The Population Settlement in Russia’s Arctic Zone: Facts and Trends

Abstract

Abstract In the paper the authors present the study of facts and trends in population settlement in regions of Russian Arctic Zone. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that the location of the population in the Arctic Zone depends not only on the socio-economic development of the Arctic territories, but also on Russia’s geopolitical security. The authors considered population settlement from two interrelated positions: the process of a certain territory settling in the process of migration and the result of this process – the residents’ resettlement in regions. Some main indicators of the population settlement in regions completely or partially located in the Arctic were estimated. The authors proceeded from several hypotheses: firstly, socio-economic resource factors of population distribution become the most significant; secondly, Russia’s Arctic regions are poorly populated and their population continues to decline; thirdly, migration in Arctic regions is voluntary, it has an economic character and its direction changed depending on economic and social conditions; fourthly, Arctic settlements differ significantly from ones in other Russia’s territories; fifthly, problem-solving of the settlement population in the Arctic territories is the key to solving the problem of Russia’s development. The research made possible to confirm or disprove these hypotheses.