Let’s build a model Soviet village": the first USSR projects in the Arctic

The paper deals with the search for managerial decisions and the first Soviet institutions in the Arctic, their goals, means and results. It turns out what lessons useful for the Arctic policy of modern Russia can be learned from the past. The authors used a methodology for analyzing the stages of the socio-economic development of society, which is based on such economic and technological factors as scientific and technological progress, changes in the structure of production, and investment activity. The role of economic and technological, domestic and foreign policy factors in the development of the domestic sector of the Arctic changed at different stages of the development of the state, so the authors relied on historical-comparative and historical-genetic research methods. Both archival data and memoirs of contemporaries, publications of recent years are used, summarized and analyzed. Based on this, a periodization of the domestic Arctic policy at the pioneer stage in the 1920-1930s is proposed. The basis for determining the chronological framework is the degree of state participation in the development of the Arctic, the scale and effectiveness of the Arctic policy. It turns out what set of tasks was solved in the region, thanks to the activities of the first Arctic expeditions of O.Yu. Schmidt, V.Yu. Wiese, N.N. Zubov, R.L. Samoilovich. Their personal contribution to the study of the Arctic is shown. The activity of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route became the pinnacle of the unifying processes in the region, therefore, the mechanism of its activity, the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet organization are considered. It is concluded that the successes in the Soviet mastery of the Arctic were due to both the activity of the state in the region and the high social status of Soviet polar research.