Article
Arctic narrative semantics in Soviet History, Fiction and Art of the 1930s
The paper traces the very different contours of Soviet discourses of Arctic in the Stalinists 1930s with their narrative transformation of Arctic space into integral part of national Soviet space. The goal is to see how the Arctic narrative developed and evolved throughout the last 30/40 years of the Soviet era. The research is based on analysis of 3000 literary texts, articles, memoirs and letters, published and archived. The results confirm the presence of ‘Arctic discourse’ in the Soviet society and is supported by various sources. The Arctic issue became per- manent in cultural and political practices of the time in the late 1920s and had a series of cli- maxes in the 1930s–1940s. Its popularity peaked in the mid-1950s and then dropped dramatical- ly. The cultural and literary background of such change is explored through the narrative definitions.
The first volume involves the Russian Federation as a common denominator with either Norway (oldest multilateral region in the Arctic) or the United States (sharing with Russia the longest maritime boundary in the world) to interpret changes with connected biophysical and socio-economic systems that underscore decisions across a “continuum of urgencies” from security to sustainability time scales. The second and third volumes will emerge from presentations during the annual Arctic Frontiers Conferences in Tromsø, Norway, starting in January 2020. Volume 2 will consider circumstances associated with areas beyond sovereign jurisdictions from Arctic and non-Arctic perspectives, recognizing the international community has unambiguous rights and responsibilities in the Arctic High Seas under the law of the sea. Volume 3 is intended to synthesize insights on a pan-Arctic scale, analogous to the world ocean across all sea zones, involving decisions to achieve ongoing progress with sustainability, coupling governance mechanisms and built infrastructure. Throughout this book series, which we expect to expand beyond the Arctic, science diplomacy will be applied as an international, interdisciplinary, and inclusive (holistic) process, facilitating informed decisionmaking to balance national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth across generations. With holistic integration, this book series will reveal skills, methods, and theory of informed decisionmaking that will continue to evolve, contributing to balance, resilience, and stability that underlie progress with sustainability across our home planet.
The EU-Russia common space on external security is examined.
This chapter is a first attempt to study the development of different kind of field stations in the western sector of the Russian Arctic in theperiod from the First to Second International Polar Years (1882 - 1933). As more or less independent entities, marine biological and polar meteorological stations were on different sides of the process but were interconnected through the people involved and the filed research practices implemented.Three major concerns influenced the development of field studies in the Russian Arctic – navigation, demands for the efficient use of natural resources and the political–military strategy of keeping land and their surrounding seas under Soviet control. Stations gradually moved further north from the sub-Arctic to the Arctic islands.The scientific network in the Arctic was initially established through the confrontation between interrelated sites of knowledge – field stations and research vessels – before their merger and placement in the same centralized network, which subsequently became very efficient with the introduction of aviation. The stations were not just crucial places for knowledge production but also places for the transfer of scientific, primarily tacit, knowledge about observations and laboratory analysis. They also maintained a specific culture of field sciences. By the time of the Second IPY in the Soviet Arctic, a distinct shift could be seen from broad international cooperation to a centralized national network and from scientific, educational and local economic objectives to military, geopolitical and broader economic interests.
The post-Cold War Arctic has seen a transformation from military tension and a focus on national security to a concern for environmental and human security. As a result of this, the globalized Arctic has a high level of peace and stability, maintained by international cooperation between the Arctic states, northern indigenous peoples, sub-national governments and local actors. There has also been a shift from environmental protection to economic activities and, consequently, states easily trump other interests. Now, in the Arctic, these challenges require fresh thinking on a local and global scale. Regional wars, the 'war on terror', and economic crises have posed new threats to Northern security order.
In this chapter we want to see what historical narratives can tell us in order to better understand our concerns with the vanishing ice as evidence of a current mega-transition. Was the 2007 minimum unique? When and why did science start to study Arctic sea ice? Have there been periods of an ice-free Arctic Sea in the past? And, if they did occur, how does it impact on interpretations of our present- time discourse on the possible emergence of anice- free Arctic Sea? Climate change may, in retrospect, have appeared an obvious companion idea, but this relationship between ice and climate was rarely put forward as a serious alternative for the immediate future on the human timescale of decades, generations, or even centuries. But when it finally was, comparatively late in the middle of the twentieth century, sea ice was part of the story. We start by visiting the idea of an ice-free Arctic in the past, then moving on to the scientific undertakings on sea -ice in the Soviet Union. Interwar efforts outside the Soviet Union were as only matched by Nordic researchers, with whom we deal with subsequently. Finally we discuss the Cold -War effortsand their military connections. That science is interest-driven is evident throughout the entire period. Sea- ice minima may comprise straightforward facts, but the underlying knowledge is the outcome of a complex science politics of circumpolar ice.
A survey of the Samizdat Archive of the Institute of Eastern Europe in Bremen. Introductory texts and annotated catalogue.