In search for instructive models: The Russian state at a crossroads to conquering the North.

Ch. 5. P. 110–136.

Lajus J.

Mastering the North was a long-term problem for the Russian state, which at least from the eighteenth century tried to organize the effective use of its resources. This chapter illustrates two very distinct foreign models employed for the “state colonization” of the Russian North in a formative period between the Great Reform of 1861 and Stalin’s industrialization of 1930s: Norway and Canada. Although the use of the Norwegian model for colonization of the Russian North is relatively well studied, “railway colonization” of 1920s is not that well known,and very few works embrace both imperial and early Soviet periods of colonization.

Keywords: Российские железные дороги, Russian railways, внутренняя колонизация, history of fisheries, история рыболовства, экологическая история, environmental history, European North of Russia, internal colonization, Европейский север России

In book

Northscapes: History, Technology, and the Making of Northern Environments

Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013.