Igarka as a Frontier: Lessons from the Pioneer of the Northern Sea Route

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Series: Humanities & Social Sciences. 2020. Vol. 13. No. 5. P. 783–799.

Nadezhda Yu. Zamiatina

The article considers the development trajectory of Igarka, a pioneer export port of the Northern Sea Route. The focus is made on analyzing the possibilities of preserving the town after the collapse of the town-forming enterprises. The main conceptual framework of the analysis is the Jack London’s hypothesis introduced by Alaskan economist Lee Husky (about potential of frontier cities for further development in the post-boom period). The findings are that the reason for the current economic and social crises in Igarka is not only the change in the conditions of timber export and navigation along the Northern Sea Route in the 1990s, but also the reduced economic functions of the town, as well as the decrease in the diversity of the urban environment as a whole, after paradoxically record production indicators in the last Soviet decades.

Keywords: transport, frontier, Northern Sea Route, resource development projects, export, Boom And Bust Cycle, cyclical economic development, dependence on course, Jack London’s effect