Far North (Russia)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Far North of Russia, sometimes called the Extreme North, covers about 5,500,000 square kilometres. That is roughly one-third of the entire country. Almost all of it lies above the Arctic Circle, in a belt where winters are brutal and distances are enormous. Yet this is not only a place on a map. It is also a legal category, one that decides how much a worker is paid, when a person may retire, and what a government owes to those who live far from the rest of the country. Where exactly does the Far North begin? Why would a mountain range among the southernmost in Russia count as part of it? And what do people receive in return for living there? The answers start with a surprisingly bureaucratic question of borders.

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• 2. Drawing the Line

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  Five regions are included in the Far North in their entirety: Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Kamchatka Krai, Magadan Oblast, Murmansk Oblast and Sakha. Many other regions contribute only a portion. Arkhangelsk Oblast, Irkutsk Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai, the Komi Republic, Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Republic of Karelia, Sakhalin Oblast, Tuva and Tyumen Oblast each add certain parts or cities. The definition also reaches out to sea. It takes in every island of the Arctic Ocean, along with its seas, the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk.

  The most striking oddity is Tuva. Some of its mountainous districts are classed as Far North even though they sit among the southernmost places in Russia. Geography alone cannot explain that, so the explanation lies in law. In January 2007, the State Duma Committee for Issues of the North and Far East approved a proposed law to define these regions. Its regions were set according to general climate, and the harsher the climate, the greater the compensation attached to it. Compensation of that kind has a long history of its own.

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• 3. The Northern Bonus

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  Soviet planners understood that nobody would move to the polar edge of the country for ordinary pay. From the Soviet era onward, the government offered those who work in the Far North a premium, known in Russian as severnye nadbavki. In English it is called the Northern Bonus. It is an extra grade of payment layered on top of normal wages.

  The bonus is only the start. Workers also receive additional vacation time, extra disability benefits and housing benefits. They gain extra retirement benefits as well, including a lower retirement age than workers elsewhere in Russia. All of this is meant to offset the difficulty of the work. The Russian Federation kept the arrangement after the Soviet Union ended.

  One group was always left out. The inmates of the Gulag labor camps of the Soviet Union did not receive the premium, and neither do inmates of corrective labor colonies in present-day Russia. Such inmates form the exception to a system built around paying people to endure the cold. The people who do receive it live in a handful of cities that anchor the region.

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• 4. Cities Above the Circle

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  According to the 2021 Russian census, Arkhangelsk is the largest city in the Far North, with 348,783 residents. Yakutsk follows with 311,760, and Murmansk with 270,384. Severodvinsk has 192,353 people and Norilsk 176,735. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is home to 164,900.

  The next group is smaller. Noyabrsk counts 110,620 residents, Novy Urengoi 104,107, and Magadan 92,782. Even the smallest of these is a substantial city, which is notable given the climate around it.

  A larger city sits just outside the strictest list. Surgut has 396,443 people, more than any city named above. It lies further south, and it belongs to the group of cities and territories treated as equivalent to the Far North. Counted that way, it is the biggest. Its status shows how much of the Far North is defined by policy rather than by latitude.

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• 5. People, Resources and Pictures

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  The Far North is described as rich in mineral and natural resources, and that wealth is one reason the region matters far beyond its population. In 2012, the photoreporter Justin Jin released a photodocumentary called Zone of Absolute Discomfort. It focuses on gas extraction in the Russian Arctic, and its title captures how the region feels to outsiders who go there to work.

  The region is also home to indigenous peoples, who have lived in this environment far longer than any wage premium has existed. The source notes that the climate and environment have shaped them. They have developed certain genetic differences that help them cope with conditions here, and their cultures help them as well.

  That pairing of resource extraction and long human adaptation makes the Far North unusual. Industrial crews arrive for the gas, while indigenous communities already carry the knowledge and biology that the climate demands.

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