Comparative Migration Trends in Russian Arctic Cities: Igarka and Norilsk

By Genevieve Parente

B.A. in History, May 2000, University of Virginia

A Thesis submitted to

The Faculty of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

May 20, 2012

Thesis directed by

Marie Price Professor of Geography

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the Department of Geography at The George Washington

University, particularly Dr. Nikolay Shiklomanov, Dr. Marie Price and Dr. Dmitry

Streletskiy for the field study opportunity and research guidance. This research was made possible by a Campbell Graduate Student Summer Research Award, granted through the

Department of Geography at The George Washington University. The staff at the Global

Resources Center in Gelman Library also provided invaluable assistance.

iii

Abstract of Thesis

Comparative Migration Trends in Russian Arctic Cities: Igarka and Norilsk

Located above the Arctic Circle, the Siberian cities of Igarka and Norilsk are among the scores of Arctic settlements established through Soviet central planning which are reinventing themselves to survive in the market economy. The transition of the 1990s replaced Soviet government support with neoliberal imperatives and forced the region’s natural resource industry to restructure and shift costs to the municipalities, resulting in large scale outmigration from both cities. In this remote area marked by extreme climate and few transport links, both localities now employ migration management strategies to achieve their economic and social sustainability.

Igarka and Norilsk attempt to shrink their large pensioner populations to minimize social service costs and grow the number of skilled professionals through selective recruiting, although they face challenges in their retention. However, over the years migration incentives have had the effect of retaining many pensioners, who are more sensitive to factors that discourage outmigration, such as high moving costs. They are also more likely to possess longstanding social networks and want to continue to earn the benefits on their pensions as residents of the northern regions.

The political and economic climate has also changed significantly as corporate interests wax in importance compared to government influence. Powerful energy companies respond to changed incentives and improved technology to find more cost effective strategies to exploit the area’s natural resources. They are downsizing their permanent workforce and turning instead to temporary shift workers. Year-round workers

and large municipalities are giving way to smaller cities with satellite worksites. A new kind of company town is developing as well-compensated laborers from other parts of

Russia leave their families behind and live in company camps on a rotating basis. The growing number of temporary workers spurs the drawdown of the permanent population in Igarka and Norilsk through means that affect the quality of life for remaining residents, and with major implications for future migration and settlement patterns in the region.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...... iii

Abstract of Thesis ...... iv

List of Figures ...... vii

Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………1

Chapter 2: Literature Review ...... 10

Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 24

Chapter 4: Norilsk ...... 32

Chapter 5: Igarka ...... 66

Chapter 6: Conclusion...... 97

References...... 104

List of Figures

Figure 1.1………………………………………………………………………………….3

Figure 1.2………………………………………………………………………………….6

Figure 3.1………………………………………………………………………………….29

Figure 4.1………………………………………………………………………………….33

Figure 4.2………………………………………………………………………………….35

Figure 4.3………………………………………………………………………………….39

Figure 4.4………………………………………………………………………………….41

Figure 4.5………………………………………………………………………………….49

Figure 4.6……………………………………………………………….…………………53

Figure 4.7………………………………………………………………………………….54

Figure 4.8………………………………………………………………………………….59

Figure 4.9………………………………………………………………………………….62

Figure 5.1………………………………………………………………………………….67

Figure 5.2………………………………………………………………………………….69

Figure 5.3………………………………………………………………………………….71

Figure 5.4………………………………………………………………………………….72

Figure 5.5………………………………………………………………………………….73

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Figure 5.8………………………………………………………………………………….80

Figure 5.9………………………………………………………………………………….87

Figure 5.10…………………………………..…………………………………………….91

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Figure 5.11…………………………………………………………………………….….92

Figure 6.1……………………………………………………………………………...….98

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Igarka and Norilsk in Context

Russia’s natural resource-rich and lightly populated Arctic region boasts more than its share of the country’s GDP (Whiteman 2010), and climate change may determine the area’s future economic expansion and urban settlement patterns. Smith (2010, 157-163) predicts a “New North,” where climate change will ameliorate the hostile natural environment, open ice-bound Arctic shipping lanes and attract new inhabitants. However,

Russia's turbulent free market transition has already created a “New North” as the new capitalistic business model and high costs of residency have transformed the economic opportunities, migration patterns and settlement strategies in this remote region. In the post-transition context, what drives migration and settlement trends in Siberian cities?

What migration management strategies do municipalities use to address the changing demographic structure of cities?

This case study focuses on two Siberian cities, Igarka and Norilsk, which are experiencing substantial decline and compares their efforts to achieve their economic and social sustainability in a market economy. Igarka and Norilsk are among the scores of

Arctic settlements established through Soviet central planning which are attempting to reinvent themselves in order to survive. In the new neo-liberal context, the state and the powerful natural resource companies in the region abandon their traditional paternal roles, shutter inefficient industry and shed jobs. Arctic residents move to larger towns or flee the region entirely, although some lack the means to do so. As a result, in the far north and other peripheral regions demographic changes are distributed unevenly, as

some cities, towns, and administrative districts shrink while more resource-rich areas maintain steady populations or even grow (Heleniak 2009a). Igarka and Norilsk exemplify the demographic disparities of the region. This thesis builds on and updates the spate of research during the 1990s and early 2000s on the adaption of Siberian cities to market conditions. I examine the efforts of localities twenty years after the transition as they to continue to evolve from company towns to settlements with less support from local industry or the central and regional governments.

Most of the data for this study was obtained from field work in Igarka and Norilsk during the summer of 2011.1 We conducted more than a dozen individual interviews, meeting with representatives from city economic development bureaus, federal migration services, employment centers, and local elected officials. We also interviewed scholars from The Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences.2

The cities of Igarka and Norilsk are located above the Arctic Circle in the northern portion of Krasnoyarsk Krai, an administrative subdivision of the Siberian

Federal District (Figure 1.1). The Siberian Federal District is located in the geographic center of the Russian Federation and is one of eight federal districts created in May 2000

1 Professor Nikolay Shiklomanov and Dr. Dmitry Streletskiy joined Parente and two other students from The George Washington University on a field research program in Russia with our counterparts from the Department of Geography at the Moscow State University (MSU). The research program was sponsored by the International Permafrost Association (IPA). We are grateful to the Igarka Geocryological Laboratory, Russian Academy of Sciences, Norilsk City Assembly and Polar Division of Norilsk Nickel for administrative and logistical support. This research was partially sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation grant ARC-1002119 and NASA grants NNX09AI94G and 09-040 to the George Washington University. Parente’s funding was provided by the Campbell Graduate Student Summer Research Award, granted through the Department of Geography at The George Washington University.

2 Drs. Streletskiy, Shiklomanov, and their colleagues arranged appointments and accompanied the lead author on site visits and interviews. Dr. Nikita Tananaev, Director of the Igarka Geocryological Laboratory, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was particularly helpful, providing entrée and translation assistance that made it possible to engage local people in a difficult research environment.

by Vladimir Putin. Krasnoyarsk Krai is one of 83 federal subjects in Russia. The Krai’s administrative center is the large city of Krasnoyarsk, located in the southern portion of the Krai. Krasnoyarsk Krai is located at the Yenisei Basin. The northward flowing

Yenisei River empties into the Arctic Ocean after it passes by Igarka and the town of

Dudinka, which serves as the riverport for Norilsk. Norilsk is the second largest city in the world above the Arctic Circle, with more than 100,000 residents. Igarka has a population of about 6,000.

Figure 1.1: Study sites Norilsk and Igarka are located within the Arctic Circle, along the Yenisei River. The river is an important conduit for the region’s people and goods. (Cartographic Credit: Dmitry Streletskiy)

According to the Russian Presidential Advisor for Climate, Alexander Bedritsky, the Arctic region is inhabited by 1.5% of the population although it is responsible for about 11% of the country’s GDP, mainly from mineral extraction and processing

(Whiteman 2010). It is an important site for population research, given the national

interest in maintaining a cost-effective but stable regional workforce to exploit the region’s valuable resources.

The Soviet government originally established both towns as settlements to develop the area’s immense resource wealth in the 1920s and 1930s and provided large subsidies to the towns. Their populations grew quickly and artificially in the early years but the end of the forced labor system in the 1950s eliminated the massive, cheap workforce. In order to continue operations as labor shortages loomed in Siberia, the

Soviet government initiated a system of wage bonuses to individuals, called northern subsidies, to staunch the outflow of migrants (Hill and Gaddy 2003, 95). Some of these incentives remain in place today.

The market transition of the 1990s challenged the fundamental rationale of large- scale industry and accompanying permanent settlements in a region marked by extreme climate and few transport links. Igarka and Norilsk experienced another wave of population decline, exacerbated by the diminishing value of the northern wage benefits and Moscow’s withdrawal of city subsidies, which shifted the high costs of maintenance to localities.

Over the last 20 years, Igarka’s population has declined precipitously as its role as a major river port in the Soviet economy has vanished. Recent development has bypassed the town entirely and Igarka cannot sustain its dwindling permanent population. The nearest economic activity is a major oil field located outside of town which uses shift workers from other parts of Russia housed at temporary camps at the worksite. In contrast, Norilsk has retained its economic relevance in mining and metallurgy and hosts

Russia’s largest mining operator, Norilsk Nickel Mining and Metallurgy Company

(Kramer 2011). Its population has been declining gradually over the last several decades as industry cuts the permanent workforce and reduces the social benefits it traditionally offered the residents of this company town, shifting costs to the city. The municipality in turn encourages the outmigration of the non-working population, including pensioners, who rely most heavily on public social benefits.

Igarka and Norilsk are attempting to spur development and minimize social service costs by reshaping their unsustainable demographic structures which are skewed towards youth and the elderly. Pensioners are particularly costly for the cities to maintain and both Igarka and Norilsk encourage the out-migration of the growing dependent population. The municipalities must subsidize the national pension benefits to cover the costs of housing, energy and food which are more expensive than in the less peripheral and more temperate regions of Russia. At the same time, the city governments and local industries selectively recruit skilled professionals through a range of incentive schemes, although they face challenges in their retention.

Historically, demographic change in Igarka and Norilsk reflected broad trends at larger geographic scales, characterized by population growth before the fall of the Soviet

Union, and subsequent population decline. Between 1959 and 1989 the Russian Republic as a whole, the Siberian Federal District, Krasnoyarsk Krai and the cities of Norilsk and

Igarka all gained population. Between 1989 and 2009 all levels experienced varying degrees of demographic decline, although population loss was most dramatic in the cities of Norilsk and Igarka (Figure 1.2). During this period the population of the Russian

Federation declined 3.5 percent, the Siberian Federal District, 7.2 percent, Krasnoyarsk

Krai, 4.9 percent, Norilsk, 39.4 percent, and Igarka 64.4 percent. Igarka and Norilsk are

not exceptional cases; many settlements throughout the Arctic have experienced decline or growth since the transition (Heleniak 2009a).

Figure 1.2 Sources: Goskomstat, Regiony Rossii

More detailed demographic information is available for the large city of Norilsk than Igarka, and indicates that Norilsk constitutes a declining portion of Krasnoyarsk

Krai’s population. Between 1989 and 2009, the population of Norilsk as a proportion of the Krai as a whole declined steadily from 5.76 percent in 1989 to 4.70 percent in 1999 to

3.67 percent in 2009. Norilsk’s population peaked in 1979, when it represented 6.67 percent of the Krai’s overall population. The population of the Krai has remained rather steady over the past few decades, with just over three million residents in 1989 and 2.8 million in 2009 (Regiony Rossii 2003, 2009). The population of Krasnoyarsk City, the

Krai’s administrative center, has increased during this period. The city is located in the more temperate southern portion of the Krai, and the number of residents has grown from

912,400 in 1989 to 962,500 in 2010 (Regiony Rossii 2010).

Between 1999 and 2009 the number of ethnic minorities arriving in Krasnoyarsk

Krai from other regions of Russia and from abroad more than doubled, rising from

29,495 to 62,238. In 1999 most arrivals were from other regions of Russia (23,972) and

5,523 were from other countries. In 2009, the vast majority of migrants were again internal (54,848) with somewhat more arrivals (7,390) coming directly from foreign countries (Rosstat 2002, 2010). Ethnic minorities can arrive from other regions of Russia and be included in the count of internal migrants.

Igarka attracts almost no in-migrants either foreign or domestic. However, in

Norilsk field work in 2011 indicates that the city continues to attract both ethnic minorities and foreign-born, and that the largest groups are Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians,

Tajiks and Uzbeks. Growth trends for these ethnicities were difficult to discern but research suggested that the number of some ethnic minority and foreign-born groups in

Norilsk may be growing (such as Tajiks and Uzbeks), while other groups are large but probably declining in number (such as Azeris), reflecting trends at larger geographic scales. The top five sending countries of international migrants at the national, regional and Krai levels are also the largest minority groups in Norilsk. Also, these geographic scales share Norilsk’s trends in minority group growth.

In 1999 the top five sending countries to the Russian Federation (in order of size) were Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Azerbaijan. By 2009 Armenia and

Tajikistan had replaced Georgia and Azerbaijan among the largest migrant source

countries. For the East Siberian Region, the top migrant source countries were

Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan in 1999. Ten years later, as at the national level, Tajiks and Armenians joined the top migrant groups, replacing

Ukrainians and Azerbaijanis. Similarly, in Krasnoyarsk Krai, the top five sending countries in 1999 were Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan but by 2009 Tajikistan and Armenia had replaced Ukraine and Uzbekistan (Rosstat 2002,

328; 2010, 408). Currently the city reflects Krasnoyarsk Krai’s demographic composition, which according to the preliminary results of the 2010 national census show residents are 91.3 percent ethnic Russian, 1.4 percent Ukrainian and 0.6 percent

Azerbaijanis. These two groups are among the largest groups of ethnic minorities both in the Krai and in Norilsk (Rosstat 2011).

At all scales, over the past decade the number of incoming Ukrainians,

Azerbaijanis and Georgians has fallen and the number of Tajiks and Armenians has grown. Norilsk is experiencing similar trends. The number of Azerbaijanis is falling although the trend with Ukrainians is difficult to discern. The city may be continuing to attract more Ukrainians given its unique labor market with a high demand for individuals trained in specialized natural resource and engineering. The number of Azeris could be falling as the longstanding community now relies on family networks for replenishment, and few new immigrants come for jobs. Employment opportunities also likely accounts for the newer trend in Tajik and Uzbek migrant laborers, who may come from other parts of Russia where they have already been seeking the kind of low skill, low pay labor they undertake in Norilsk.

In terms of overall demographics, the composition of Norilsk and Igarka differ between each other and with the other administrative and geographic units mentioned above. Traditionally, cities in Siberia and other peripheral regions in extreme environments have high proportions of working age residents and few pensioners; most people come only for work. Norilsk’s population of pensioners doubled between 1991 and 2010, although pensioners still account for less than ten percent of the population, far fewer than the 19 percent of the Krai and 20 percent of the national populations

(Goskomstat 2010, 51, 53). Despite Norilsk’s relatively small proportion of pensioners, it struggles to subsidize them, likely due to the higher costs of maintaining non-working residents in such a remote area with high living costs. Igarka has a larger share of non- workers in its population compared to Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, and the overall Russian

Federation, almost evenly divided between working age residents, seniors and children

(Igarka Employment Bureau 2011).

In this context, the municipalities of Igarka and Norilsk are both attempting to manage migration and related labor and settlement trends. The research draws on interdisciplinary literature in history, geography, demography, economics, political science and sociology in the Russian North. These themes are taken up in the literature review which follows.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Migration, Labor and Settlement in Norilsk and Igarka

The literature review focuses on socioeconomic issues that influence migration in the Russian North as well as the region’s demographic history. Important themes include the region’s development during the Soviet period and the ongoing economic and strategic importance of its raw materials industry, which still demands a steady workforce. However, the region’s adverse environmental and geographic conditions present perennial challenges to recruit and retain workers. In the early 20th century this was addressed through the forced resettlement and labor arrangements of the GULAG system. Other migration incentives, such as wage bonuses, were offered by the state, and still exist today. Since the 1991 market transition, the Kremlin has attempted to draw down the population of these expensive outlying settlements through large programs which attract few participants (Nuykina 2011). This thesis is part of more recent literature indicating that national, regional and local authorities are increasingly allowing cities to shrink through more localized dynamics. Economic and political changes have created new incentives and disincentives to migrate in the Arctic that both municipalities are attempting to leverage to ensure their economic success and demographic stability.

Market forces and local companies now impact these flows and the informal dynamics of outmigration from the region and led to slower outmigration in the 2000s as the individuals who wanted to move did so.

Given the diversity of the Russian Northern region, the review will focus on regional themes that impact the urban processes and migration dynamics occurring in

Igarka and Norilsk as new labor, settlement and migration trends emerge twenty years after the transition. Temporally, this study relies on literature dating from the former

Soviet period as well as retrospective and current sources from the past two decades.

The literature reviewed is organized into the following areas; A) Soviet History of the Russian Arctic Region; cities of Norilsk and Igarka, B) Transition and Post-Transition

Economic and Political Structures in the Arctic, C) Migration theory and Migration and

Development Trends in Siberia.

A) Soviet History of the Russian Arctic Region, Igarka and Norilsk

Norilsk and Igarka in the GULAG System and Arctic Environment

There is abundant historical and retrospective literature on the Russian Arctic during the Soviet period, which describes the central government’s massive effort and expense to develop and manage the region’s industries and large settlements. This costly and coordinated system unraveled with the end of central planning, leaving settlements and restructured natural resource companies to devise solutions to adapt to the dramatic changes of the market system.

The region’s economic development through state intervention created GULAG towns such as Norilsk and Igarka to exploit the region’s raw materials (North and Solecki

1977) and conduct commercial shipping along the Northern Sea Route (Drent 1993).

Under the forced resettlement of labor through the GULAG system many Arctic settlements, including Igarka and Norilsk, experienced their greatest population growth.

With the end of central planning in 1991, the Kremlin plays a smaller, indirect role in encouraging migration to and from the region, primarily through voluntary resettlement programs and limited wage subsidies to residents. Private and semi-private industry and

local government are the primary actors managing development and migration in a market context. In an area characterized by harsh climate and geographic remoteness, these entities face challenges in recruiting labor and absorbing the high costs of permanent populations which were previously borne by the Soviet government.

The literature highlights the importance of Igarka and Norilsk in Soviet efforts to develop the region’s natural resources and prepare for World War II. Smolka (1937,

1938) and Gruber (1939) place the cities of Norilsk and Igarka in this context as strategically important sites within the Soviet economy that warranted and received generous and artificial economic and political subsidies. The support and rationale for large populations in these cities fell away during the transition in 1991 (Hill and Gaddy

2003, 94). Today, although Norilsk and to a lesser extent, Igarka, still retain economic and strategic importance, there is little development investment by the central government, and indeed outmigration initiatives.

Slavin (1964) and Horensma (1991) discuss the environmental and geographic challenges as well as economic and political motivations for Soviet expansion and settlement throughout Russia’s northern regions. These challenges remain today in recruitment and retention for high skill workers, but the system of incentives developed to attract workers to the region better retains pensioners than high skilled professionals. It is clear that the state, localities and local industry would like to streamline the population in these towns.

Several sources detail Soviet-era labor recruitment to Igarka and Norilsk which created the large, unsustainable settlements of today. Kizny (2004) discusses the state’s programs to resettle peasants to Siberia from the 1930s through the 1950s as the primary

labor recruitment mechanism in the region. Gregory and Lazarev (2003) discuss the economic and political decisions during the Soviet era that began the system of forced labor in nationalized extractive industry in Siberia. The book includes an essay on the

Norilsk labor complex in particular. Both Khlevnyuk (2004) and Applebaum (2003) trace the history of the GULAG system of camps and include detailed discussions of the camp at Norilsk. Both note the severe weather and working conditions.

Igarka was comprised of both free and unfree workers. Free workers were recruited through advertising in the press throughout the Soviet Union, as well as by organizations responsible for certain industries (Webster 1951, 35). However, Igarka was also a “special settlement,” a precursor of GULAG labor camps which emerged during the 1930s. “Resettled,” relatively well-to-do kulaks or peasants that were, in fact

“prisoners and forced laborers employed in the extraction of the raw materials so crucial for the Soviet Union’s ongoing industrialization effort” (Viola 2007, 2). After the market transition, to draw down large Arctic settlements the state would revisit such large-scale resettlement efforts in the reverse. The perennial difficulties of maintaining large populations and attracting and retaining workers in the remote location and harsh climate have become an expense the state cannot manage. Today, although the state maintains an ongoing voluntary outmigration program for residents of the northern regions, few residents of either Norilsk or Igarka have participated, and compared to the Soviet period the intervention of the central government is less effective. Now the city governments and local industries such as Norilsk Nickel and Rosneft are managing migration through more indirect inducements.

B) Transition and Post-Transition Economic and Political Structure of the Arctic

Much literature which informs this research focuses on the immediate aftermath of the 1991 transition, detailing the plight of unsustainably large company towns in

Siberia during the 1990s. The 1990s is what Bradshaw calls the “transitional recession”

(2008, 1), when the short-term planning imperatives of the former Soviet system engendered the economic shocks and outmigration both cities continue to experience today (Hill and Gaddy 2003). Large single industry towns in the Arctic, like Igarka and

Norilsk, were impacted by new economic and political policies implemented by Moscow and the changing dynamics between what Ziker (1999) calls Russia’s core and periphery.

Blakkisrud and Honneland’s (2006) collection of essays cover the post-transition evolution of political relations between Moscow and the sub-national regions of the

Arctic.

Heleniak (2009) notes that the drawdown of state subsidies and incentives to far- flung Arctic populations since the transition has had different impacts throughout the

Russian North. Many monotowns in the region share Igarka’s experience of dramatic outflows of its residents as the single economic base crumbled as companies could not operate without central government subsidies to raw materials processing and shipping

(Mulherin 1996; Sokolova 2000). Other cities in the Russian north have shared Norilsk’s slower pace of outmigration and selective in-migration. Such municipalities shifted from being administered by the central government to company towns reliant on the largesse of their (usually) sole industries. These economic changes illustrate Igarka and Norilsk’s

motivations to reshape local demography, and why industry plays such a large role in shaping migration patterns both directly and indirectly.

Commander and Bornhorst (2006) and the World Bank detail the evolution of monotowns since 1991. Post-transition, these settlements are characterized by lack of economic diversification, outmigration, crumbling infrastructure, and the need for public services infrastructure (health, education, water, sewage, heat, public transport) as companies withdraw benefits (UKP 2011).3 Barenberg’s (2007) case study of the

Siberian city of Vorkuta as it transitioned from a GULAG town to a company town details similar trends. The study highlights the unsustainability of settlements like

Vorkuta, Igarka and Norilsk, evidenced by the declining quality of life as financing from the state and companies dries up and costs shift to the municipalities themselves.

Norilsk Nickel’s corporate restructuring over the past few decades is one of the primary mechanisms behind workforce and social expenditure reductions in the city.

Private companies such as Norilsk Nickel offer fewer public benefits than semi-private companies or those majority owned by the Russian Government (such as Gazprom in

Tyumen Oblast). Norilsk Nickel is part of a trend throughout the Russian North where powerful natural resource companies have replaced the state as the main arbiter of regional and local political organization and budget structure. Igarka’s lack of industry

“sponsor” largely explains its deterioration. In this context, Ziker (1999), Julian (2001),

Glazunov (2010) and Humphreys (2011) describe Norilsk Nickel’s evolving business model, new shareholder orientation and the company’s motivations to reduce labor costs, its outlays for social benefits for the city of Norilsk, as well as the near-term effects.

Orttung, Lussier and Paretskaya (2000) analyze Norilsk Nickel’s political influence in

3 http://www.scribd.com/UrbanKnowledge/d/61967343-Russia-UKP-Workshop-Summary-June-2011

Krasnoyarsk Krai and the company’s success in shifting the tax burden onto the Norilsk municipal government, effectively aligning their interests in reducing the population, particularly non-working segments.

This study brings up to date the trends outlined by these authors, and suggests that

Igarka and Norilsk continue to evolve in the new market context in different ways. Now both cities are attempting to move beyond merely reacting to the economic and political sea-change by proactively adopting new methods to adapt to the loss of jobs, subsidies and residents. Business interests around Igarka are creating more cost-effective temporary settlements where industrial organization allows. City administrators try to save money by reshaping the local population by adding workers and moving pensioners.

In Norilsk industry and local government are attempting to craft policies that accomplish a gradual drawdown of the population rather than attempt large-scale quick resettlements.

C) Migration Theory and Migration and Demographic Trends in

Siberia

The cases of Igarka and Norilsk fit within broad analyses of Soviet-era migration policies, settlement patterns and other historical demographic data (Mitchneck 1991;

1995). Centrally managed migration to develop industry in Siberia was characterized by forced resettlements and limited internal migration, which skewed the “natural” migrant processes described in classical migration theories. Mikhailova (2005) sketches internal migration in Russia since 1900 within a broader economic analysis of Soviet relocation policy. Prociuk (1967) and Rowland (1982) discuss Soviet intervention to address labor shortages in Siberia and develop the region’s extractive industries.

The end of forced migration and the lift of internal migration restrictions began after the demise of the GULAG in the 1950s and ended definitively with the fall of the

Soviet regime. Since then, classical migration theory better explains recent population movements in and out of Norilsk and Igarka. Today, migration in the Arctic region is a response to push and pull economic factors, described in neo-classical migration theory in Massey, et al. (1993). In the remote Russian North, most migrants arrive or depart for economic reasons, as described in Ernest Ravenstein’s (1889) work which identifies migration dynamics that govern migration decisions, broadly defined, as socio-economic variables, demographic variables, and geographic variables.

Soviet migration policies responded to many of the same fundamental factors in this region that individual migrants respond to today: chronic labor shortages, extreme climate, long distances and poor overland transport routes. Some of these “push” and

“pull” dynamics have remained constant, yet other factors began to play a role in recruiting workers to the region to maintain industry operations.

New inducements developed to encourage in and out-migration such as wage bonuses and social networks. This region’s unfavorable variables such as extreme climate and poor economic diversification exert a “push” out of the region but could no longer be overcome by forced relocation. New “pull” factors such as relatively high wages (in the case of Norilsk) or longstanding family support networks in Siberia act to retain some residents. Brettell and Hollifield (2008) summarize migrant-network theory as migration patterns that follow along the lines of social networks. Residents in both Norilsk and

Igarka have local social networks, although Norilsk also offers more job opportunities

compared to Igarka, which explains in part why some in-migration continues to Norilsk, and why Igarka fails to attract migrants.

However, networks can also encourage outmigration, as residents of Norilsk and

Igarka with family or friends in other parts of Russia are more likely to move out of the

Arctic, but a lack of social networks outside the region may impinge on migration plans.

Social networks facilitate international migration by linking countries of origin with remote and inaccessible locations. Norilsk has such linkages and a large international population, but Igarka does not.

This research adds to the scant literature about international migration in Siberia, although Laruelle’s (2011a) “The Demographic Challenges of Russia's Arctic” and

Heleniak’s (2006) “Regional Distribution of the Muslim Population of Russia” both note the large number of migrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in some cities in the North. They discuss the importance of job opportunities and social networks for migrants in far-flung destinations with limited access. They find that networks provide migrants important information about the local labor market in cities like Norilsk, which offers comparatively more job opportunities than major cities like

Moscow. In Norilsk, international migrants cooperate to address challenges and achieve practical goals they face in an urban setting (Lefebvre 1974; De Certeau 1988). However their limited participation in formal community organizations reflects the much stronger reliance on informal networks among migrants in Russia, “as the most effective way of solving some of the immediate problems of resettlement…. and finding accommodation or employment” (Flynn in Evans, Henry and Sundstrom 2006, 258).

During the 1990s, the central government continued to try to “plan” Siberia by promoting outmigration through some high profile state-sponsored resettlement programs. Beginning in 1998, Moscow and the World Bank attempted the large scale and rapid drawdown of several large permanent settlements in the northern regions, including

Norilsk, which failed to attract as many participants as expected (World Bank 2004).

Currently, the state maintains a smaller scale resettlement program that has attracted few takers from Igarka and Norilsk.

Everett Lee’s (1966) theory of “intervening obstacles” on the migration process suggests reasons for the limited uptake on the formal outmigration schemes designed to reduce the economic burden of settlements in the Arctic region. He argued that variables such as distance, physical and political barriers, and having dependents (family networks) can impede or even prevent migration.

2000s Slowing Outmigration

Round (2005) and others note the large outflow of residents from the Arctic North soon after the transition and the subsequent slowing of flows in the 2000s as extraction of hydrocarbons and minerals boomed. Norilsk’s pattern of depopulation falls within this narrative but Igarka’s does not, as the nearest extractive industry is about 80 miles outside the town; an enterprise that does not rely on the town of Igarka. Bornhorst and

Commander (2004) propose several reasons for the slowing pace of outmigration including longstanding constraints on labor mobility in Russia. These factors are particularly relevant in the Siberian space and include underdeveloped housing markets, regional regulations inhibiting movements of labor and high search and moving costs.

Andrienko and Guriev (2004) highlight the traditionally low levels of internal migration

in Russia (compared to most OECD countries) which raises questions about outmigration from monotowns in Russia. On the one hand there is a traditional resistance to moving, but there are few other options in single industry towns. This may account for movement from satellite towns to Norilsk itself.

There are several other disincentives for outmigration in Norilsk and Igarka that mostly affect pensioners and explain the growing proportion of the pensioner population.

In both cities fewer pensioners than workers depart, as other incentives to migrate besides job opportunities become important. Pensioners are more sensitive to disincentives to migrate, including northern benefits on pensions, high costs of outmigration and strong local social networks. Heleniak (2009) discusses limitations on regional outmigration citing the important role of emotional attachment to place in discouraging migration. His research on Russian Arctic populations examines how longstanding residency in an area complicates straightforward economic migration decisions. His research using Russian census data indicates long-term residency in the area over several generations and strong family networks. Both Igarka and Norilsk’s isolation means many longstanding residents not only have strong links locally, but few links elsewhere in Russia which could have provided support for out-migrants.

Bornhorst and Commander (2004) find that housing price differentials limit migration in Russia. Interviews in both Norilsk and Igarka indicate that few residents take advantage of the state voluntary resettlement programs in part because the subsidies are too low to afford new housing (Igarka Employment Bureau 2011).

Pension and wage differentials between the Arctic and other regions of Russia are also factors in discouraging outmigration. The state resettlement programs had strings

attached that residents cited as disincentives to move, such as requiring participants to forgo the financial supplements the federal government still gives to retirees in the north

(Myers 2004).

Heleniak (2003) also finds that it is particularly difficult for low-income, older residents to out-migrate, due mainly to economic constraints. He notes that in the

Siberian region, that includes Norilsk and Igarka; real pensions were less than 70 percent of the regional elderly subsistence minimum. My research also finds that pensioners are a growing share of the population in Norilsk and Igarka, and there are fewer men in this age range due to high male mortality. This supports Lee’s (1966) theory that “migration differentials” such as gender, social class, and age influence mobility. Throughout the

Russian north, migration flows vary as older residents often cannot afford the high search and relocation costs to leave the harsh climate, and have extended family networks isolated from the rest of Russia.

New Patterns of Labor and Settlement in Circumpolar North and Siberia

Temporary shift work is a new development around Igarka, but literature reveals its long precedent in the Tyumen Oblast and in other parts of the Russian North. Bond

(1985) notes that oil and gas extractive industries such as those near Igarka are better suited to temporary workers than mineral processing, which requires a more permanent work force, as in Norilsk. Research by DeGuerre (2009) and Spies (2009) suggests that shift work is increasing in natural resource extraction in several countries, such as

Canada, which lack Russia’s large permanent populations at high latitudes. However

DeGuerre’s case study of Alberta highlights important differences with shift work near

Igarka. She finds that the regional government, not oil companies, is the leading recruiter,

and that Alberta draws from foreign temporary workers, not internal migrants. In Igarka,

Vankor oil company, a subsidiary of the publically controlled Rosneft company, and not the local or regional government drives employment decisions and relies on migrants from other parts of Russia.

Conclusion

This thesis contributes to new literature about changing migration, settlement and labor patterns in the Russian Arctic. Two decades after the market transition urban areas are learning to adapt to restructured local economies and without the traditional support from the central government or paternal local industry. The region’s new socio-economic model seeks efficiencies through temporary shift work and the reduction of social benefits in one-industry towns. Resource companies are powerful actors affecting migration in and around cities like Norilsk and Igarka and impact population flows directly and indirectly.

Much existing literature charts the dramatic changes of the 1990s but there is less research about recent economic conditions and the evolution of the capitalistic business model. This thesis brings earlier post-transition literature up to date as it pertains to the diverging fates of former company towns. It sketches the emerging trends of temporary settlements replacing permanent towns, as in the case of Igarka, an example of a Siberian town that has outlived its usefulness. Temporary settlements at nearby resource extraction sites are replacing such permanent settlements as companies utilize new technology and shift workers arrangements. This is an emerging trend in many areas of the world that are rich in natural resources but inhospitable to permanent human habitation, including the circumpolar Arctic and the Australian outback.

This research also examines the long-term impacts of the drawdown of artificially large workforces and reductions in social benefits on permanent populations in Siberia.

In the case of Norilsk, the city is still economically relevant but no longer requires a large and expensive permanent population. As Norilsk Nickel reduces its workforce, tax payments and social benefits to the city, the company impacts the quality of life and changes labor patterns in the city. However, the company retains a large number of working pensioners who continue working because they have fewer public social services to rely on. These policies have the effect of retaining pensioners who want to stay in

Norilsk and work to keep the northern wage benefits. The company’s policies work against the interests of the municipality which wants to save money by drawing down the overall population, particularly the number of costly pensioners. Norilsk will likely not disappear as long as the natural resources remain, nor will it be replaced by temporary settlements of shift workers, but the city will continue to shrink in population, gain pensioners as a proportion of the population and remain economically undiversified.

Laurence Smith (2010) predicts growth of island-like cities in the North as climate change eases the extreme climate and facilitates extraction and shipping of natural resources. That may eventually transpire with climate change, but as Lawson

(2011) and others note, in the near term traditional economic and environmental factors drive the region’s economic expansion. Similarly, human migration and settlement patterns are for the time being evolving in response to many of these same issues.

The existing interdisciplinary literature related to this thesis topic relies on mixed methodologies, which were also employed to gather and analyze the information presented in this study.

Chapter 3: Methodology

Research for this thesis was conducted in the cities of Igarka and Norilsk in the

Russian Federation during the summer of 2011, as well as through library and demographic research. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized to collect data for each of the three research areas detailed in the literature review: History of the

Russian Arctic Region- cities of Norilsk and Igarka; Transition and Post-Transition

Economic and Political Structures in the Arctic; Migration theory and Migration and

Development Trends in Siberia.

Qualitative data include regional histories, interviews with Russian officials,

NGO representatives and migrants, and the political and economic structure of the Arctic region. Quantitative sources include technical analyses of various aspects of the Arctic environment, government census figures or other official population figures.

Field Work

Data was gathered during a summer 2011 research trip to Krasnoyarsk Krai, an administrative subdivision of the Siberian Federal District. The Siberian Federal District is located in the center of the Russian Federation. It is one of eight federal districts and

Krasnoyarsk Krai is one of 83 federal subjects in Russia. The administrative center of the

Krai is the city of Krasnoyarsk. Site visits included the cities of Norilsk and Igarka, which are the research case study areas located in the northern region of Krasnoyarsk

Krai, above the Arctic Circle.

Research was sponsored by the International Permafrost Association and organized through the Department of Geography at Moscow State University (MSU) in

Moscow, Russia. The trip was organized by Dr. V.I. Grebenets, professor of Geography at MSU, specialist in permafrost and Arctic ecological issues. The trip was for students to assess permafrost and other ecological changes through field work and analysis in and around the towns of Igarka and Norilsk. The trip was funded in part by a Campbell

Summer Research Grant awarded through the Department of Geography at the George

Washington University.

Field research was a critical source of information at the city level because it is nearly impossible to obtain these data from the United States. With the assistance of Dr.

Nikolay Shiklomanov, Dr. Dmitry Streletskiy and Dr. Nikita Tananaev I conducted 13 individual interviews and site visits and collected city-level data on demography, economic development, urban processes, migration patterns and quality of infrastructure.

I visited several natural resource extraction sites in Norilsk to observe industry methods, and gathered information about the natural resource extraction industry in the Arctic through on-site interviews. I also visited the new airport development by Rosneft in

Igarka. I met with representatives from the following organizations: Igarka and Norilsk public employment bureaus, Igarka Mayor’s Office, Igarka Permafrost Museum, Norilsk city economic development bureau, Norilsk Statistical Agency, Norilsk Federal

Migration Service (FMS), Nurd Kamal Mosque caretaker, a Norilsk consultancy monitoring housing, Principal at Public Elementary School No. 13 in Norilsk, local elected officials and Azeri interviewees. I also interviewed scholars from the Moscow

State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Background Research

Archival research provided information about Soviet state-sponsored development of large settlements in the Arctic region, including Igarka and Norilsk, for resource extraction and shipping along the Northern Sea Route. Information was also gathered on the migration dynamics in the region during the Soviet era. Some important themes include the large scale resettlement of forced laborers from throughout the Soviet

Union to establish GULAG communities, the recruitment of free laborers through financial incentives and limits on internal migration in Soviet space. The cultural, political and economic legacy of the labor camps is important today as many of the same resource extraction industries still exist and employ the descendants of some of these resettled people.

Post-Soviet government resettlement programs in the Russian Arctic during the late 1990s and early 2000s, partially funded by the World Bank, failed to attract as many participants as intended. Understanding these dynamics should highlight motivations for migration to and from the region. World Bank publications offer details of the program scope and structures, impacted populations, and political context of these programs.

Further research questions about these programs include the number of program participants, the adequacy of financial inducements to participate, and overall costs of the programs.

Employment figures on the national level for Russia are available through the

OECD website which has figures from the Russian Federation State Committee on

Statistics which conducts a quarterly Labor Force Survey. Unemployment data and industry information in Krasnoyarsk Krai and Norilsk for the year 2010 are available through the Russian government’s website “Russia by the Numbers” in English, also

available through Rosstat’s annual publication, Statistical Yearbook of Russia,4 which publishes statistics describing Russia's socioeconomic position at the levels of the federal districts and regions of the Russian Federation. It is published annually and years 1996-

2011 are available through the Global Resources Center at The George Washington

University’s Gelman Library.

Information on general migration theories that are particularly applicable to the

Russian case were obtained from established resources mentioned in the literature review- mainly academic books and articles. Information on recent national trends in

Russia on issues such as pension benefits, cost of living in the region, demography and immigration were garnered mainly through newspaper reporting, interview transcripts and specialized reports.

Demographic Research

Current and recent demographic data for the Arctic region and the case study cities are available for comparison over time through the Russian censuses from 2002

(available in English) and 2010 (available in Russian) as well as through Regions of

Russia: The main socio-economic indicators of cities, Statistical Compendium.5 Regions of Russia is a publication of Rosstat (Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service) with city level demographic information for Norilsk, as well as at the level of Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Siberian Federal District and the national (2004-2011). Regions of Russia provides information on the socio-economic situation of the capitals of the republics within the

4 Российский статистический ежегодник 5 Регионы России. Основные социально-экономические показатели городов. 2010. Статистический сборник. Росстат

Russian Federation, the centers of regions, provinces, autonomous regions and autonomous regions, and cities with populations over 100,000 people.

The Krasnoyarsk Krai Territory State Statistics Service (www.krasstat.gks.ru) also provides population information and the demographic breakdown for Norilsk since about

1986. The figures provided by the agency correspond more closely with the census figures (preliminary 2010) than the Regions of Russia figures.

Historical demographic data from the Soviet era is available through the literature and the Soviet censuses collected by Goskomstat, the State Committee for Statistics, which was the centralized statistics agency of the Soviet Union. Goskomstat was created in 1987 to replace the Central Statistical Administration and the Russian Federal State

Statistics Service (Rosstat) is its successor.

Norilsk current population figures

Some methodological challenges arise in measuring the number of residents in

Norilsk. For the current population of Norilsk (2010- 2011), two different population figures are offered by three official sources. The Russian Federation’s national 2010

Preliminary Census and the Krasnoyarsk Krai Territory State Statistics Service provide similar city population figures, 175.3 (thousand) as of January 1, 2011 and 176.0 as of

January 1, 2010, respectively. In contrast, Regiony Rossii,6 offers a figure of 202.0

(thousand) for Norilsk as of January 1, 2010. Norilsk’s changing administrative boundaries and a lack of data available for settlements with fewer than 100,000 residents makes it difficult to reconcile the different figures (175.3 or 202.0 in 2010).

6 Regiony Rossii: osnovnyrsotsial'no-ekonomicheskiepokazateligorodov: ofitsial'noeizdanie, Federal'naiaSluzhbaGosudarstvennoiStatistiki, Mosckva, 2010

In 2004 a “Decision of the Council of Administration of the Krasnoyarsk

Territory from November 29, 2004 № 298" designated the city of Norilsk an "urban district" combining the city with the nearby satellite towns of Talnakh, Karyerkan and

Snezhnogorsk. The administrative decision went into effect in 2006, meaning population figures for Norilsk from that time would supposedly include the outlying settlements. The agglomeration of settlements as a means to centralize and streamline small populations has been widespread since the transition, which caused the redistribution of populations, particularly in peripheral regions of Russia such as the Arctic (Heleniak 2009).

Decennial census data indicates substantial population declines both at the “urban district” level, and at the level of the localities (Norilsk and all towns) between 2002 and

2010 (Figure 3.1). In 2002 the population of the entire urban district, including Norilsk and the outlying settlements was 221.4 (all figures in thousands of people) and fell to

175.3 thousand in 2010. The population of the Norilsk central district (the city proper) also fell from 134.8 to 105.8. Each of the three towns of Talnakh (Талнах), Kayerkan

(Кайеркан) and Snezhnogorsk (Снежногорск) also declined.

1989 2002 2010 Norilsk including: 267,609 221,408 175,301 (202.0) (Regiony Rossii) Central District, including 174,673 134,832 105,792 Talnakh 62,849 58,654 47,175 Kayerkan 27,881 27,116 22,334 Snezhnogorsk 2,206 1,306 1,072

Figure 3.1 Census Population Data for Norilsk. Sources: Goskomstat, Rosstat

In contrast, in 2010 Regiony Rossii offers an overall population figure of 202.0 for the entire “urban district” (Figure 3.1). The figure is given in Regiony Rossii with an

accompanying footnote that the 202.0 “[includes] settlements, subject to the city administration.”7 Confusingly, the same summary page however, defines the area of

Norilsk as 4.5 km. This figure is unchanged before and after 2006 and would not include the outlying settlements.

Looking at the population trends prior to 2010, (Figure 1) the Regiony Rossii

202.0 figure seems more in line with the gradual decline at the urban district level than the sharp drop of 175.3 indicated in the 2002 census. The censuses are ten year snapshots, but Regiony Rossii collects population data each year, and shows a continual decline in the Norilsk (“Central District”) population in 2004 of 133.4 down from 175.0 in the 1989 federal census. The 2002 census agrees with Regiony Rossii as to the “central district” population. However, after 2006, although Regiony Rossii still collects population data for the agglomerated district as a whole, there is only spotty sub-district information, so where the divergence begins between the sources is unclear.

The agglomeration has made population statistics at the level of the three formerly independent settlements and for the Norilsk “Central District” systematically unavailable other than through the censuses. Without these numbers, it is difficult to substantiate the

Regiony Rossii figures in order to better understand why the 2010 data differs so greatly from the census.

The census data breaks out the settlement population information, and allows us to trace population change at the sub-district level, and the data seems to indicate population loss in all towns. However, it would be interesting to know how much of the population decline of the small settlements is due to mortality and low birth rates rather

7 Включаянаселенныепункты, подчиненныегородскойадминистрации

than outmigration and if the populations of the small towns are moving to Norilsk as the nearest “big city” or out of the region altogether.

This micro level population data is important because several of the outlying settlements are related to the Norilsk Nickel mining complex- especially Talnakh, which is almost a bedroom community for Norilsk. Population decline there could provide information on employment trends by Norilsk Nickel regionally and shed light on Norilsk

Nickel’s progress in streamlining its production and reducing staff.

The preliminary 2010 census figures will likely be adjusted slightly but still indicate a very large population drop for the region as well as all the cities, including

Norilsk proper. This demands further research. The Regions of Russia data (202.0) seems more in line with the decades-long trend of a slower gradual migration, but it is difficult to substantiate that number without city-level data from a source besides the census.

Ultimately, although it may not be possible to reconcile the 2010-2011 figures from the census and Regions of Russia, in this thesis, there is a clear downward population trend for the region either way, which is what was expected, and supports observations of

Norilsk attempting to engineer and manage a smaller city.

Chapter 4

Norilsk: Arctic Industrial Outpost

“Those [prisoners] quarrying stone for roadmaking in the polar blizzards of Norilsk were allowed ten minutes for a warm-up once in the course of a twelve-hour shift.”

A. Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago, Vol. 3 (2007, 8)

Norilsk Positioning and Overview

Founded in 1935 as a GULAG camp, Norilsk and the nearby satellite communities of Talnakh, Kayerkan and Snejnogorsk now comprise the Norilsk Industrial

Area, one of the most important mining and metals processing centers in the world

(Figure 4.1). Located on the Taimyr Peninsula, the city of Norilsk is a company town dominated by the Polar Division of Norilsk Nickel Mining and Metallurgy Company

(MMC). The company grew out of Soviet-era mining operations and today is an international company headquartered in Moscow. In 2008 the global company was valued at $53 billion, mostly due to rising nickel prices linked to high demand by steel manufacturers as well as investment funds (CorpWatch 2008).

Figure 4.1 The view of Norilsk is obscured by smog from local smelters. Norilsk is one of the most polluted cities in Russia. (Photo: G. Parente)

Norilsk Nickel controls one-fifth of the world’s nickel deposits, 20 percent of the cobalt, 3 percent of all the copper and almost 45 percent of the world’s valuable platinum group metals such as palladium, used in technological devices such as cell phones and other manufactured goods (CorpWatch 2008). Norilsk is the 89th most populated city in

Russia (2005), but holds 39th place in direct investments (Rosstat 2006).

Norilsk Nickel’s Polar Transportation Division owns and manages the riverport in the city of Dudinka, located along the Yenisei about 80 kilometers west of Norilsk.

Dudinka facilitates the company’s metal, coal and other ore exports up the Yenisei to the

Arctic Ocean and markets around the world, and in 2010 had a population of a little over

22,000. About 4.5 million tons of goods, mostly metals from Norilsk, pass through the

port every year (Russia Briefing 2011). Dudinka also delivers industrial and consumer goods to the Norilsk Industrial Area by road and railway links (Paxton 2007).

Norilsk’s intense mining and refining activities have rendered it the most polluted city in Russia, and among the most contaminated on the planet, according to a 2007 study by the Blacksmith Institute. The perpetual daylight of the region’s summer “polar day” is dimmed by a semi-permanent blanket of thick yellow-grey smog. Norilsk generates more than 2 million tons of pollutants annually (2005), primarily sulfur dioxide, surpassing

Russia’s second most polluted city of Novokuznetsk four times over (Rosstat 2005).

The city’s latitude is at 69°20'N, making it an Arctic area with an environment poorly suited to support large populations and unattractive for in-migration. According to

WorldClimateGuide.co.uk, the city’s average annual temperature is -9.1°C (15.7°F) and it receives 250-270 days per year of snow. Norilsk is only connected to other cities via rail and poor roads, and transport is expensive for people and supplies by air or sea

(Humphreys 2011). The city is further isolated by some unusual federal laws which apply uniquely to Norilsk and a handful of other locations in Russia. Norilsk is a quasi-closed city. Although not formally designated as such, it is closed in practice: Norilsk is part of a geographic region demarcated by a 2001 Federal decree as a closed region.8 This status is a holdover from the Soviet, era, designed to limit the admittance of foreigners and even

Russian citizens, in areas the Kremlin considers to have strategic importance (Korchagina

2001). This designation was reinstated in 2001 at the request of city officials, signaling a reluctance to grow Norilsk by any means. Such city policies, coupled with Norilsk

Nickel’s new corporate efficiencies, indicate an interest by both actors to gradually draw

8 In 2001, Federal Decree No. 755. The decree does not name Norilsk specifically as closed, but it outlines the square of territory between lakes: Polovinnoe, Kazantsevo, Messoiakha, Maduika, Diupkun, which includes Norilsk.

down the bloated population to a more sustainable size, and with a composition that includes fewer pensioners and foreign residents.

Population and Demographic Overview

Despite its robust economic activity, the population of Norilsk is shrinking. The number of residents grew until about 1990, when the economic shocks of the market transition caused many to depart the city and the population to decline (Figure 4.2). The city is contracting gradually. It retains its economic relevance and mining activities and a large population of more than 100,000.

Figure 4.2: Relative population change in Norilsk and Igarka (compared to 1989). (Chart created by D. Streletskiy, Source: Rosstat)

The region’s cold climate, remote location and few land transport links incentivize outmigration by raising the cost of living for residents and the costs of the city to maintain a large population. However, there are also migration flows into the city from other areas of Russia and abroad.

The city still attracts new migrants both from other areas of Russia, as well as international migrants. Migration flows in both directions are spurred by Norilsk’s unique

combination of economic, social and environmental factors. The Norilsk municipal government and Norilsk Nickel MMC are the primary actors that directly and indirectly shape the city’s dynamic migration patterns.

Norilsk’s Development and Demographic History

Norilsk was created by fiat as a GULAG settlement in 1921 and grew through rich subsidies from the Soviet government to support its important but costly mining operations (Grimond 1997). The city’s valuable processed metals were shipped along the

Northern Sea Route which had been developed by the Soviet government to facilitate the development and export of these Arctic resources (Ragner 2008, 115). Norilsk was one of the many cities in the Russian Arctic made possible only through the forced relocation of workers, as the region’s harsh climate, remote location and few links with the rest of

Russia make it an unappealing site for voluntary migration.

The city’s population grew artificially during the Soviet period, mainly through the forced resettlement of kulaks (peasants). Norilsk was granted city status in 1953 at which time the population was 77,000, including 68,000 convicts (Grimond 1997). With the end of the GULAG system in the 1950s, the Soviet government initiated a system of wage bonuses for individuals, to staunch the outflow of migrants and continue operations as labor shortages loomed in Siberia (Hill and Gaddy 2003, 95).

Northern subsidies proved successful and the population grew in the 1950s on through the 1980s. As infrastructure investments increased during the 1960s and 1970s, improving quality of life in Norilsk, the city was able to attract and retain skilled professionals with higher expectations for quality of life than longstanding residents

(Bond 1985). Meier notes the youthful demographic of the city, citing the Norilsk Nickel

Combine director’s claim of 14,000 children in the city’s kindergartens in 1974, and double that number by 1987 (2003, 224).

The fall of the Soviet Union marked the beginning of Norilsk’s population decline, and the number of inhabitants dropped from a near high of 174,673 in 1989

(Goskomstat 1992). Between 1989 and 1998 Norilsk lost about 13% of its residents, and by the 2002 census 134,832 residents remained (Rosstat 2002). Norilsk Nickel’s economic restructuring over the past several decades caused many residents to lose their jobs and the city’s undiversified economy forced many to leave in search of other jobs.

Since 2002 Norilsk has lost an additional 10% of its residents. By 2010, the population had further diminished to about 105,800, according to preliminary census estimates (Rosstat 2011). The Norilsk Industrial Region as a whole is also contracting, although it is difficult to monitor the flows due to poor population measurement since the towns were agglomerated.

In 2011, despite the city’s economic productivity and Norilsk Nickel’s growing profitability over the past decade, the benefits of the greater economic activity are not directly accruing to the locality or translating into the city’s growth. Norilsk Nickel and the municipality of Norilsk are the primary institutional actors shaping the city’s demography. Their implicit and explicit policies indicate that neither one wants to grow the city at any cost.

As the city’s economic engine and largest employer, Norilsk Nickel MMC demonstrates an overwhelming influence on migration in the city in several ways, although its impact is mixed. The company promotes limited in-migration through selective recruiting but most policies and practices encourage outmigration directly

through the drawdown of its permanent workforce and indirectly through its social policies that affect quality of life in Norilsk.

The company has shed its traditional paternal role in the community and shifted the costs of many social services to the city, especially impacting seniors and the very young. Compared to its profits, Norilsk Nickel has negotiated low tax payments to the regional and city governments. Meanwhile, the city attempts to improve services and draw down the non-working population in response to declines in funding. The municipality struggles to absorb the costs formerly borne by Norilsk Nickel and provide for the day-to-day needs of its large population with limited support from the central government. For example, in the late 1990s, the city participated in some unsuccessful large-scale resettlement schemes to draw down the city’s growing proportion of seniors.

Despite a lower quality of life and harsh environment, many residents remain in Norilsk.

Norilsk Nickel Mining and Metallurgy Company

Norilsk Nickel is the single largest direct employer of more than 60,000 in the industrial region, according to the municipal website (Norilsk City 2011) (Figure 4.3). In interviews, the Norilsk Statistical Agency (2011) notes that Norilsk Nickel supports thousands more indirectly, through its control of a number of non-mining companies in the area.

Figure 4.3 A supervisor at Norilsk Nickel leaving after shift change. (Photo: G. Parente)

Since its privatization in 1994 and change of ownership in 1997, Norilsk Nickel has adopted a new orientation towards improving shareholder value by introduced money-saving measures and repositioning the company from an “archetypal Soviet institution” to a modern global corporation” (Humphreys 2011, 1). These measures to reduce labor costs and social expenditures in the city encourage outmigration both directly and indirectly.

According to Glazunov (2010) between 1997 and 2003 Norilsk Nickel lowered labor costs by reducing the expensive local workforce by about 3-5% each year. The

company also began to reduce its traditional “expenditures on maintaining the social infrastructure of the town and the region” (Glazunov 2010, 17) (Figure 4.4). The company also shifted production to other regions of Russia as well as internationally. The company has halved its workforce in the Norilsk Industrial Region, from 110,000 in 1998 to 60,000 in 2011 (Norilsk Nickel 2011). The company has reduced the number of its local direct employees through attrition, as many long-time workers leave or retire. It also relies on more subcontracting from former republics of the Soviet Union (Ziker

1999). These measures save the company money by reducing its future pension responsibilities. In a 2010 interview with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, it was reported that 18,000 pensioners continue to work at Norilsk Nickel and the company supports an additional 20,000 retired workers.9 In meetings in Norilsk in 2011, Norilsk Nickel representatives discussed their efforts to reduce the number of workers and subcontract more functions ranging from scientific research to cafeteria services and transportation.

9 http://government.ru/eng/gov/priorities/docs/11981/.

Figure 4.4 Soviet-era housing and utilidors predominate on the edge of town. (Photo: G. Parente)

High-Skill Workers and Retention Issues

Although primarily reducing its workforce through attrition, Norilsk Nickel needs to fill specialized positions and the Siberian mining industry can no longer rely on central planning to ensure a constant stream of workers. The company encourages selective in- migration to Norilsk through the domestic and international direct recruitment of a few high skill employees. Norilsk Nickel still offers some of the highest wages in the country to attract workers. In 2005 Norilsk held 4th place in average salaries of 25,900 RUB per month, which grew four times since 1999 (Rosstat 2006). However since the transition there are an increasing number of well-paid mining and engineering jobs throughout

Russia, giving professionals in the industry more options to live and work in more

hospitable climes. Shrinking wage differentials between Norilsk Nickel and other companies also renders the Northern Benefits wage bonus system less attractive. Wage earners in Norilsk earn a 60 percent bonus on their base wages (Igarka Employment

Bureau 2011), but higher base wages in other regions of Russia diminish the advantage.

According to a company official, Norilsk Nickel fills all its job openings either with local labor or through advertising and direct recruitment outside the city. The company recruits engineers and other specialized professionals from other parts of Russia and the former Soviet countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

According to the Norilsk public employment agency, the expanding number of job opportunities throughout Russia means fewer high skill professionals are willing to relocate to Norilsk. International recruits come from countries like Kazakhstan or

Ukraine, which have advanced educational systems and established mining industries, but offer fewer career options in the sector. Among the foreign-born in Norilsk, it is often

Ukrainians who fill skilled positions (Norilsk Employment Bureau 2011).

Norilsk Nickel provides the necessary work authorizations and offers housing and travel reimbursements and financial incentives to lure recruits. In interviews, officials admit they struggle to retain highly skilled employees in an otherwise undesirable location. Norilsk Nickel also recruits local students through an internship program with several universities throughout Russia, including the local Norilsk

University of Industry. In 2004, the Company began the Professional Start program to

“increase the interest of youth to graduate with specialties demanded by the Company

and at motivating the achievement of best possible education results with subsequent joining the ranks of MMC Norilsk Nickel employees.”10

Norilsk Nickel offers scholarships to students of Russian universities, who sign agreements to work for the group companies after graduation. The company cooperates with over 30 education institutes, including the Norilsk Industrial Institute, Siberian

Federal University, Irkutsk State Technical University, and G. V. Plekhanov Saint

Petersburg State Mining Institute and Technical University.11

Beyond employment measures, Norilsk Nickel indirectly promotes outmigration as it cuts the traditional social benefits it used to offer the city and environs. Since privatization the company has dropped many public services and local public transport it used to provide. The municipality is now struggling with these costs. Between 1992 and

1996 the financial difficulties of Norilsk Nickel resulted in the reduction of the amount of social services expenditure by 22% in healthcare, 61% in education, 18% in cultural activities and 2% in sports (Aberkeeba 1997 in Julian 2001). “From a purely humanitarian point of view, the city is here and needs social services,'' said Vladimir N.

Karelin, the director of the Norilsk Nickel Taimyr mine. ''From a purely business point of view, such infrastructure is inefficient'' (Myers, 2004).

In 1998, although Norilsk Nickel “agreed to continue paying 1 billion to 1.4 billion rubles annually to maintain the region’s social sphere, [the First Deputy Prime

Minister Yurii] Maslyukkov agreed to help transfer these costs to taxpayers” (Orttung,

Lussier and Paretskaya 2000, 529).

10 Norilsk Nickel attracts young specialists with grants. August 31, 2011. http://www.norilsknickel.ru/en/press/news/3345/. 11 http://hr.nornik.ru/student/norilsk/polar/professional/advantages.htm.

However, declining public benefits for residents are difficult to establish as a proximate cause for outmigration and Bond (1985, 40) notes that in the Soviet period at least, low labor turnover was not necessarily an indicator of “adequate living conditions”.

Under market conditions, residents out-migrate for reasons that were not applicable during the Soviet period when internal migration was restricted, such as to rejoin family elsewhere in Russia. Nevertheless, these costs have fallen to the city.

Municipality of Norilsk

Norilsk is economically healthy, but the economic activity does not maximize benefits for the population as Norilsk Nickel shifts labor and social service costs and reduces its tax burden. Norilsk is transitioning away from its company town status and can no longer rely on industry or the national and regional governments to support its economy and population. The shrinking population remains unsustainably large and city administrators seem to favor policies to raise money, rein in costs and/or diversify the economy instead of fostering growth. The city pursues these strategies to varying degrees, but primarily through cost control efforts to draw down the expensive non- working population. The city invests little in economic diversification and increasing the tax payments of Norilsk Nickel seems unlikely given the company’s political clout.

The dynamics are similar at the regional level. The entire Krasnoyarsk Krai economy relies on the export of raw materials, and as of the late 1990s shipped up to $2.5 billion worth of goods a year. However little is reinvested locally, which contributes to “a general degradation of the regional economy” (EWI RRR, 20 August 1998) (Orttung,

Lussier and Paretskaya 2000, 285).

Taxes

Norilsk Nickel and other industry taxes pay the largest share of the city and Krai tax revenues, although the allocation of contributions is constantly being renegotiated

(Orttung, Lussier and Paretskaya 2000, 531). According to Norilsk Nickel, in 2008, the company’s tax payments account for about 28 percent of the income of consolidated regional budget and for more than three fourths (about 77 percent) of the income of

Norilsk city municipal budget, which was 10,491.13 million RUR in that year.12

However, Norilsk Nickel and other resource companies in the Russian North have negotiated lower rates so potential tax revenues are larger than actual tax revenues at both the city and regional scales (Ziker 1999).

The Company benefits from its political strength in the region, at the expense of the city and Krai. In 1997 for example, the company’s new majority owner, oligarch

Vladimir Potanin, capitalized on his close relationship with Moscow to obtain permission for Norilsk Nickel to write off “$280 million (USD) in tax debt to the region and postpone payment to the federal budget of $145 million for ten years and the state pension fund of $260 million and $350 million for five and 10 years respectively” (Butrin

2004 in Glazunov 2010, 21). According to Glazunov, the company’s economic and social position “provided total political control of the region and helped general director of Nornickel, Alexsandr Khloponin, win the election for the governor of the Taimyr

Region in 2001” (Glazunov 2010, 21). Khloponin later went on to become the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai.

12 Norilsk Nickel website 2010, http://nornik.ru/en/development/presence/#_ftn1

Economic Diversification

A commonly advocated remedy for one-industry cities such as Norilsk is to diversify the local economy so they become less reliant on single entities and attract new people and firms. Public or federal support is often part of this approach. In many places, public or private development agencies are new industry greenhouses, regional universities are tapped to cultivate new products and services appropriate to the region, medical facilities are upgraded to better service the population and attract medical professionals and the like. However, in discussions with the Norilsk Economic

Development Bureau, the city seems to be pursuing a course of economic and population maintenance or even measured decline rather than expansion.

According to the Norilsk Bureau of Economic Development (2011), there is a lack of sophisticated sectors like IT in Norilsk, which could diversify the tax base and attract more trained and educated workers to high skill jobs. Representatives at the

Bureau expressed their interest in developing such high skill industries; however, such plans appear stymied by Norilsk Nickel and bureaucratic inertia. The Bureau has no plans in place, and mentioned they were waiting for direction from Moscow. Locally, Norilsk

Nickel is politically powerful and not interested in new, large big businesses coming to

Norilsk. If a company or business comes into town they receive tax breaks, but Norilsk

Nickel vets new companies to eliminate competition (Norilsk Bureau of Economic

Development 2011).

Small businesses, presumably not in potential competition with Norilsk Nickel, are an important part of the local economy. Small businesses employ a large segment of

the population outside of the primary mining sector, but rely on the relatively highly paid

Norilsk Nickel employees.

According to the Bureau of Economic Development, about 8-10 percent of the population is engaged in small business enterprise. These estimates are available because small business owners need to obtain licenses through the tax service. Trade licenses are one specific kind of small business license issued by the tax office. About 2.5 percent of the population was engaged in trade for the period of 2009-2010. “Trade” in the local context describes businessmen who purchase products wholesale in Krasnoyarsk, transport it up the river and sell them at their own store or restaurant in Norilsk. Goods are about evenly split between food and non-food commodities.

Municipal Recruitment and Training Programs

Aside from Norilsk Nickel’s training and recruitment programs for its own employees, the city does not currently have public programs for attracting workers in other sectors to Norilsk, according to an interviewee at the Norilsk Bureau of Economic

Development (2011). Interviewees at the Bureau first claimed there was not a labor shortage of working age population, but later contradicted themselves (2011).

Throughout town one notes amenities designed to improve the quality of life and retain residents, including a performing arts center, a movie theater, sushi restaurants and nightclubs. Bureau representatives said they are not concerned about shortages in teachers and health care professionals because they say the shrinking population will need fewer anyway. This would support the indications of the city’s “managed decline” approach to development over the past few decades.

Youth make up a declining segment of Norilsk’s population, largely due to brain drain. Students finish high school and often leave Norilsk to attend larger regional universities such as Siberian Federal University in Krasnoyarsk. In 1991 children made up 26 percent of the city’s population, and had fallen to 18 percent in 2010 (Norilsk

Statistical Agency, 1991 figures; Rosstat, 2010 figures). The city pays for a university education for some children so they will come back, but the return rate is only 2-3 percent (Norilsk Bureau of Economic Development 2011). Some students are sponsored by Norilsk Nickel to study subjects such as Engineering and Geology, but the city has few mechanisms or inducements to retain graduates in other academic specializations.

The city also operates some training institutes in cooperation with Norilsk Nickel.

With the decline in young people, the population of Norilsk is aging, raising the costs of maintaining the population. Pensioners are an expensive demographic and represent a growing share of the population of Norilsk. Their proportion of the population doubled between 2000 and 2010, from about 4 percent in 1991 to 9 percent in 2010

(Figure 4.5) (Norilsk Statistical Agency, 1991 figures; Rosstat 2010 figures). It is a smaller percentage for the Krai as a whole but the high cost of living in northern latitudes still outstrips the benefits. The city must subsidize the national pension benefits to cover the costs of housing, energy and food which are more expensive than in the less peripheral and more temperate regions of Russia. In Norilsk heating costs are a large part of household expenditures. Low income residents, including many pensioners, cannot afford to pay.

“With the company's financial support shrinking, the

maintenance of city services has become an increasingly

heavy burden, particularly the city's aging housing and heating

system. The city's budget, which this year will total some

$300 million, is already so strained that it has no room for

improving services.” (Myers 2004).

Children (under 16 yrs)

Working Age (Men 16-59 yrs, Women 16-54 yrs)

Seniors

Figure 4.5 Demographic Summary of Norilsk between 1991 and 2010. Source: Norilsk Statistical Agency (1991); Rosstat (2010).

A 2003 United Nations (UNEP) energy subsidies report found that in Russia several factors contributed to high heating costs, noting that “rising heat prices and the inability for growing numbers of customers to pay for their supplies has meant deteriorating payment discipline and rising debt of end users with heat suppliers. For technical and social reasons, it is often difficult to cut supplies to households that do not pay their bills (72).”

Similar to the Northern Benefit wage subsidies, pensions are higher for those living in the officially designated northern regions (on a sliding scale). In 2007, pensions were 2.6 percent higher in Norilsk (as a northern region) than on the mainland, not enough to live on but too high for people to move.

Working pensioners can still earn the Northern subsidy on earned wages, and

Norilsk Nickel continues to support large numbers of both retirees and working pensioners. Before 2009 anyone born in the officially designated Northern Regions garnered a northern subsidy, but since then the labor law changed to only support active labor (Igarka Employment Bureau 2011). This offers pensioners a major incentive to work as long as possible to supplement their pension benefits. The Norilsk Bureau of

Economic Development (2011) noted that moving pensioners off the local payroll is important to make room for more of the working age population to obtain jobs.

The city wants to relocate pensioners to other parts of Russia and in cooperation with Norilsk Nickel have encouraged some residents to participate in Federal voluntary outmigration schemes to assist mainly elderly or nonworking households to leave the region. These efforts have been unsuccessful in moving large numbers (Round 2005,

717). According to The Economist, the costs of providing social support for an individual north of the Arctic Circle was about $2,000 a year more than elsewhere, whereas resettlement imposes a one-off cost of only about $4,000 (1998).

Since the 1990’s various federal programs to encourage outmigration from the northern regions of Russia have been implemented, including one financed through the

World Bank which ran from 2002 to 2009 in three pilot areas (Nuykina 2011, 30). There is one ongoing federal resettlement program that was begun in 2002, and implemented

under Federal Law 125-FZ, “On housing subsidies for citizens’ migration from the Far

North and equivalent regions.” This policy is still in force and offers housing subsidies in the form of certificates to would-be out-migrants from any of the officially designated regions of the Far North. The Yamal Nenets Autonomous Oblast, in which Norilsk is located, has been among the most active in “promoting resettlement and supported the federal relocation policy by allocating additional funds and initiating regional migration- assistance projects” (Busalov (1998) in Nuykina 2011, 23). This new law replaced various other outmigration schemes wherein the state built housing in temperate zones in

Russia and provided housing subsidies for northern residents to move (Nuykina 30). The participation of the World Bank made the newest iteration of the state’s federal program a more market oriented, “neo-liberal” program that offered more flexibility in terms of location for migrants, but more of the burden of search and initial financing was placed on would-be out-migrants (Nuykina 2011, 43). Prioritized groups included residents of closing settlements, invalids, pensioners, unemployed and longtime workers eligible for the wage benefits from working in the north for 15 years or more (42).

World Bank Resettlement Pilot Program

Beginning in 2002 and 2009, Norilsk was among several territories included in a pilot of the Migration Assistance Component (MAP) of a larger World Bank Northern

Restructuring Project. The MAP was intended to assist what the World Bank calls

“economically and socially vulnerable households” out-migrate from each of the pilot areas. In Norilsk the targeted population included non-working and elderly populations and households more likely to live in poverty (i.e. families with many children) (World

Bank 2010, 4).13 Actual out-migration fell far short of World Bank projections- only a 14 percent realization for households and 8 percent for individuals (World Bank 2010, 12).

World Bank post-pilot analysis cites several reasons for low participation in Norilsk including, “the existence of other more attractive migration programs in terms of the size of assistance”, the fact that the housing subsidy is not sufficient for housing purchase elsewhere (14), and a desire by residents to continue earning a “Northern bonus “for pension benefits (15).

The World Bank came to regard the inclusion of the Norilsk municipality as a pilot territory as a design flaw resulting from their underestimation of “the relative economic prosperity of Norilsk and the high level of social support provided by regional and municipal levels” (World Bank 2010, 9). However, other studies have found a low uptake on Arctic resettlement initiatives and outmigration from the region for different reasons. Heleniak (2009) notes the important role of emotional attachment to place in discouraging migration. His research on Russian Arctic populations notes that longstanding residency in an area complicates straightforward economic migration decisions. His research and Russian census data indicate long-term residency in the region over several generations and strong family networks in the area compared to elsewhere in Russia.

Foreign-born and Ethnic Minorities

Norilsk hosts both international migrants and migrants from other parts of Russia

(Figure 4.6). An exact number is unavailable as the Norilsk office of the Federal

13 http://www- wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2010/07/19/00033303 7_20100719000542/Rendered/PDF/ICR13430ICR0Bo1B01Official0Use01091.pdf.

Migration Service (FMS), responsible for immigration control, refused to provide a figure (FMS 2011). Also, ethnic minorities and actual immigrants are usually conflated in discussions both with native Russians and with ethnic minorities themselves.

Figure 4.6 Ethnically diverse Norilsk residents enjoy a local street festival. (Photo: G. Parente)

In Norilsk there are both longstanding ethnic minorities who have lived in Russia or Norilsk for several generations as well as new immigrants. Most international migrants come from neighboring CIS countries such as Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan as well as the Ukraine and Armenia. Azerbaijanis are the single largest and longest-standing minority ethnic group in Norilsk, numbering about 10,000 (Keremov 2011). Azeris first came to Norilsk after serving in the Soviet army in the 1950s and worked in mining.

Many remained and have brought relatives from Azerbaijan. The community is split

about evenly between foreign born and ethnic minority residents (Keremov 2011). A representative at the FMS office concurred that Azeris are the largest foreign-born and ethnic group in Norilsk, and that Ukrainians are the second largest, but didn’t distinguish between immigrants and Russian citizens (FMS 2011) (Figure 4.7).

Figure 4.7 Inhabitants hail from several regions of Russia as well as Central Asia, China and the Caucuses. (Photo: G. Parente)

The foreign-born come to Norilsk for several reasons. Primarily, there is less competition for jobs than in other areas of Russia, migrants have access to family support from the longstanding residency of other migrants, and finally, they benefit indirectly from the relatively high wages provided by Norilsk Nickel. In some ways the characteristics of many migrants are converging with the overall population, and in others the population is distinct.

The local Federal Migration Service (FMS) paints a picture of immigrants in

Norilsk that is similar to the foreign-born population at the national level. The FMS estimates about 90-95 percent of the foreign-born in Norilsk speak Russian, hail mainly from former Soviet states where Russian is still taught in school, and have generally low levels of education. Nationals from most CIS countries do not need visas to enter Russia.

They come to Norilsk primarily through family networks and seek the required work permits upon arrival (FMS 2011).

International migrants employ cooperative strategies in three broad areas; to come to Norilsk; to obtain jobs and housing; and to participate in the larger community. For low skill workers, access and entry to this remote city is facilitated by traditional networks of fellow migrants. One scenario is family and friends who already live in

Norilsk and who bring relatives from abroad. Another scenario is when foreign migrants enter Russia and initially go to larger destinations, such as Moscow, and through networks hear about Norilsk as a location with jobs and less employment competition

(Laruelle 2011b).

Norilsk’s quasi-closed status further restricts migration into the city. Norilsk was closed during the Soviet period, opened in 1991, and became semi-closed again in 2001.

This on again, off again restriction illustrates the ambiguous and uncertain migration policies of post-Soviet Russia. It is rumored that local authorities requested the new semi- closed status in order to slow foreign immigration from the former Soviet republics, rather than for security reasons. All foreigners except those from Belarus need permission to visit, and there is a quota regarding how many foreigners can be admitted at one time.

Visitors and newcomers must pass through airport or river port security checkpoints and

present special permits to verify their legal status in Russia. There are few routes into the city and migration checkpoints at all of them, both of which raise challenges to access- making networks of host migrants already in Norilsk very important.

Counting the Foreign Born and Visa Enforcement

According to the local FMS, Norilsk’s geographic isolation, closed city status and few transport links allow authorities to more easily track the foreign born than in most other cities, through the entry and exit registries to the city. There are few roads so there are entry and exit registries at the security posts at the airport and port (in Dudinka) through which everyone must pass. These security checkpoints check the legal status of people already in Russia. If someone doesn’t have legal status, it is handled through the courts, and a migrant is detained in Norilsk for typically week-long proceedings. If they have a valid foreign passport and no documents, FMS calls the Embassy in Moscow and the embassy reimburses FMS the cost of deportation (FMS 2011).

Some migrants do come to Norilsk through a national system of work permits, which are designed for certain occupations based on employer requests. If the term of stay ends and an immigrant does not leave the FMS does not have immigration enforcement authorities, the local police in Norilsk are responsible for finding and detaining them (FMS 2011).

Migrants from non-visa countries can come to Norilsk without a visa or work permit or family sponsorship. They have 90 days to obtain work permit but many don’t and they become undocumented. Working without a permit constitutes under-the-table work. Municipalities issue permits, but the number of work permit issuances underestimates the number of migrants (Laruelle 2011b).

According to the FMS, the opportunity to obtain Russian citizenship administratively is rarely undertaken by the foreign born in Norilsk, mainly because it is a complicated, cumbersome process. For all nationalities, they must pass a language test and any criminal convictions preclude citizenship. The FMS official expressed a desire for Russia to adopt the US-style citizenship test of national values and general knowledge about Russia (FMS 2011).

Immigrant Employment and Housing

Through networks migrants obtain information about the local labor market and are often employed by other migrants. The local employment agency said they see few international migrants, as they rely mostly on each other. Low-skill migrants don’t work for Norilsk Nickel but cater to the relatively highly paid miners. However, as the number of Norilsk Nickel employees shrinks, so do the number of jobs in the secondary job market which employs most migrants.

The labor market for international migrants is highly segmented with definite employment niches. According to the Economic Development Bureau (2011) the largest role of the foreign born in Norilsk’s economy was in municipal services, trade and construction. The organization could not provide specific figures, but confirmed that many small business owners engaged in trade and operating shops and restaurants were

Azerbaijanis. An Azeri interviewee noted that Azerbaijanis moved into small business from mining when salaries fell for industrial jobs in the mid-1990s (part of Russia’s economic collapse) and estimated that today they represent about 5 percent of the approximately 1,000 persons engaged in small business and 10 percent in large businesses (meaning larger stores or more than one store). In the mid-1990’s most trade

licenses were held by the foreign-born, but by 2011, immigrants’ share of licenses fell to about 50 percent. Increasingly the children of immigrants are attending University instead of participating in family businesses (Keremov 2011).

Uzbeks and Tajiks in Norilsk often drive trucks and taxis and work on subcontracted public works projects for the city (Figure 4.8). These jobs are seasonal with low pay and few benefits that natives do not want (Keremov 2011). A few highly skilled Moldovans and Ukrainians work in the mining sector. Norilsk Nickel recruits foreign-born high skill employees claiming it is hard to attract native high skill professionals to Norilsk. Critics argue that it is a cost saving measure because professional migrants cost less than Russians.

4.8 Foreign migrants work on Norilsk city construction projects. (Photo: G. Parente)

In Norilsk, low skill immigrants are more likely to leverage personal relationships to seek jobs than use the employment agency (Norilsk Employment Bureau 2011). There are plentiful jobs for immigrants, according to a young Azeri man born in Norilsk, whose family has lived in Norilsk for several generations. He noted that most immigrants plan to work temporarily and then return to their native countries, although strong family networks induce many to remain.

Longstanding migrant residents also offer readily available housing options for new migrants. Propiska is a hurdle both for native Russians and for migrants. The propiska system survives its Soviet era origins as a way to regulate internal migration by

requiring perspective residents to obtain government-issued registration “giving them legal rights to live in a particular district” (Lubarsky 2001 in Prager 2010, 1). Migrants can get around propiska requirements with the help of networks. A landlord can hold a propiska and rent out the rooms to others. This is an illegal, although fairly common practice throughout Russia (Laruelle 2011b).

According to the interviewee at the Norilsk Economic Development Bureau, given the declining overall population of Norilsk, there will be a similarly diminishing need for immigrants in the future (2011). As with the teachers and the health care professionals, the city will likely need fewer municipal services in the future, and the balance of supply and demand is self-regulating. There are no programs to diversify employment opportunities for immigrants beyond the occupations in which they are clustered. There are an increasing number of ethnic minority students in the Norilsk

Industrial Institute and the other schools in the city. Ethnic youth are better off than their parents and their migration patterns resemble those of ethnic Russian youth- as the educated depart Norilsk (Norilsk Economic Development Bureau 2011).

The Economic Development Bureau doesn’t keep track of foreign born and ethnic minorities at the city level but staff note that non-Russian citizens cannot take certain positions in the city administration, Norilsk Nickel and some elected positions, and that non-citizens cannot vote locally (although it is unclear how many non-citizens live in the city) (2011).

The Norilsk Bureau of Economic Development (2011), also estimates that about

80 percent of the foreign- born in the city transmit remittances. If immigrants have a bank, they usually use it to send remittances, although they can also use mobile phones.

Unlike in the United States and other migrant destination countries, “banking immigrants,” that is, special outreach by banks to immigrant communities to encourage them to use their services- is not a program in Russia. According to the Bureau, if immigrants need credit to open business, they do not turn to banks, but instead to family and friends. The interviewee also implied they often obtain money through illicit activities, but this seemed to be speculative.

Immigrant Community and Cultural Organization

The third area in which immigrants organize is to participate in the larger Norilsk community and develop their own cultural and social activities. In the political sphere, migrants and ethnic minorities have two representatives on the City Council, a Russian- born Azeri and a Ukrainian. The Azerbaijani City Council member is a successful businessman in Norilsk. He founded the House of Friendship, a local nonprofit which offers multicultural outreach programs among schoolchildren, cultural center, and plans participation in city cultural and social events.

There seems to be little formal mutual aid organizations among immigrant groups in Norilsk, although the activities of the House of Friendship seem like a potential area of cooperation. Another is the city’s mosque (Figure 4.9). In Norilsk, immigrants as well as ethnic minorities who are Russian citizens include practicing and non-practicing Muslims of various sects. Many worship at the Nurd Kamal mosque, founded in 1989 by an ethnic

Tatar from Norilsk who now lives in Sochi. The mosque is a self-funded operation, and receives about 500 visitors a week from several different migrant and ethnic groups, according to its caretaker (Nurd Kamal Mosque 2011).

4.9 The Nurd Kamal Mosque is possibly the northernmost in the world, and attracts hundreds of worshippers each week. (Photo: G. Parente)

This seems like a small number, given the large immigrant and ethnic population of the city. One of the mosque caretakers, an immigrant from Tajikistan, noted that many families pray at home, so not everyone goes to the mosque every week. Instead, family representatives may go, or just one person from the household. At the mosque are an imam and a madrasa, with the imam’s deputy as the teacher (Interview 2011). The madrassa, a religious school for both children and adults, is located in the mosque as well. The mosque doesn’t formally sponsor community events. For Muslim holidays, they pay for festivities out of a general fund and events are on the mosque property.

People come to the mosque for tea, to discuss problems with each other and seek advice

from the imam (Nurd Kamal Mosque 2011). Connected to the mosque is the “Eastern

Café”, run by an Azeri, which serves halal meat delivered directly from Krasnoyarsk. The restaurant has become an informal community gathering place, and where mosque visitors stop for tea and conversation.

However, neither of these community projects – the House of Friendship and the mosque- developed organically from the migrant community, but were initiatives undertaken singlehandedly by wealthy individuals. This may indicate that recent migrants rely more on informal networks to secure their pressing concerns of employment and housing. The philanthropic approach also reflects the broader political and cultural context in Russia, wherein civil organizations still rely on personal connections (Evans,

Henry and Sundstrom 2006, 311).

Conclusion

Although the Norilsk Industrial Area remains highly productive and economically vital both to the regional government and Russia’s national reliance on raw material exports, the city’s population continues the contraction that began in 1991. Both the company and the city are pursuing a course of managed decline rather than economic or demographic expansion. Norilsk Nickel’s efforts to downsize and reduce city benefits and Norilsk’s quasi-closed status indicate that public and private decision makers are unwilling to grow the population. Young people continue to depart the city, although neither Norilsk Nickel nor the city wants to diversify the economy or grow the mining workforce in order to retain them. However, despite Norilsk’s overall trend of outmigration, there is significant nuance to the macro narrative. Selective in-migration to

Norilsk continues through immigration and the hiring policies of Norilsk Nickel, which

lend some dynamism to the local labor market and create a broad urban demographic which includes foreign-born residents and ethnic minorities. Despite the city’s inhospitable living conditions, large numbers of longstanding residents remain for various reasons. They resist both formal resettlement initiatives and other financial inducements to relocate to the Russian “mainland”. For example, the hiring practices of

Norilsk Nickel, which have the effect of increasing the proportion of pensioners. In this case, the policies of Norilsk Nickel seem to work against the goals of the municipality.

By employing pensioners while at the same time reducing funding for public social benefits that pensioners heavily rely on, Norilsk Nickel is increasing the number of working pensioners remaining in the city. This further squeezes young workers out of the few remaining jobs and works against out-migration programs for pensioners.

Norilsk continues to attract immigrants but this group is not growing the population of Norilsk. They perform work in specific occupational niches, but the characteristics of many in the longstanding population are converging with that of the rest of Norilsk. Immigrants are pursuing the practical goals their community needs and are having some success coping with everyday needs of their members--housing, jobs, and maintaining community cohesion and identity. Much of this effort is built on networks and resources outside of city structures. It illustrates how self-organization at the local level can operate and be effective. The fact that many migrants operate outside of these may be to their advantage as Norilsk’s few institutional supports fall away. However, given the dependence of foreign workers on Norilsk Nickel employees, the declining workforce will likely also draw down the number of migrants. Educated young migrants and ethnic minorities are exiting Norilsk just as the ethnic Russian population.

Overall, the future size and demographic composition of Norilsk is unclear, although change may be gradual as incentives to in-migrate or exit are left more to market forces and natural attrition rather than coordinated industry or state-sponsored initiatives. It is clear though, that Norilsk Nickel will reshape the city to achieve its own goals. In 2003 The Guardian (UK) quoted a Norilsk worker: “In Soviet times, people knew it was their town, and looked after it. But today, they try to come here for 10 years, make money, and then leave. They don't care and neither does the company. It wants to squeeze this town dry, like taking the juice from a lemon."

Chapter 5

Igarka: Fading Arctic Riverport

“I don’t think I shall ever forget that arrival in Igarka.”

• Ruth Gruber, American Foreign Correspondent, I Went to the Soviet Arctic, 1939

Introduction

Igarka was established in 1929 as a port and timber mill complex along the northward- flowing Yenisei River and was designated a city in 1931 (Dobrenko and Naimen 2005,

251). Located within the Arctic Circle, for more than 50 years Igarka occupied a highly valued role in the Soviet economy, processing and exporting timber from Siberian forests to Western European markets via the famous Northern Sea Route (Armstrong 2011, 65)

(Figure 5.1). Originally a fishing village in 1927 it had 49 inhabitants, which quickly grew to about 20,000 by 1939 (Armstrong 1965, 144).

Figure 5.1 Igarka is located 725 kilometers from the mouth of the Yenisei River. Map: D. Streletskiy

Port Igarka enjoyed a prioritized status and subsidies from the Soviet central government in need of hard currency in exchange for timber exports. Government propagandists held out the thriving city as an exemplar of Soviet domination of the Arctic and its trove of natural resources (McCannon 1998, 89). City authorities reported with pride that they had built a “large industrial and cultural center for the entire Yenisei

District” (Gruber 1939, 82).

However, Igarka’s undiversified economy was hit hard by the economic restructuring in the 1990s. Igarka’s decline is part of the larger Arctic region’s decline in the timber and export industries after the restructuring. The government no longer needed the hard currency and could not afford subsidies. The regional lumber and shipping industry became financially untenable as the true costs of shipping in Arctic waterways and maintaining a large port community in Igarka’s remote and harsh climate became prohibitive. Igarka lost its river port role, privileged status and most of its population.

Today, the economic and demographic future of Igarka is unclear and problematic. The town struggles to employ its remaining population of 6,000 and attract new inhabitants (Igarka Employment Bureau 2011). The challenge of maintaining a large settlement in this location has changed little since 1935, when Igarka’s female Mayor,

Valentina Ostroumova, attempted to improve living conditions and migration incentives so free workers would “want to settle here permanently” (Gruber 1939, 88). The city

Mayor Ostroumova aspired to build struggles to survive in the post-Soviet economy, where market forces undermine the economic rationale for this community.

Population and the City of Igarka

In 2011, Igarka’s population of 6,100 was the lowest since the town bypassed that number during its meteoric rise in the 1930s (Rosstat 2011). The population exploded during this time, peaking at about 23,000 in 1939 (Russian

Civilization 2005). By the mid-1930’s two-thirds of the population were kulaks, or special settlers (Khlevniuk 2004, 136). Kulaks were formerly well-to-do peasants who resisted collectivization and were exiled to Siberia. Igarka’s role in the Northern Sea

Route was prioritized to obtain hard currency for the war effort, and kulaks provided unlimited free labor in these remote areas. The permanent population dropped about 40% by 1959, although this number was buoyed somewhat by a seasonal workforce of several thousand workers. The number of residents fluctuated between 14,000 and 20,000 for several decades (Smolka 1938, 276, Slavin 1964) and the last Soviet census of 1989 recorded Igarka’s population at 18,820 (Goskomstat 1992). During the 1990’s Igarka lost half of its population, falling to 8,627 in the 2002 census (Rosstat 2002). It lost a third of that number in 2000 when the last remaining lumber mill closed, to reach its current levels (Rosstat 2005) (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2 Population of Igarka (thousands of people) (Chart created by D. Streletskiy, Source: Rosstat)

Igarka’s population is not only declining, but pensioners and youth under age 18 make up almost 70% of the town, according to the local employment office. These residents do not generate income and do not provide tax revenues. City authorities are attempting to reshape the lopsided demographics by recruiting skilled professionals such as teachers and encouraging the outmigration of pensioners to other cities. The remote outpost struggles to retain Igarkan youth. The town’s initiatives to educate and retain young people are hamstrung by budget limitations.

The town’s extreme environmental conditions, remote location and limited transport links continue to severely limit its growth. Today Igarka is a lonely outpost surrounded in the brief summer by endless tundra dotted with red and purple wildflowers.

The town averages 246 days per year below 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

With its high latitude, Igarka experiences almost constant darkness during the winter

“Polar Night,” and the opposite in the summer.

The deep snow of the region’s long winters cover the few rows of brick Soviet-era apartment blocks from the 1960s and 70s, a handful of small grocery stores, banya

(Russian sauna) and local government buildings (Figure 5.3). The grocery stores are small, stocked with a few items, mostly canned food, alcohol, fresh meat, cheese, and expensive fresh fruit. The remaining residents of Igarka are those who could not afford to leave the city. Access to the city is only possible by boat or plane and one seasonal winter road. In interviews several people referred to Igarka as an “island” highlighting its remoteness from other parts of the country.

Figure 5.3 The population of Igarka has dropped from about 18,000 in 1989 to 6,000 today. (Photo: N. Tananaev)

The abandoned lumber mill and deserted older part of the city built in the 1930s and

1940s lies to the west (Figure 5.4). All that remains are broad boulevards and the remains of the once-grand performing arts theater (Figures 5.5 and 5.6). According to the local museum curator, many of the political prisoners in Igarka were performers, populating the city’s performance calendar. The museum displays pictures of the actors and playbills from their performances (Permafrost Museum 2011).

Figure 5.4 Today the Igarka port no longer sees the heavy shipping traffic it did in the past. (Photo: G. Parente)

Figure 5.5. For many decades, Igarkans and GULAG prisoners produced a variety of music and dance productions in the grand local theater. (Photo supplied by N. Tananaev)

Figure 5.6 The neglected remains of the theater at the present time. (Photo: G. Parente)

Vankor Company, a subsidiary of Rosneft, one of Russia’s largest oil companies is

Igarka’s only hope of recapturing its economic role as a port. Vankor is the sole remaining industry in the area and provides employment and social services the city cannot otherwise fund. Through job creation, education and training for young Igarkans the company encourages worker retention in Igarka. However, it is unclear if these investments can revive the town and mitigate the outmigration that has characterized the last thirty years.

The Inhabitants and the Development of Igarka

Originally a “resettlement town,” Igarka’s fast-growing population was artificially fed from a diversity of geographic areas within the Soviet Union. In the Soviet era, all internal migration was limited (Heleniak 2001) so Igarka’s inhabitants were a combination of ‘free’ workers and their families under work contracts, as well as kulak prisoners used as forced labor.

Settlements like Igarka as well as the infamous labor camps were both part of the

GULAG organizational system Stalin used to punish political opponents and industrialize

Siberia. However, settlements differed from camps in their “appearance of normalcy and freedom of movement” within the town (Khlevnyuk 2004). By the early 1930’s Igarka’s population was about 14,000 including about 4,000 kulaks (McNeill and Unger 2010,

37). According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, kulaks, euphemistically called “special settlers,” did not even hold the internal passports that allowed limited movement until the

1950s (2007, 367).

‘Free’ labor was recruited from across Russia through advertisements in the press and by organizations responsible for specific industries (Webster 1951, 35). As Lazerov and Gregory note, the classification of ‘free’ labor in these special settlements is questionable, although ‘free’ laborers worked more often in industry than in the harsher conditions of construction (2003, 16). In the case of Igarka, the infamous Dead Road” or

“Road of Bones" railway construction project was an infamous example- staffed in part by prisoners from the 503rd Labor Camp, in Igarka, and responsible for thousands of deaths (Haywood 2010, 100). The rail was initiated in 1947 by Stalin to deliver military supplies to Arctic ports by linking the port cities of Salekhard and Igarka to the Soviet

Union’s eastern territories and their natural resources. The project was abandoned after his death.

In 1935 Ruth Gruber, an American foreign correspondent, visited Igarka and described the lively town as appearing, “like an American pioneer town, almost a woodcut of old Chicago. Its houses were square and wooden and mostly one-storied, stained brown with weather and smoke. Ships were in the harbor, smoke was curling up from building, logs were floating downstream” (1939, 70).

At its height, the city had a population of about 20,000 people, a permanent harbor with mechanized loading machinery, lumber mills, power plants, theaters, hospitals, schools and agricultural plantations (Smolka 1938, 276). Visitors noted the growth of the town in terms of “overflowing maternity hospitals” and the segregation of the kulaks into “dark barracks near the edge of the town” (1939, 77). The growing population was fed in part through one of the largest state farms in the Soviet Union’s system of farms throughout the Arctic region. Polyarnyy at Igarka produced vegetables, cattle and cereals (Webster 1951, 37). Igarka was also a base for scientific research. In

1939 the All-Union Institute of Polar Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Industrial

Economy was headquartered in Igarka and controlled twenty-five research stations, of which “six specialized on reindeer, six on agriculture, and the remainder on problems of industrial biology.” Today, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Division retains a

Permafrost Research Station in Igarka.

However life in Igarka was difficult, particularly for the “special settlers” facing hunger, inadequate housing and forced labor outside year round. With limited formal migration permitted by the authorities, outmigration from Igarka occurred in the form of

forced laborers attempting to escape the harsh living conditions such as those experienced by a former child kulak in Igarka who “recalled waking [up in the barracks] the first morning with his coat frozen to the wall” (Viola 2007, 48).

Port Igarka and the Northern Sea Route

For most of its existence Igarka was the primary lumber port on the Northern Sea

Route (NSR) and terminus for many vessels crossing the Kara Sea from European ports

(Lloyd 1950) (Figure 5.7). It is located about 725 km (450 mi.) upstream from the mouth of the Yenisey Gulf (Slavin 1964, 107). Port Igarka was established as the Soviet central authorities prioritized the development of the Northern Sea Route and expanded shipping capacity beginning in the 1930s. The Soviet economy was struggling after World War I, and railroad capacity was severely depleted, making maritime transport particularly important to distribute domestic food supplies (Mulherin 1996, 10).

Figure 5.7 The busy Igarka port in the 1960s. (Photo supplied by N. Tananaev)

The development of the NSR was also vital for Russia to obtain hard currency to purchase technology and rebuild its economy. Igarka and other Arctic ports relied heavily on government subsidies throughout their existence as severe climate conditions result in high operating costs. Important cost factors in Arctic ports include a short navigation season of only a few summer months on the Yenisei, few readily available workers in

Siberia, and expensive icebreaking ships (Mulherin 1996, 43).

During the 1930’s Igarka’s importance and size expanded with the development of the NSR and the Soviet Russian Arctic fleet, which moved between 100,000 and

300,000 tons of cargo annually, employing from 40 to 150 ships per year (Mulherin

1996, 10). The “Far North” exported most of its timber output, and two-thirds of it passed through Igarka, where three mills had been built (Webster 1951, 36). These state- run industries were subsidized and part of a planned economy, so that timber exports earned hard currency but were not necessarily profitable in a capitalistic sense. Foreign ships from Europe would call first at the port of Murmansk, pass through the Kara Straits, steam north-east to Ostrov Belyy, round it on the north side and make for Dikson Port, which they passed as they entered the Yenisey 400 miles upstream to Igarka. The return trip was the same process in reverse (Armstrong 2011, 143-4).

Hosting trade driven by foreign industrialists, Igarka was a cosmopolitan island in a Soviet Union closed to the rest of the world. The dozens of foreign ships arriving in

Igarka brought a range of imported goods and capital to Igarka at a time when the rest of the country relied on food coupons (Rak 2005). Igarka’s town newspaper had an English language section for the foreign sailors (Gruber 1939, 90). The town had its own internal

exchange rate, as foreign sailors used both US dollars and Russian rubles (Igarka

Mayor’s Office 2011).

Logs were rafted downstream to Igarka from forests around the Angara River basin, several hundred kilometers to the south during the summer. Logs were cut up in the following winter and shipped off in the months of August and September on British tramp steamers (Gerbaud 1991, 64). The main species of wood that came through Igarka was Siberian larch, a soft wood prized particularly in western markets for its hardwood properties and resistance to rot. Larch is used for shipbuilding, posts, poles, railroad tie sleepers, and mine props.

Economic Transition and Igarka’s Decline

As of the late 1980s and early 1990s Igarka was still responsible for 14% of all

Russian lumber exports, according to Dr. Terence Armstrong of the Scott Polar Institute

(Drent 1993, 5). Shipping along the Northern Sea Route was still the only means of servicing peripheral regions, and remained crucial for resource development and as a source of hard currency from exports (Mulherin 1996, 43). However, the new market dynamics rendered the transport of forest products via the NSR unprofitable for many northern ports and precipitated Igarka’s economic and demographic decline. The end of the Soviet era freed internal migration which was previously tightly controlled, and as

Igarkans lost their jobs, they left the city.

As a single industry town, the onset of privatization caused Igarka’s population to decline in two waves over the course of three decades. The population fell almost 48% between 1989 and 2000, to 9,800 people. In 2000 Igarka’s last lumber mill closed, effectively ending its timber export-based economy. The mill closure shed about 5,000

jobs; the remaining population fell by an additional 40% to the 2011 population of about

6,100 inhabitants (Figure 5.8). Almost as quickly as it had grown, Igarka shrank. Most people moved to the Russian “mainland” to be near family in a more temperate climate.

Figure 5.8 Igarka’s once-thriving lumber mill along the Yenisei River is now abandoned. (Photo: G. Parente)

The central government no longer subsidized the high costs of Arctic shipping (Mulherin

1996, 43). Further, the national government’s dissolution of central control of port operations and new taxes levied on port operators worsened the business climate in northern ports like Igarka, which Peters (1993) argues had never been commercially profitable (Mulherin 1996). Rising taxes included railway and sea transport and electric

energy tariffs. Ice-breaker charges were considered prohibitively expensive, at USD 18 per ton of transported goods (Sokolova 2000, 31). In a market economy insufficient capital investment began to limit productivity, as none of the Arctic ports had sufficient reserves to maintain its current infrastructure, let alone invest in necessary improvements and modernization. Insufficient capital allowed 40% of ship and cargo-handling equipment in all ports to become useless (Mulherin 1996, 42-43).

Beyond shipping, the forest industry in Krasnoyarsk Krai, which supplied Igarkan mills, also began to work at a loss. The industry was poorly managed as it was privatized, experiencing decreasing production capacity and inefficient operations due to residual

Soviet practices such as retaining full employment at all costs and lack of capital investment in export ports like Igarka (Sokolova 2000, 52-4). The state ceased subsidizing the Northern Sea Route altogether in 2003 (CASR 2007). By 2000 the capacity of the four Northern Sea Route seaports located in the Arctic-Igarka, Dixon,

Dudinka and Khatanga, had fallen to about 100,000 cubic meters from its peak in the late

1980s when around 2 million cubic meters of sawn timber was transported through

Dudinka Seaport via the North Sea Route (Sokolova 2000, 31).

The port of Igarka is now owned by the local forestry company, and sees almost no cargo or passenger ships (CASR 2007). Igarka is no longer fundamental to the

Northern Sea Route, although it still belongs to a part of the NSR controlled by a marine operations headquarters in Murmansk, several thousand miles away. The Murmansk

Shipping Company (MSC) operates the icebreakers and controls shipping through the western half of the route. Overall responsibility for shipping activities on the NSR

currently resides with the Administration of the Northern Sea Route (ANSR) in Moscow

(Muhelin 1996, 58).

Igarka City Budget

In 2006 Igarka lost city status and control of its own budget as Igarkans voted to join the town administratively to Turukhansk Rayon. A Russian “rayon” is comparable to a county in the United States. Previously it was its own administrative entity within

Krasnoyarsk Krai and controlled its own budget. A krai is an administrative region in

Russia roughly corresponding to a state in the United States.

Federal Law #131 for Regional Restructuring, enacted in 2006, attempted to agglomerate cities in peripheral regions with shrinking populations and called for a city restructuring via municipality referenda. According to the Mayor’s office, at the time of the referendum there were no jobs in Igarka and locals relied on public subsidies. The final lumber mill closure in 2000 resulted in massive unemployment and outmigration, leaving Igarka with a significant budget shortfall (Igarka Mayor’s Office 2011).

As part of the Rayon budget Igarka sends all revenues it generates to the Krai government, which returns a portion to the city. Representatives of the Mayor’s office claim that city administrators and Igarka residents have come to regret this change;

Igarka’s budget has shrunk as part of the Rayon and even the benefits of new development are limited (Igarka Mayor’s Office 2011). For example, the oil and gas company, Vankor, arrived in the Turukhansk region in 2007, creating local employment and a tax base. Since Igarka does not have independent status it cannot take full advantage of the added revenue. Formerly, Igarka could collect property and income taxes and 60% of the revenues would stay in Igarka and 40% would be sent to the Krai.

However, now Igarka only receives back 10% of what it sends to the Rayon, and cannot directly profit from leasing infrastructure to Vankor. Local officials admit that the town’s budget structure stunts development and limits their ability to provide services to retain the existing population and attract new residents (Igarka Mayor’s Office 2011).

Igarka’s skewed population distribution exacerbates its budget woes. Not only are numbers declining, but the number of working people is shrinking compared with the overall population. Currently, only about one third of inhabitants work in the formal economy. In 2010, there were about 2,100 pensioners out of the approximately 6,000 inhabitants of Igarka, and another 2,000 children under 18 (Igarka Mayor’s Office 2011).

The large number of dependents demands expensive social services such as education, healthcare and housing. At the same time, the city cannot provide the necessary financial incentives to attract skilled professional such as teachers and doctors. Many of the job- training functions are falling to the private sector (Igarka Mayor’s Office 2011).

The city’s 2012 budget was yet undecided in the summer of 2011, although the

Mayor’s office reported that only about 10% of the budget is “on the books,” and that in fact the city budget is four times larger than it appears, primarily because of direct investment from Vankor. While Vankor investment in the region in the form of road construction is much needed, the smaller budget limits the city’s ability to offer direct inducements to would-be new residents in the form of housing allowances. It also limits the city’s ability to invest in needed municipal housing improvements or to improve the town’s cultural amenities.

Employment and Northern Subsidies

Vankor is the largest local employer, providing about 5,000 jobs in the

Turukhansk region which includes Igarka and nearby towns. Public construction and maintenance jobs through the city account for the second largest group of workers followed by city budget items that include mainly public employees in the hospital, schools, police, firehouse and library. And the fourth largest category is other private employers, mostly in trade and includes local grocery and other stores. There are few services in Igarka’s formal economy, such as salons or childcare (Igarka Employment

Bureau 2011).

Igarkan city administrators also rely on “Northern Subsidies” to recruit workers and retain inhabitants. Soviet central planners initiated this program of pay bonuses for

Russians willing to remain or migrate to northern regions vital for the country’s economic development. Started in the late 1950’s, they were intended to staunch the outflow of workers as the GULAG settlements were dismantled and labor shortages loomed in Siberia (Hill and Gaddy 2003, 95).

By the 1960s workers were fleeing the inhospitable region, citing the cold, low wages, unsatisfactory living conditions including lack of cultural activities and the desire to be closer to family in European Russia (Hill and Gaddy 2003, 95). In Krasnoyarsk

Krai, “no more than 12 percent of newly recruited workers finished their contracts, the others leaving their jobs prematurely” (Prociuk 1967). Rural outmigration of more than

11% occurred between 1970 and 1979 in Siberia (Jensen, Shabad and Wright 1983, 88).

According to the Igarka Employment Bureau, individuals born in the North received the subsidy which was written into labor law. Igarka falls within the designated

region. Today, workers in Igarka earn a 60% bonus on their base salary. In the town of

Dudinka, several hundred kilometers to the north, workers earn an 80% addition to their salary (Igarka Employment Bureau 2011). However, Russia’s evolving economic reality means that northern subsidies no longer benefit Igarka as they did in the past. Because of federal budget constraints, qualifications for this benefit changed in the late 2000s, and now the federal government only supports bonuses for active labor (Igarka Employment

Bureau 2011). As of 2009 pensioners do not receive a bonus which is now only earned on work hours. The Northern subsidy also fails to attract workers to Igarka because base salaries are so low that the bonus is an inadequate enticement. With Russia’s improving economy, good jobs are more widely available in other areas and the subsidies are no longer the inducement they once were, particularly for young people who would like to remain in major cities if they can.

Cost of Living and Pensioners

The cost of living in Igarka outstrips the meager salaries for which the subsidies cannot compensate. This is particularly the case for pensioners, who no longer earn northern subsidies in their pension checks. In 2005, Igarka’s overall population of 8,000 included 3,000 pensioners and 150 disabled residents (Rak 2005).

Pensions are paid for by the central government and national reforms in 2005 modestly hiked pension payments to replace a range of non-monetary benefits, such as free public transport, free medicines and reduced prices for utilities for seniors (BBC

2005). In news reports, pensioners believed they would be hurt by the changes, and protested, gaining a significant increase in the universal, labor pension. However, according to the Igarka Employment Office, this hike is widely considered inadequate to

compensate for the cuts in in-kind services (2011). Towns like Igarka must either accept nonpayment of services by pensioners who cannot afford to pay, or use local subsidies to guarantee services.

Pensioners had subsidized housing and utility costs until the reforms of 2005, when Igarkan pensioners paid 505 rubles per month to rent an apartment (about $18 in

2005 USD). However, working age inhabitants did not have subsidized utilities, which cost 4,000-5,000 rubles ($143- $179 in 2005 USD) for a two-bedroom apartment after rates increased 86% in 2004. The average northern salary was about 6,000 rubles a month

(about $215 in 2005 USD), and many inhabitants could not afford to pay their bills, adding to the city debt of 20 million rubles in 2005 (Rak 2005).

To relieve budget pressures, local officials would like to resettle pensioners to other areas of Russia. However, according to the local employment bureau, in 2011 only three Igarkan families took advantage of an ongoing nationally funded resettlement program (2011). According to this scheme, qualified pensioners who worked for more than 15 years in the North qualify for the federal program to encourage families to give up their apartments in the North in exchange for money to buy an apartment elsewhere.

The official rationale is that everyone who desired to leave the city has already left.

However, the financial assistance is generally considered insufficient to afford housing elsewhere in Russia.

Brain Drain and Youth

Igarka has failed to retain young people who leave for University and do not return (Figure 5.9). The city pays for the university education of some Igarkan youth so they will return and improve the human capital of the town, but there is no enforcement

mechanism (Igarka Employment Bureau 2011). The funding relies on the honor system but most students leave permanently. According to the local employment agency officials, most young people do not return due to low salaries in Igarka and better opportunities elsewhere. Young returnees are usually those who already have an apartment in town, or find a job in the region by themselves. Igarkan administrators therefore want to attract high skill professionals by offering in-kind benefits such as free housing. However the city cannot afford financial incentives and there is no municipal

(public) housing to offer young people (Igarka Mayor’s Office 2011).

Figure 5.9 Igarkan schoolchildren in front of aging apartment buildings. (Photo: G. Parente)

In 2006 the Mayor brought in eight school teachers from different regions, only to have them leave after six months due to the lack of free housing and the town’s geographic isolation (Igarka Employment Bureau 2011). The city no longer has the cultural amenities to retain a class of young and educated professionals. Gone are

Igarka’s nightclubs, new sport and health facilities and the large “club seating 1,000 people in its auditorium” (Gruber 1939, 82).

The challenge of attracting and retaining young talent in Igarka has precedent from the Soviet era. Letters dating from 1936 from the Igarka city committee addressed to Com. Stalin and other Soviet officials request permission for certain young people to leave Igarka to pursue higher education. “The right to move at least within the polar regions would, on the one hand, raise the political morale…. And would, on the other hand, force the managers of Igarka and other localities to fight for better services for the workers in order to attract them with superior living conditions and cultural entertainment and not by binding them administratively” (Khlevniuk 2004, 135-136). Igarka’s ability to retain youth has always been difficult, relying on government prohibitions on migration, rather than the appeal of Igarka itself. Under the current political system, out migration is no longer prohibited.

Current Economic Development: Rosneft’s Vankor Oil Field and Airport

The sole remaining industry in the Igarka area is Rosneft, Russia’s national oil company. Rosneft is majority owned by the government of Russia but is undergoing privatization, and is the country’s leading extraction and refinement company. Rosneft is developing the oil and gas field through its subsidiary, Vankorneft, and upgrading the

Igarka airport to ferry cargo (Rosneft 2009). The Vankor oil and gas field is located about

80 miles outside of Igarka, and represents one of the few viable industries in the entire region. According to the president of Rosneft, in 2007 of the 5,000 workers Vankor employed regionally, the Vankor field employed about 150 people from Igarka itself

(Rosneft 2007).

The Vankor reserve is vast and productive, connected to a new oil pipeline to

China. It is one of the largest investments made by the federal government in years and on the cutting edge of Russia’s new orientation towards eastern markets. The importance of this project to the national economy was underscored by Vladimir Putin’s attendance at the opening in 2009. Putin declared Vankor exports important to regional development

(Rosneft 2011). As with the timber industry before, the oil and gas resources of Igarka and its environs are important to the national economy. However, with the explosion of shift work, these resources can now be extracted and processed without large permanent settlements of workers (Rosneft 2007). Shift work is increasingly popular throughout the

Arctic region, particularly in resource extraction, as a way to avoid maintaining costly, permanent populations at high latitudes (Laruelle 2011a, 9). Shift workers are brought in to work several weeks to months at a time, and then are returned to their homes. The company also saves money using shift labor by hiring the workers in Krasnoyarsk and sending them to Igarka. Rosneft avoids paying the wage subsidies required for hires in the designated northern regions, which are eligible for the Northern wage benefits.

According to Rosneft’s website, the company has built permanent camps at the

Vankor field complex for several hundred contractors and 2,000 oil field shift workers

(Rosneft 2011).

Vankor also undertakes local infrastructure improvement initiatives that directly benefit their operations. These construction projects provide employment for locals and improved transportation vital to the city’s future. The company reports construction of

100 km of highways in the region and a new winter road connecting Igarka and the airport, which is on the other side of the Yenisei and previously only accessible weather permitting. A hotel and a cafeteria for future airport passengers is also part of the airport reconstruction. These infrastructure projects will help alleviate Igarka’s serious accessibility challenges and provide construction and service jobs for the local population.

The employment gains from new development are not all local however. The airport also serves to transport shift workers to the extraction site (Rosneft 2009a).

Temporary shift workers are rebuilding the Igarka airport. They come from the city of

Krasnoyarsk, the administrative center of Krasnoyarsk territory, several hundred kilometers to the south. Workers live onsite at the airport from weeks to several months at a time, housed in company dormitories with subsidized meals in a company cafeteria

(Figures 5.10 and 5.11). Igarka has hosted shift workers throughout its history, in addition to its permanent population. During the abbreviated summer shipping season when the mill was open, the city demanded between 2,000 to 4,000 seasonal workers to undertake loading and packaging operations, although recruitment has always been difficult in this remote location (Rak 2005).

Figure 5.10 Employee cafeteria for shift workers constructing the new Igarka airport. (Photo: N. Shiklomanov)

Figure 5.11 Brand-new dorms for Rosneft shift workers at the Igarka airport compare favorably to housing for the permanent population in Igarka. (Photo: G. Parente)

Vankor’s Education Initiatives, Job Training and Social Assistance

Beyond direct employment, Vankor provides a range of indirect benefits to the town through educational subsidies, job training and social services that the city cannot provide. It offers training opportunities to local youth at several education levels, including incentives for high school students to study math, science and engineering subjects for future employment with the company. The company also provides funding for promising students to attend the Siberian Federal University in the city of

Krasnoyarsk for eventual hire in the region.

Vankor offers job training for recruitment purposes and subsidizes the local technical college and trade school attended by local youth. According to the Mayor’s office, the town is investing the equivalent of several thousand USD to buy more equipment for the college (2011). The company also provides recreational opportunities for Igarkan youth, investing 20 million rubles to send local youth to recreational summer camps.

The company’s annual corporate social responsibility reports state that it will fund social facilities for pensioners and replenish local budgets throughout Turukhansk, but details on specific investments are not provided (Rosneft 2009b).

The Future of Igarka

Igarka today is a town fighting for its life, like many one-industry towns that dot the interior of North America and elsewhere. There is a competition between outmigration and economic stagnation and municipal efforts to encourage new industry and a diversified workforce. The early growth and prosperity enjoyed by Igarka was the product of the Soviet economic system and forced migration of prison laborers to the area. The central government’s tight control and policies masked the costs and challenges of operating in Siberia. But these challenges and inefficiencies of maintaining massive industry and permanent settlements in the Arctic were becoming more apparent by the

1950s. Local officials did not have the autonomy or means to head off the growing fractures in the system. The unraveling coincided with Stalin’s death and the disbanding of the GULAG settlements. Tens of thousands of former prisoners could move around with country and take better jobs elsewhere. The breakup of the Soviet Union and move to a freer market based economy of the 1990’s sealed the town’s fate.

The suddenness and completeness of these changes did little to cushion the blow and there were no plans to redirect local infrastructure to other uses or otherwise alleviate the loss to Igarka. Much of Igarka was abandoned to rust and decay that marks so much of the city today. Most of the early investments were lost to disuse.

Today, oil and gas resources are equally important to the Russian national economy but large, permanent settlements are no longer required. The town of Igarka is no longer synonymous with the local industry and is now of little interest to authorities at either the national or regional level, reflected in its absorption into the regional administrative apparatus.

Consequently, Igarka’s population structure is unsustainable, with the majority of its population made up of pensioners and children, both drains on the local economy.

Pensioners cannot afford to leave, and young people are fleeing the town permanently.

Igarka needs to grow its working population, train and retain young people, and evacuate pensioners, but without control of its budget, the town cannot fully capture the benefits of the remaining economic activity and fund projects to accomplish these goals.

Vankor has wide latitude to affect employment and retain young Igarkans.

However there are structural and circumstantial limitations on its ability to singlehandedly revive the economy and fully replace municipal social obligations. For example, most employment gains are limited to Vankor’s direct recruitment of workers in particular occupations, such as engineering. The city still faces shortages of teachers and doctors, and budget constraints limit their ability to provide the financial incentives necessary to attract these professionals.

In interviews, Igarka’s inhabitants predict increasing investment and industry in the abundant oil and gas reserves in the region. They claim Igarka’s population has stabilized, as those that wanted to leave have already left. Igarkans understand new employment growth in the region will likely be the kind of shift work in evidence at the

Igarka airport, particularly for future construction and in oil and gas extraction. However, town officials anticipate a growth in the demand for support services for those workers, including hospitals and specialized staff from Igarka (Igarka Mayor’s Office 2011). It is unclear, however, how they will retain these professionals.

Even with the new and important development of oil and gas in the region, it will not return Igarka to its heyday. Beyond new transport links, there is little additional economic “spillover” from this new investment in the form of additional job creation.

Vankor has been operating in the region for several years, and the extent to which its investment and employment will benefit Igarka has been demonstrated. For example, in rebuilding the airport in Igarka, Vankor imported workers. There has been no evidence of growth in a service economy beyond a few jobs in the airport hotel and cafeteria. Further, the oil field’s geographic distance means it is more likely Vankor will import doctors to live on-site than travel the 80 miles to Igarka for hospital services.

Rosneft and Vankor are not the Soviet state-run operations of yore. Their lean operation reflects the corporate ethos of a capitalist Russia. Vankor’s investments serve the needs of their extraction operations. The benefits from the company’s operations are spread throughout the region, compared to the timber industry, when economic activity was concentrated within the Igarka city limits. The company’s philanthropic initiatives for pensioners and youth are relegated to annual social responsibility reports. As charity

operations, these projects cannot provide the kind of comprehensive assistance that will resolve the impoverished conditions in which pensioners live, or to advance them the financial assistance they would need to leave the city.

In interviews Igarkans appear confident of the town’s future, with or without

Vankor. Several officials retain faith in the Yenisei as a significant route for trade and the ability of the city to once again depend on its river port function. However there is no evidence that the timber industry will revive, and air transport is largely replacing river transport in Russia. The town’s isolation remains a challenge, as demonstrated by the hope that locals hold out for the possible completion of the railroad begun under Stalin between Salekhard and Igarka. Despite its infamous origins, the railroad is one of the few potential development projects in the area, and a land link for Igarka to the outside world.

Once again it is natural resources which hold the key to Igarka’s future. The development of the oil and gas industry has sparked renewed investment, growth and optimism in Igarka. As of now, it appears that a small part of the new economic activity will accrue to Igarka but it will not be enough to reshape the town’s demographics or the town’s economy. Social and market freedoms in the new Russia will determine Igarka’s future in the same way Soviet control created a city from empty tundra.

Chapter 6

Conclusion: Comparative Migration Policies and Practices in

Igarka and Norilsk

Igarka and Norilsk face similar environmental and demographic challenges as they manage migration, but they follow diverging paths to find new fiscal and social equilibrium. In both municipalities, business and local government craft policies and foster practices that directly and indirectly shape their shrinking populations. However, these entities sometimes work at cross purposes and they may be unable to overcome the region’s myriad challenges. Igarka seeks to attract new economic development and working-age residents. In Norilsk an orderly draw down of the Norilsk Nickel workforce and overall number of residents is the priority, rather than economic diversification or population growth.

The collapse of the Soviet Union curtailed growth and prompted the outmigration of residents to a far greater degree in Igarka than Norilsk. Figure 6.1 compares the population change in Norilsk and Igarka in percent relative to 1989, the year of the last

Soviet census. Between 1989 and 1998 Norilsk lost about 13 percent of its population, and Igarka almost 45 percent. Igarka lost inhabitants at a higher rate throughout the 1990s as its lumber processing facilities struggled without government support. In the last decade, both cities have contracted at roughly the same rate, losing an additional ten percent of their inhabitants. Some residents remain because they cannot afford to leave or have extensive local family networks. In Norilsk the high market prices for rare earth minerals and nickel boosts the local economy and allows Norilsk to partially stem of the

flow of its residents. Selective in-migration to Norilsk, primarily through longstanding immigration as well through the hiring policies of Norilsk Nickel lends some dynamism to the local labor market and broad urban demographic, including numerous foreign-born residents and ethnic minorities.

Figure 6.1: Relative population change in Norilsk and Igarka (compared to 1989). (Chart created by D. Streletskiy, Source: Rosstat)

In meetings during our visit, officials in both Igarka and Norilsk voiced concerns over their limited budgets and the diminution of federal support. Neither local companies nor the municipal governments can afford to offer comprehensive social benefits as in the past. Igarka particularly struggles to improve its tax base. Although the unemployment rate hovers around one to two percent in both cities, young people are departing permanently and pensioners make up a growing share of the overall populace. Pensions

are not adequate for the high cost of living yet neither Igarka nor Norilsk has succeeded in relocating a significant number of pensioners through official programs. Many pensioners remain because disincentives to outmigration impact pensioners disproportionately, including extended networks, fixed incomes and northern benefits on pensions. Perversely, this retains them even though both municipalities would like them to move out. Both cities will likely retain these skewed demographics unless they can make the outmigration incentives more attractive to pensioners or diversify economically to bring in more working age residents.

Longstanding immigration to Norilsk and the hiring policies of Norilsk Nickel lend to the city a more dynamic labor market and a broader urban demographic than

Igarka, including numerous foreign-born residents and ethnic minorities. However,

Norilsk Nickel’s efforts to downsize and reduce city benefits and Norilsk’s quasi-closed status together indicate that both public and private decisionmakers are unwilling to grow the population. Norilsk Nickel “cherry-picks” a few highly skilled individuals by offering competitive salaries and jobs, although retention falters as northern wage subsidies lose their value and Russia’s improving economy makes good jobs widely available elsewhere. Besides a few Ukrainians, most of the foreign born are not recruited by

Norilsk Nickel but arrive through the usual immigrant family networks, or for other jobs.

They do not work in the mining sector, but rather in trade and services, and form a secondary labor market that relies on the relatively well-paid Norilsk Nickel employees.

Igarka is largely open to labor migrants, but can afford few incentives to attract or keep professionals. Without an economic base to attract workers it cannot reshape its aging

population, the result of inhabitants’ longstanding residency over generations and the one-way flight of former workers.

Local policymakers can best achieve viable communities and implement effective migration policies by capturing revenue generated by local development. The value of nickel and copper is expected to grow, allowing for a stable, albeit smaller, population in

Norilsk. In Igarka, there is no desire to rebuild the lumber industry and the town will reap only marginal benefits from Vankor. Beyond new transport links, there is little additional economic “spillover” from this new project in the form of additional job creation. Vankor has been operating in the region for several years, and the extent to which its investment and employment will benefit Igarka’s purse has already been demonstrated.

A commonly advocated remedy for one-industry cities is to diversify the local economy so they become less reliant on single entities and attract new people and firms.

Public or federal support is often part of this approach. In many places, public or private development agencies are new industry “greenhouses,” regional universities are tapped to cultivate new products and services appropriate to the region, medical facilities are upgraded to better service the population and attract medical professionals and the like.

The prospects for significant in-migration to Igarka and Norilsk are not promising because such diversification was not pursued during their more prosperous eras and outside intervention now seems unlikely. In an interview, officials at the Norilsk

Economic Development Bureau (2011) expressed interest in initiating a local IT industry, but seemed to be waiting for direction from Moscow that is unlikely to materialize, given the state’s overriding interest in Norilsk is natural resources.

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Both cities consider improved transport routes fundamental to their economic futures and are pushing for expanded air, rail and river links. Access to the Yenisei river ports to transport goods and people is still very important to both Norilsk and Igarka, but the river’s use is limited by the short navigation season. Projected shrinkage of sea ice and opening of the North passage in the future may enhance the use of marine transportation and positively affect the region’s economy and employment. Igarka is particularly interested in reestablishing its role as a river port to facilitate growth and bring in wage earners.

Existing airports make both cities attractive for development and increase mobility in the region. Airports easily bring in workers from other parts of Russia, allowing the cities to take advantage of the regional trend to temporary shift work.

Norilsk has not yet come to rely on shift workers, although this is occurring in Igarka with the new airport upgrades and oil field operations. Expanding shift work puts additional pressure on permanent residents who may not be competitive in the changing economic environment.

The Future of Arctic Cities

Although the Russian Arctic GULAG camps are now gone, some cities and towns remain in their footprints, scattered across the tundra. Most of these sites owe their existence to the natural resources which prompted initial settlement and remain the backbone of the national economy. This research indicates that yet another north is emerging 20 years after the transition. The new neoliberal model of development in

Siberia means some towns which are no longer economically viable will fail, others may

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shrink and others grow. In Igarka and Norilsk, the economic imperatives of streamlined private and semi-private companies encourage the “managed decline” of both cities.

The political and economic climate has changed significantly as corporate interests wax in importance compared to government influence. Year-round workers and municipalities to support them are giving way to smaller cities with satellite worksites.

Powerful energy companies respond to changed incentives and improved technology to find more cost effective strategies to exploit the area’s natural resources. The state and business leaders are shrugging off responsibility for the costly infrastructure of permanent towns and bloated populations. In this vast region, a lean workforce that can easily move from project to project is highly valued and increasingly possible through better transportation and workers coming from other parts of Russia or abroad. A new kind of company town is developing as well-compensated laborers leave their families behind and live in company camps on a rotating basis. This new arrangement fits within the neoliberal model of migration as mobile workers and artificially created temporary communities replace permanent settlements. Industry benefits to the detriment of the state and labor. Igarka will likely fade completely as it cannot capture the economic benefits of nearby oil development, and parallel temporary worksites with shift workers proliferate, reflecting neoliberal labor trends in remote regions. Norilsk will not disappear as long as the value of its mineral deposits endure, although it is unclear at what point the shrinking city will achieve demographic equilibrium and be able to sustain itself with fewer subsidies, fewer jobs and fewer residents. The city will likely fail to diversify its economy but the permanent population will not be replaced with temporary workers as in

Igarka, as its refining activities demand a more permanent workforce than extraction

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operations. Norilsk will likely continue to struggle with retention of skilled workers and with a growing proportion of pensioners. The region’s history of layered in and out migration incentives and programs has resulted in an aging population that is expensive to maintain and difficult to move. Also, diversified job opportunities throughout Russia mean Norilsk increasingly competes with other localities to attract workers, and wage bonuses are not as attractive as they once were.

Climate change could provide significant economic benefits to the region, extend the working season and improve access to oil, gas and minerals. Such changes could also improve quality of life for remaining residents and reduce the incentives to leave.

However, given the new corporate ethos and regional dynamics, it seems more likely that improved conditions will not alter the trend of a declining year-round population.

Reduced transport costs for people and goods are an anticipated benefit of a warmer

Arctic more likely to facilitate short-term work arrangements than create compelling incentives for increased urbanization.

Shift work is not well-suited for all aspects of resource development, but the growing number of temporary workers spurs the drawdown of the permanent population through means that affect the quality of life for remaining residents, and with major implications for future migration and settlement patterns in the region.

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