The Conquest of the Russian Arctic by Paul R. Josephson

Abstract

The Conquest of Russian Arctic, by Paul R. Josephson. Cambridge & London, Harvard University Press, 2014. 456 pp. $58.00 US (cloth). Rooted in a land-based empire that spread overland in all directions, Russia took to seas relatively late. Here Paul Josephson provides a detailed account of Russian resource extraction in Arctic--fish and whales in nineteenth century, and oil and gas in twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This account of conquest of Russian North provides a telling history of rise of Russia as a naval Arctic power and push to both industrialize and urbanize Arctic. In many ways, Josephson asserts, contemporary Russian state continues to live legacy of gulag-driven Russian conquest of north under Joseph Stalin. Josephson demonstrates how conquest of Russian Arctic was tied to need to develop a northeast Arctic sea route. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), a war that Russian Empire lost, that highlighted need to find a shorter and faster route to reach Pacific from central Russia than Trans-Siberian Railway. To reach theatre of war, Russia had to send ships around Cape of Good Hope to get to northern Pacific. The railway was overloaded and could not provide necessary means to transport troops and equipment to Russian Pacific ports (27). Even in times of peace, railway was not sufficient as the Trans-Siberian Railway had such low capacity that it was overwhelmed by grain shipments --grain often rotted in open air as it waited to be shipped (29). They then faced challenge of building ships that could adequately sail these waters. This book does provide a telling account of early years of exploration carried out in final decade of Imperial Russia. As Josephson explains, not only were these expeditions ill-prepared and lacking in crews with even a basic knowledge and understanding of Arctic conditions, but invariably, emotions [such] as patriotism and heroism overwhelmed those of common sense and self-awareness (32). The Empire was simply too technologically backward--still featuring a largely peasant-based economy with relatively little industrial activity as compared to epoch's leading economic powers--and thus lacking industrial base to effectively establish a strong presence in Arctic Ocean. This problem plagued Soviet rulers in turn following October Revolution. Josephson examines ways in which gulag slave labour was used to compensate for shortages of technology that still bedeviled Soviet plans in 1930s. Gulag labour was used to build, dig, pour, load and dump (p. 116). The need for labour was such that prisoners who finished their terms were charged again; to fill requirement for engineers, secret police gathered engineers in Moscow for large-scale construction projects in Arctic (126). …