Studies of Social and Economic Development of the Russian Arctic at the Regional and Local Levels: Review of Some Relevant Works by Russian Researchers

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In the middle of next year, it will be 10 years since the signing of the presidential decree “On the land territories of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation”, which marked a new stage of state policy towards the Arctic macro-region. As its strategic importance became actualized, which became a consequence of intensive discussions about the prospects of the Northern Sea Route, the development of natural resources available in the Arctic, threats to the stability of Arctic ecosystems, global economic competition, military and political security in the Arctic, etc., the interest of Russian researchers has increased in the issues of managing the socio-economic development of individual Arctic territories and the Russian Arctic as a whole, in the conceptual rethinking of the principles of Arctic policy, in the search for effective strategies and technologies for simultaneously achieving the goals of economic growth, social well-being and ecosystem sustainability. This interest stimulated the development of a number of research projects, the results of which were reflected in publications of the last decade.

The complexity and multidimensionality of the processes studied by social researchers of the Russian Arctic have determined the inevitable subject-thematic specialization of some of them — from demography to sustainable development, from municipal reform to garage economy, from Arctic urbanism to the situation of small indigenous peoples. At the same time, in the long term, the task of interdisciplinary synthesis of conceptual developments made by domestic researchers in the period from the creation of the AZRF (accompanied by the intensification of its scientific study) to the present day. It is worth noting that most of the articles published in recent years on the topics stated above have an empirical focus, and the literature review presented in them is aimed at highlighting the state of affairs in a highly specialized subject area.

At the same time, there is already an opportunity to carry out some revision of the work done, including the identification of “bottlenecks” in the subject field of current scientific research in the Arctic territories. As will be shown in our review, such research is carried out at several levels (regional and local) and in several main thematic areas. At the same time, certain significant issues of development of the Arctic territories still remain outside the active attention of Russian economists, demographers and sociologists. This review is intended, among other things, to highlight these gaps in scientific knowledge about the Russian Arctic in its current state.

The focus will be on the territories within the European part of the Russian Arctic (Murmansk Oblast, Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Arctic municipalities of the Arkhangelsk Oblast, Republic of Karelia and Republic of Komi), due to the greater attention from business and the number of projects implemented over the last decade. Some of the works concerning the Siberian and Far Eastern territories of the AZRF are considered in the text of the review only insofar as their content is an interregional comparative analysis within the boundaries of the entire AZRF.

Regional cases and interregional comparative studies

The research works devoted to the socio-economic development of the Arctic territories of Russia, in which the analysis on the scale of a region of the Russian Federation is carried out, can be divided into studies of individual regional cases that reveal the specifics and uniqueness of the selected region, and comparative studies, covering a sample of several Arctic regions or all regions of the Russian Arctic at once.

Such topics as infrastructural development in the Arctic, economic policy of the state and the dynamics of regional economies, social well-being in the Arctic regions, natural and migratory movement of their population, rational use of natural resources, and other related issues are most studied, predictably, in monographic surveys.

Among the most recent monographs summarizing the results of comparative interregional analysis of social and economic processes, one can highlight a collective work published on the basis of the Kola Science Center in 2019 [1, Bazhutova E.A., Biev A.A., Emelyanova E.E.]. This monograph aggregates data for all regions (individual territories of regions) included in the AZRF at the time of publication for a very extensive period of time, reaching several decades for some indicators. The latter allows us to analyze changes in the general trends of socio-economic development of the Arctic macro-region of Russia at certain stages of its historical development over long time series. However, the work under review is not primarily retrospective: the focus of the authors’ research interest is the latest period of the post-Soviet development of the country (2001–2018). The central issues of the monograph are the settlement structure of the Arctic territories, demographic processes, investment activities and experience of public-private partnerships, development of the transport system, and sectoral structure of regional economies. The Arctic macroregion is described not only in its internal diversity, but also in comparison with all-Russian trends, as well as similar processes and phenomena in the Scandinavian countries. This monograph represents a detailed analytical review of the totality of the processes of socio-economic development of the Russian Arctic in the 20th and especially the 21st centuries.

The monograph, prepared by the staff of the N. Laverov Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Research of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences [2, Chizhova L.A., Tutygin A.G. et al.], is another collective work that covers the entire Arctic macro-region, and the issues range from methodological problems of studying socio-economic processes in the Russian Arctic to more specific, but in practical terms extremely important issues, such as problems and prospects for the development of transport and logistics infrastructure of Arctic sea and land communications. In terms of content, the monograph covers, along with the above-mentioned topics, the study of trends in various forms of economic behavior of the population of the Arctic territories, including entrepreneurial behavior, the influence of various components of social well-being on the realization of the economic potential of the Russian Arctic, the substantiation of valid and reliable indicators for the purposes of constructing both descriptive and numerical (where the nature of the data allows this) models of socio-economic dynamics within the boundaries of the macro-region under

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Anton M. Maksimov, Ulyana E. Yakusheva. Studies of Social and Economic Development … study. The monograph pays attention to the main directions of state policy for the development of the Arctic and proposes standardized approaches (algorithms) to the development of management decisions within the framework of this policy.

Despite the fact that the book was published in 2022, it underestimates the radical changes generated by the recent coronavirus pandemic and the new geopolitical reality. It is all the more interesting to assess in what aspects the conceptual developments of the authors are able to explain the processes observed in changed conditions, and what requires adjustment and even significant revision.

Several other monographs of recent years touch upon a much less wide range of topics, focusing on a certain class of phenomena. Thus, the monograph “Human capital of the Arctic regions: systemic problems and technologies for solving them”, published in 2020 [3, Barbakov O.M., Belonozhko M.L. et al.], written with the involvement of authors from scientific organizations of several Arctic and northern regions of the country (from Arkhangelsk to Tyumen oblasts), focuses on the problems of reproduction of labor resources and human capital in the Russian Arctic at the current stage of its economic, socio-political and technological development. The authors do not limit themselves to traditional questions about the contribution of educational institutions to the growth of human capital and the reform of the system of personnel training for the Arctic economy, but also explore the role of attitudes, values, and identities of Arctic residents on their motivation to work, continuous learning, and settling in the territory of residence, which, in turn, affects the dynamics of human capital.

A recent work of 2022 edition, prepared by economists and economy-geographers from the previously mentioned FRC of the UB of the RAS, “Realization of the demographic potential of the Russian Arctic territories in the context of innovative development: mechanism, factors, regulation tools” [4, Smirennikova E.V., Gubina O.V. et al.], combines the problems of demographic processes in the Russian Arctic and innovations in the economy (technological, managerial, etc.). In the monograph by the Arkhangelsk researchers, the analysis is carried out on the scale of the entire AZRF. It presents the “demographic portrait” of the macro-region, the mechanism for realizing the demographic potential of the Arctic territories in the context of innovative development, and practical aspects of regulating demographic processes. In addition, the monograph contains a methodological section that reveals the research background of the team of authors [4, Smirenni-kova E.V., Gubina O.V. et al., pp. 113–146].

The book by the specialists from the Kola Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Dynamics of social development of the territories of the Russian Arctic in the estimates of the population: Murmansk Oblast” [5, Gushchina I.A., Kondratovich D.L. et al.] refers to examples of research cases: this work summarizes the results of many years of sociological research conducted in the Murmansk Oblast, which is entirely included in the Russian Arctic and is its northwestern border region. The peculiarity of this monograph is that its authors analyze not the objectified parameters of the development of the socio-economic system of the region, but the percep- tion and assessment of socio-economic processes and government policy in this area directly by residents of the Murmansk Oblast, which act as predictors of their economic behavior, migration decisions, political participation, and, consequently, factors in the development of the Oblast’s territories. In this regard, researchers consider the conditions and potential of self-development of local communities [5, pp. 80–115].

Among the general journal publications on the socio-economic development of the Arctic regions, one should mention the article by a team of authors from the Northern State Medical University (Arkhangelsk), which shows the dynamics of the socio-economic situation of the AZRF regions for a wide range of indicators in two time intervals — 2000 and 2020 [6, Malinina E.S., Ushakova T.N. et al.]. The article presents changes in the following indicators for 9 constituent entities of the Russian Federation, fully or partially included in the Arctic zone: population and life expectancy, real cash income and Gini coefficient, industrial production index and employment. The authors conclude that the socio-economic situation in almost all regions of the Russian Arctic is steadily deteriorating (over a horizon of 20 years) in most of the analyzed indicators [6, p. 145].

Young Arkhangelsk researchers L.V. Voronina, A.V. Grigorishchin and co-authors reveal the importance of the institutional environment for the development of social infrastructure on the example of two subjects of the Russian Federation (the Arkhangelsk Oblast and the Komi Republic) [7]. The authors of the article see the main flaw in institutional design in the inconsistency of strategic planning documents of different levels of government (municipal, regional, interregional), and the solution to the problem —in the development of “harmonized regional programs for the development of social infrastructure in the Arctic zone of the Northern macro-region” [7, p. 152].

The joint article by scientists from Yekaterinburg and Arkhangelsk [8, Voronina L.V., Shelo-mentsev A.G. et al.] once again raises the well-known question in the context of the topic of socioeconomic development about the influence of the migration movement of the population on it. Based on the results of correlation and regression analysis, the authors established a connection between the migration balance and the level of employment, the availability of places in kindergartens, the number of schoolchildren, the average wage, the volume of goods shipped, investments and taxes. Regions of the Russian Arctic are differentiated depending on the intensity of migration processes and the degree of their impact on the regional economy into extractive regions, where the effects of migration due to the significant role of the rotational method of labor force formation are most pronounced, and regions with a diversified economy (such as the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk oblasts), where such effects are minimal.

Along with the demographic and institutional factors of the socio-economic development of the Arctic territories, some articles are devoted to the impact of the specifics of social relations and cultural determinants of Arctic communities. Thus, the article by A.M. Maksimov and A.V. Ukhanova [9] made an attempt to discover the connection between the value orientations of the population of the Arctic regions (the article compares the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and the Arctic municipalities of the Arkhangelsk Oblast) and their propensity for entrepreneurial be-

Anton M. Maksimov, Ulyana E. Yakusheva. Studies of Social and Economic Development … havior. In this work, the direct connection between these parameters is weakly traced; however, the indirect influence of values (through their participation in the formation of positive attitudes and motivation for entrepreneurship) on entrepreneurial activity is logically justified. Another article by A.M. Maksimov and his colleagues [10] examines the dependence of entrepreneurial activity on social capital and the level of trust on the materials of a single region (the Arkhangelsk Oblast). The article shows how the lack of social capital and trust in institutions increases the transaction costs of market agents, negatively affects the realization of the region’s entrepreneurial potential and contributes to maintaining its low investment rating.

The efforts of regional researchers develop and offer for discussion structural models of integrated socio-economic development of the AZRF, taking into account the role and interrelationships of components related to the factors of production, social infrastructure, institutional order and socio-cultural specifics of the population of the Arctic territories [11, Regeta A .I., Malinina K.O., Maksimov A.M., p. 167].

Regional (including comparative) studies of typologically different territories of the AZRF — economically diversified cities, single-industry towns and rural areas — are particularly worth highlighting. In a comparative perspective, these types of settlements are actively studied by A.N. Pi-lyasov and his colleagues [12], these studies will be discussed below in the section devoted to local socio-economic research. Here we would like to note the article by V.V. Dyadik, an economist from the Kola Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is a meta-analysis of studies of Arctic single-industry towns [13]. The author carried out a thorough review of domestic and foreign publications on the socio-economic situation in Arctic single-industry towns, which allowed generalizing on the main research issues regarding the problems and trends in the development of Arctic single-industry towns. The author shows that the central topics in Russian scientific discourse are the environmental situation in single-industry towns, their inherent demographic problems and issues of their strategic development as a type of settlement characteristic of the Russian Arctic. The interest of foreign (European and North American) researchers is focused more on the prospects and difficulties of organizing local self-government and local civil initiatives in Arctic single-industry towns, which reflects the decentralized and subsidized approach to territorial (in particular, urban) development in the Arctic inherent in these countries.

In turn, the specifics of northern and Arctic rural territories are consistently studied by Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor V.A. Ivanov from the Komi Scientific Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His latest works include the articles devoted to the role of the northern/Arctic regions in ensuring the country’s food security [14] and the peculiarities of the economic development of rural areas of the Arctic and North (based on the case of the Komi Republic) [15]. Despite the general assessment of the agricultural sector of the economy of the northern and Arctic regions (territories) of the Russian Federation as deeply depressed and peripheral in their sectoral structure, V.A. Ivanov believes that rural settlements and rural communities have prospects and they lie in the diversification of the production sector, as well as in the

REVIEWS AND REPORTS

Anton M. Maksimov, Ulyana E. Yakusheva. Studies of Social and Economic Development … transition of state policy from a tactical response to current rural problems to strategic management [15, pp. 52–53].

Local studies and comparative researches at the municipal level

In recent years, studies of socio-economic development have been developed and actively conducted at lower territorial level — municipalities of various types. The analysis of works has shown that researchers often turn to the study of a separate municipal district, urban district, typologically close cities of a particular region (for example, single-industry towns), several interconnected settlements. The local nature of the research is compensated by a greater depth of immersion in empirical material, greater detail in the texture and complexity of the analysis. At the same time, the general picture of social and economic life in the Russian Arctic at the local level, despite all the common features inherent in the territories of this macro-region, is distinguished by diversity and variety.

This is largely due to the historically developed heterogeneity of the distribution of the population, production facilities and infrastructure, the difference in approaches to the development of Arctic territories in the Northwestern, Siberian and Far Eastern parts of the Russian Arctic, and the typological differentiation of Arctic settlements and communities, which form the “Arctic facade of Russia”. This issue is currently being developed by A.N. Pilyasov. Thus, in his article of 2021, he provides the author’s classification of types of settlements, describing the economic, social, cultural and everyday differences between them. In particular, seven types are distinguished (2 for urban districts and 5 for municipal districts): “genuine” city (all Arctic regional centers and large industrial centers), areal “quasi-urban” district (Pevek, Novaya Zemlya), urban municipal district, agro-industrial rural district, rural “national” district with a large urban center, national municipal district with underdeveloped urban centers, classic rural municipal district (in which there are no permanent urban settlements, only rotational ones) [12, pp. 743–751]. Moreover, within the same type, the local socio-economic situation may vary depending on the context, which is set by the general characteristics of the subject of the Russian Federation, the border nature of the location of the municipality, etc. The above circumstances determine the importance of empirical study at the local level of individual research cases, on the basis of which it is possible to form the most complete and dynamic picture of the socio-economic “landscape” in the Russian Arctic.

Many specialists from regional research centers and universities are currently engaged in such local studies. A comparative overview of the demographic, social, economic characteristics of municipalities within the boundaries of one region can be found in the works of researchers from the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk oblasts, the Komi Republic (similar studies are conducted in the Tyumen Oblast/Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Sakha Republic, but their systematic review requires a separate bibliographic article).

Thus, the article by scientists from the FCIAR of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Arkhangelsk) tests formalized methods of expert assessment of the socio-economic situ- ation in five Arctic municipalities of the Arkhangelsk Oblast (in the context of both individual settlements and regions as a whole) by 9 factors — from transport accessibility to the availability of industrial infrastructure [16, Tutygin A.G., Chizhova L.A., Lovdin E.N., pp. 177–183]. Although the result obtained by the authors, indicating the determining role of the state of transport communications for successful socio-economic development, is a posteriori justified only for the areas mentioned above, the methodology used is basically applicable regardless of the geography of the study (at least within the Arctic macro-region) .

Arkhangelsk researchers also pay close attention to the medical and social situation in the Arctic territories and its interrelation with economic, social and environmental conditions of the population. In particular, recent study carried out by a group of scientists from the Northern Medical State University [17, Konovalova L.V., Ushakova T.N., et al.] analyzed the dynamics of recent years (before and during the pandemic of coronavirus infection) by 15 indicators in four groups of factors: economic, social, medical-ecological, and living conditions. The study covered 9 municipalities (3 city districts, 5 districts and the special administrative-territorial unit “Novaya Zemlya”). A comparative analysis of the short-term dynamics of public health factors in the surveyed territories showed a significant dispersion among individual municipalities, in particular between urban districts and rural areas, peripheral territories and territories adjacent to the agglomeration around the regional center. In this regard, it is stated that “it is necessary to take an individual approach to solving problems that have become much more contrasting against the backdrop of restrictive measures and other consequences of the pandemic” [17, Konovalova L.V., Ushakova T.N. et al., p. 3018].

It is worth noting that Moscow researchers are also interested in the medical and social problems of the Russian Arctic at the local level. In 2021, scientists from the National Research University Higher School of Economics and the Institute of National Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences published the results of a study on premature mortality of residents of the Arctic municipalities of the Arkhangelsk Oblast according to the main classes of causes of death [18, Fattakhov T.A., Mironova A.A.]. The 2010-2019 timeframe shows a decrease in premature mortality (obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic had to make adjustments to this dynamics). But what is more important is the authors’ pointing out the differentiated nature of this dynamics within the region: in the cities, its positive character was expressed to a clearly greater extent than in the peripheral areas. The latter are also distinguished by higher mortality from external causes in working age. In general, the conclusions of Moscow authors are consistent with the results of the research work of Arkhangelsk colleagues.

In their latest works, regional researchers also pay attention to the traditional topic of mutual influence of human economic activity and the state of the environment. In the 2021 article, economist from the Komi Scientific Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences T.V. Tikhonova develops the important topic of ecological function and provided ecosystem services at the municipal level [19]. Using the example of Vorkuta, Unta, Ust-Tsilemskiy and Izhemskiy

Anton M. Maksimov, Ulyana E. Yakusheva. Studies of Social and Economic Development … municipal districts, the contribution of local ecosystems to neutralizing the negative effects of the activities of industrial enterprises and agricultural firms is shown — absorbing pollution from the atmosphere, maintaining the level of river flow due to taiga vegetation, purification of surface water runoff by bogs. The article substantiates the idea that the economic policy of regional and municipal authorities, aimed at the optimal use of ecosystem services, will significantly reduce the costs of environmental conservation and compensation for environmental damage.

Unique in its kind is a two-volume monograph by a team of authors from the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, dedicated to the ecological state of Lake Imandra (Murmansk Oblast, the territory of the cities of Apatity and Monchegorsk, the settlements of Imandra, Khibiny, Tik-Guba, Afrikanda, Zasheek). In the context of our review, the 4th chapter of the 1st volume is interesting, which deals with the anthropogenic load on the ecosystem of the lake and lakeside areas [20, Moiseenko T.I., Dauwalter V.A., Sandimirov S.S., pp. 42–50]. This chapter analyzes in detail the impact of local industry and transport infrastructure on the ecological state of Lake Imandra. It is shown how the development of apatite concentrate production since 1930 and the increasing volume of wastewater from 1976 to 2020 from nearby enterprises led to significant pollution of water with heavy metals, and the work of power plants led to the draining of part of the lake, changes in water temperature, which affected the decline in fish population, changes in flora and fauna. It is obvious from the research materials that serious ecological threats from the activities of extractive industry and energy enterprises have been preserved up to the present time. Further sustainable development of these territories requires increased budget expenditures on environmental protection measures and investments in eco-oriented modernization of local production facilities.

Another important and relevant monograph by scientists from the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (specifically, the staff of the G.P. Luzin Institute of Economic Problems) covers a more extensive geography of the study beyond the Murmansk Oblast (in addition to the Komi Republic, Yamalo-Nenets, Nenets and Chukotka Autonomous okrugs, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Arkhangelsk Oblast), but the analysis is carried out in the relations of municipal statistics and expert assessments of the socio-economic situation at the local level of government. It is entirely devoted to the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic of the early 2020s [21, Kobylinskaya G.V., Fedoseev S.V. et al.]. The authors assessed the impact of the pandemic on the economic development of municipalities in the Russian Arctic and identified the most significant problems. The monograph describes and substantiates the methodological principles in detail; statistical analysis and expert survey were used as research methods. The authors clearly showed the views of the administrative apparatus on the existing problems of territorial development in accordance with the approved federal and regional guidelines. The identified list of current problems at the municipal level affects practically all aspects of the territory’s development: from social issues to innovation. The paper presents a profile of municipalities by economic specialization based on a general list of indicators. Moreover, the analysis was carried out for the period from 2017 to

2020, which made it possible to compare the economic dynamics at the territorial level before the pandemic and at the end of its first year. The advantage of the work is an overview of leading enterprises, as well as an assessment of the number of small businesses, where the leader (among the surveyed municipalities) is the city of Naryan-Mar.

At the end of our review, we would like to mention another interregional study (Arkhangelsk and Murmansk Oblasts, the Republic of Karelia), where the object is not regions as a whole, but individual municipalities — an article by a group of economists from the Karelian Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the development of territories and settlements on the White Sea coast [22, Druzhinin P.V., Kurilo A.E., Moroshkina M.V.]. The analysis used the indicators that characterize both social phenomena (population size) and economic ones (structure of enterprise turnover, investments in fixed capital, employment, wages, volume of shipped goods of own production). Most of them are analyzed for the time period 2010–2019. Negative trends in development are observed for most of the coastal municipal districts. At the same time, within the framework of the forecast presented in the article, the authors point to a more successful development of coastal municipalities of the Arkhangelsk Oblast — mainly due to the location of the regional center (Arkhangelsk) and the large industrial city of Severodvinsk in the waters of the White Sea [22, Druzhinin P.V., Kurilo A.E., Moroshkina M.V., p. 14, pp. 17–18].

Conclusion

The analysis of scientific works in the field of socio-economic development of the Russian Arctic showed that research of the last few years mainly demonstrates a reflection on the trends that existed before global stress for Russian society in the “face” of the COVID-19 pandemic and the radically reformatted international political context of the country. Serious scientific works documenting the economic effects of the pandemic in relation to the Arctic territories so far exist in the form of exceptions (unlike similar studies on a nationwide scale). Obviously, thorough, well-funded research on this topic is a matter of the future, albeit the immediate one.

At the same time, the authors found that studies of the Russian Arctic in its social and economic dimensions are distinguished by pronounced thematic diversity: the focus of research attention is on the issues of economic growth drivers, social well-being, environmental security, cultural determinants of economic behavior, demographic processes, medical and social situation, strategic management of territorial development and the role of local community activity. Such thematic diversity creates the prerequisites for the formation of a complex, holistic and detailed vision of the Russian Arctic as a dynamic social system.

The rapid growth rate of the number of newly published studies devoted to the socioeconomic development of the Russian Arctic inevitably imposed restrictions on the completeness of our literature review. At the same time, it reflects the diversity of scientific research vectors in the latest socio-economic studies of the Arctic macro-region. As our review shows, this diversity is

REVIEWS AND REPORTS

Anton M. Maksimov, Ulyana E. Yakusheva. Studies of Social and Economic Development … not limited to thematic breadth, but is also expressed in the interest of researchers in the analysis of socio-economic processes at different levels of territorial organization.

Thus, the work of researchers in the Arctic and northern Russia is divided into three “flows”: interregional comparative studies within the borders of the entire Russian Arctic, regional case studies, local studies (of one, a group or a large number of municipalities). It should be noted that, outside of large-scale comparative studies of Arctic territories, the most important contribution to the multiplication of empirical material and its conceptual understanding is made primarily by researchers from regional scientific and university centers.

If we turn to the diversity of local research, the attention is drawn to the fact that research into urban economics, urbanism, and urban communities is developing much more actively, while specialized research into Arctic rural areas remains rather on the periphery of scientific work. An initial search in the RSCI database for articles with the word “Arctic” in their titles or keywords for the period from 2018 to 2023 gives a result of 29 articles specifically devoted to the study of urban issues, while the number of articles on rural territories in the Russian Arctic for the same period is only 15 (excluding ethnography, history, and medicine) — in fact half as many, with almost a third of they account for one author (Professor V.A. Ivanov from the Komi Scientific Center mentioned in the text above). On the one hand, this is quite explainable by the high level of urbanization of the Russian Arctic: in this macro-region, nine out of ten residents live in cities [23, Fauzer V.V., Smirnov A.V. et al., p. 31]. On the other hand, the study of the rural periphery in the Arctic is associated with difficulties in field work generated by its notorious transport inaccessibility. At the same time, rural communities are an integral part of the Arctic “social landscape”, so, given the current shortage of socio-economic research on the rural periphery of the Russian Arctic, their quantitative and qualitative growth can be expected in the future.