Governing the Arctic: The Russian State Commission for Arctic Development and the Forging of a New Domestic Arctic Policy Agenda

• Author: Helge Blakkisrud
• Pages: 19-45

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Citation: Helge Blakkisrud. “Gover ning the Arctic: The Russian State Commission for Arctic Development and the Forging of

a New Domestic Arctic Policy Agenda.” Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 10, 2019, pp. 190–216.

http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v10.1929

*Correspondence to: Helge Blakkisrud, email: hb@nupi.no

Arctic Review on Law and Politics

Vol. 10, 2019, pp. 190–216

190

Peer-reviewed article

Governing the Arctic: The Russian

State Commission for Arctic

Development and the Forging of a

New Domestic Arctic Policy Agenda

Helge Blakkisrud

Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)

Abstract

After a period of relative neglect in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Arctic is back on the agenda

of the Russian authorities. To ensure efcient coordination and implementation of its Arctic

strategy, the government in 2015 established a State Commission for Arctic Development. It was

to serve as a platform for coordinating the implementation of the government’s ambitious plans

for the Arctic, for exchange of information among Arctic actors, and for ironing out interagency

and interregional conicts. Based on a case study of the State Commission for Arctic Devel-

opment, this article has a twofold goal. First, it explores the current Russian domestic Arctic

agenda, mapping key actors and priorities and examining the results achieved so far. Second, it

discusses what this case study may tell us the about policy formulation and implementation in

Russia today. We nd that while the government’s renewed focus on the Arctic Zone has yielded

some impressive results, the State Commission has been at best a mixed success. The case study

demonstrates how, in the context of authoritarian modernization, the Russian government strug-

gles to come up with effective and efcient institutions for Arctic governance. Moreover, the

widespread image of a Russian governance model based on a strictly hierarchic “power vertical”

must be modied. Russia’s Arctic policy agenda is characterized by inghting and bureaucratic

obstructionism: even when Putin intervenes personally, achieving the desired goals can prove

difcult.

Keywords: Russia’s Arctic policy; State Commission for Arctic Development; Arctic Zone;

governance; Northern Sea Route; Arctic resources

Responsible Editor: Nigel Bankes, University of Calgary, Canada

Received: October 2019; Accepted: November 2019; Published: December 2019

Governing the Arctic

191

1 Introduction

At the opening session of the Third International Arctic Forum “The Arctic—

Territory of Dialogue” in 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin boldly declared:

“The Arctic is opening up a new page in our history, one that we may call the era of

industrial breakthrough. Intensive development of new gas and oil elds is underway,

large transport and energy facilities are being constructed, and the Northern Sea

Route revived.”1 After a period of relative neglect, the Arctic is back on the ofcial

Russian agenda.2 The development of the country’s Arctic resource base is frequently

presented as a key driver not only for the region itself, but for the Russian economy

as a whole,3 with the Arctic portrayed as an icy treasure trove just waiting to be

opened. Harking back to the Soviet “opening up” of the Arctic in the 1930s, Russian

ofcials again talk about “mastering” (osvoenie) the Arctic; of how to harness and

tame the country’s vast and inhospitable northern reaches along the Arctic coast.4

However, the authorities are also highly aware that the Arctic comes with a specic

set of challenges related to climatic conditions, the weakly developed or non-existent

infrastructure, and—beyond a few major urban settlements—an extremely sparse,

1 Vladimir Putin, “Vstuplenie na plenarnom zasedanii III Mezhdunarodnogo arkticheskogo

foruma ‘Arktika – territoriya dialoga,” September 25, 2013. http://kremlin.ru/events/presi-

dent/transcripts/19281.

2 In 2008, the government adopted the “Basic Principles for the Arctic Policy of the Russian

Federation toward 2020 and Beyond” (“Osnovy gosudarstvennoi politiki Rossiiskoi Fed-

eratsii v Arktike na period do 2020 goda i dal’neishuyu perspektivu,” September 18, 2008.

http://government.ru/info/18359/). In 2013, the process of Arctic policy formulation gained

further momentum when, for the rst time since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia

adopted a strategy for the Arctic, outlining national interests in the region (“O Strategii

razvitiya Arkticheskoi zony Rossiiskoi Federatsii i obespecheniya natsional’noi bezopasnosti

na period do 2020 goda,” February 20, 2013. http://government.ru/info/18360). This was

followed by the “State Program for the Socio-Economic Development of the Arctic Zone

of the Russian Federation toward 2020” in 2014 (“Ob utverzhdenie gosudarstvennoi pro-

grammy o ‘Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoe razvitie Arkticheskoi zony Rossiiskoi Federatsii na

period do 2020 goda’,” April 21, 2014. http://government.ru/docs/11967/). The latter was

revised in 2017 and extended to 2025 (“O novoi redaktsii gosudarstvennoi programmy ‘Sot-

sial’no-ekonomicheskoe razvitie Arkticheskoi zony Rossiiskoi Federatsii’,” August 31, 2017.

http://government.ru/docs/29164/).

3 Heater A. Conley and Caroline Rohloff, The New Ice Curtain: Russia’s Strategic Reach to

the Arctic (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2015), vii, see also Galina Mislivskaya, “Putin rasska-

zal o programme osvoeniya Arktiki,” Rossiiskaya gazeta, December 14, 2017. https://rg.

ru/2017/12/14/putin-rasskazal-o-programme-osvoeniia-arktiki.html.

4 For discussion of the Soviet approach to Arctic development, see, e.g., Helge Blakkisrud,

“What’s to be done with the North?” in Tackling Space: Federal Politics and the Russian North,

Helge Blakkisrud and Geir Hønneland, eds. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,

2005), 25–52; Marlene Laruelle, Russia’s Arctic Strategies and the Future of the Far North

( Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2014); Maria L. Lagutina, Russia’s Arctic Policy in the Twenty-First

Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019).