Population of the world Arctic: Russian and foreign approaches to studying demographic problems and settlement of territories

The researchers are considering the population, demographic processes and settlement of the World Arctic. It is noted that many issues have accumulated in the Arctic: from socio-demographic problems to resettlement ones. Each country solves these problems in its own way, using both universal and private approaches. The article is aimed at considering approaches used in the Russian and foreign practice to studying demographic processes and settlement of the World Arctic. Among the Russian and foreign approaches, it is necessary to mention the following ones: demographic zoning, gender, geopolitical, qualitative, combined, intersectoral, descriptive and historical, statistical, network, systemic, socio-psychological, sociological, technical and economic, ecological and biological approaches, and others. Using these approaches the process of settlement/colonization, the system of the population’s resettlement, and demographic trends in the World Arctic have been considered. It is noted that the colonization of the European North of Russia was taking place from the 10th till the 17th century, Siberia and the Far East - from the end of the 16th till the middle of the 19th century. Settlement has been carried out by its own people; Russia had no need in attracting settlers from other countries. Based on the demographic approach it has been concluded that by the beginning of the 20th century the process of colonization had been completed, and the natural demographic development and further development of the marginal territories had begun. In the foreign Arctic early colonization was of a trade and field nature, then the extraction of raw material resources had started. From the first half of the 20th century the military interest started to dominate; today the economic interest in the development of the Arctic is prevalent. Two opposite trends have been noted in the demographic development: the recessive population dynamics in the Russian Arctic and its constant growth in the foreign one. The settlement network of the Russian Arctic was forming by the network of cities of different sizes, in the foreign one small settlements were created in the initial period; now the network of medium and large cities is expanding. In the recent years the work on a rotational basis has been widely used in the World Arctic.