The new theory of the Arctic and Northern development: multi-scale interdisciplinary synthesis

After the bright achievements of the Soviet development school in the past 30 years, there was a long pause. Meanwhile, the need for a broad scientific generalization of practical efforts to deploy large and small economic projects in the Arctic and the North is enormous. The authors set the task of developing a new complex theory of the North and the Arctic development, which would be a synthesis of the best achievements of the Soviet school, foreign frontier studies and the modern regional science studies of the innovative development. In the authors’ view, its key feature is the emphasis on local development and the endogenous factors of the development, which had no attention before. Constructive synthesis of external and internal factors of colonization should be formed “from below”, from the territory itself, not from the federal center. Four new research priorities in the new study of the North and the Arctic development are identified and described in detail with a focus on: the analysis of local institutional capital; conflicts and contradictions of the natural resource development; the evolution of the settlement system; and the interaction of large and small forms of development of the territory. The new ideology of studying the Northern and Arctic development is supposed to be tested during the field and expeditionary study in the North and the Arctic regions.