, at the foothills of the Khibiny mountains. Apatity was established in the 1950s in close proximity to Kirovsk. In 2016, there were 26,971 people living in Kirovsk, and 56,730 in Apatity.

Full text of the article can be accessed here.

Two new postdocs in our research team

This summer two new postdoctoral researchers have joined our Research group on the Russian environment. Alla Bolotova is taking part in the Wollie project, and Dmitry Yagodin researches the role of journalism and media in climate change discourse in Russia. We are delighted that these two excellent experts became a valuable addition to our group and would like to introduce them to you.

 

   

Alla and Dmitry, in their own words

Continue reading “Two new postdocs in our research team”