Humanities & Social Sciences, Vol 13, No 5 (2020)

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

Nadezhda Zamyatina

Abstract


The article considers the development path of Igarka, the pioneer export port of the Northern Sea Route, from the point of view of analyzing the possibilities of preserving the city after the collapse of a city-forming enterprise. The main conceptual framework for the analysis is the Jack London hypothesis of Alaskan economist Lee Husky about the possibility of frontier cities accumulating potential for further development in the post-boom period. The analysis compares the set of cultural, research and educational organizations that could lay the “knowledge” basis for the diversification of the city at different time periods: in the 1930s, 60s, 70s and after 1995. As a result of the analysis, the reason for the current economic and social crisis of Igarka is not only a change in the conditions of forest export and shipping along the Northern Sea Route in the 1990s and years, but also a reduction in the economic functions of the city, as well as a decrease in the diversity of the urban environment as a whole, paradoxically accompanying record production indicators in the last Soviet decades.