Well, if you just look at the map of Yamal like this, yeah, I mean at the North, you know, you'll see names like Yar-Sale, Tarko-Sale, Yaptik-Sale. And all of a sudden—Novy Port! And an anchor. Any old map has an anchor on it, saying that it is a port. But, in fact, there is no port, there has never been a port as such. When I studied at the maritime academy and saw this name for the first time, I immediately resolved to be assigned there.” This is what a veteran sailor answered when I asked about how he ended up in a small (population 1,820 as of 2019) Yamal village with the sonorous name of Novy Port, located beyond the Arctic Circle on the coast of the Gulf of Ob. The references to a map, a port, and the toponym in his answer are not random at all. The geographical location of the village, its potential function as a port, and the poetic figurativeness of the name, to a great extent, predetermined its role in the contemporary history of the Arctic mediterranean. On the other hand, Novy Port itself is a product of complex collisions generated by the late imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet development of the Arctic. As Sebastian Conrad asserts, it is in such places, at the intersection of global processes and their local incarnations, where the most interesting issues in global history arise.1
This article focuses on the history of the Northern Sea Route (NSR, Severnyi Morskoi Put’, shortened to Sevmorput or SMP in Russian) as the largest Russian and Soviet modernization project of the twentieth century. A historian, knowing that its implementation resulted in the emergence of “Russian national unified transport communications in the Arctic,”2 might be tempted to construct internalist and state-centric teleological narratives presenting the development of the NSR as a sequential transition from one triumph to another. However, if we shift the focus of research from the metropolitan centers of decision-making to the anchor points of the trans-Arctic route, we are able to see complex collisions, alternative options, deviations from plans, and other failures that are inherent to the implementation of such large-scale projects.
As a matter of fact, in this case it would be better to refer to a series of projects. Their implementation inevitably caused unintended political, social, and cultural consequences with a subsequent reinterpretation, dismantling, and reassembling of the project according to the feedback principle. The history of the development of the Russian Arctic is full of such contradictions and chance events. It is more discontinuous than consistent, though retrospectively, it can be seen as something predetermined from the generalized government point of view.3 A worm's eye view of the history of the NSR, from the perspective of one certain place, allows us to avoid teleological truisms and to identify and analyze bifurcation points invisible from the heights of “state historiography,” where the “big project” is canceled or obtains a new modus vivendi. Such bifurcation points can be found in the village of Novy Port. They materialized in the form of three berths built at different times for different purposes.
This study falls into the category of those “that analyze one concrete subject in its spatial and social specificity, and at the same time position it in global contexts.”4 Such an approach seems to be heuristically useful for writing what, in a broad sense, could be called a “local history of the Northern Sea Route” in order to contextualize regional narratives and thereby increase the mutual sensitivity of local plots and global intersections. Therefore, I foreground here the search for contexts that influenced the formation of local communities, considered “a function of the imperial situation of strategically multidimensional diversity.”5 This article is based on archival research in three central and four regional Russian archives, as well as field work in the village of Novy Port in the winter and summer of 2018 (see Figure 1). During the field work, methods of participant observation, interviewing, and photo and video recording were used. Data includes the author's field notes as well as transcripts of two dozen brief interviews and fifteen in-depth semi-structured interviews.
Village of Novy Port. 2013. From the public VK Group “Istoriia Novoportovskaia” [The History of Novy Port] (https://vk.com/istoria1921).
Citation: Sibirica 23, 1; 10.3167/sib.2024.230103
Nineteenth Century Transnational and Trans-Imperial Trade in North-Western Siberia
In 1904, twenty-five years after Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld discovered the northeast passage, it was fair for the famous Russian explorer of the Arctic L. L. Breitfuß to say that, despite all its advantages and commercial benefits, the Northern Sea Route had not yet served “to establish any kind of adequate trade relations between Siberia and Europe.” Above all, he explained it by the lack of the necessary transport infrastructure: “The comparatively shallow Ob and Yenisei made navigation of large cargo ships hardly possible; at the same time, the lack of ports on the Siberian coast equipped for transshipping, as well as good river steamers and barges to transport goods up the rivers, increased the risk of such trading expeditions and weakened the ardor of merchants.”6
European (English, Norwegian, and Danish) entrepreneurs and a few export-minded Siberian merchants were interested in the development of a “Siberian sea route” and clearly understood the need for ports to be built at the mouths of Siberian rivers. Having reached the mouth of the Yenisei in 1876 on the Thames steamship, the English polar explorer D. Wiggins dreamed of “starting large-scale trade between Siberia and Western Europe through the Kara Sea and the two large rivers of Ob and Yenisei.”7 Coincidently, a group of Siberian merchants, with owners of large gold mines as its backbone (M. K. Sidorov, A. K. Trapeznikov, A. M. Sibiriakov, and others), advocated for the inclusion of Siberia in global trade. “Adequate” foreign Siberian trade, in their opinion, would prevent the region from turning into a raw material colony of the metropole and would free Siberia from the “domination of the Moscow manufactory.”8 M. K. Sidorov considered the absence of “a convenient point for foreign Siberian trade” as the key problem in organizing the “adequate distribution” of Siberian goods.9 In the 1870s, the mouths of Siberian rivers became the most convenient points of foreign Siberian trade given the advances in Arctic navigation, on the one hand, and the development of steamship building on the Ob and Yenisei Rivers, on the other. Wiggins thought it was quite possible for ocean-going ships to ascend the Ob River as far as Tyumen.10
The most important task was to find the best routes for trade caravans in the Arctic Ocean, estuaries, and numerous canals of Siberian rivers. To do so, in 1876, Siberian merchants, under the auspices of the Imperial Society for Promotion of Russian Commercial Navigation, organized an expedition captained by Christian Johan Dahl to study shipping routes in the lower reaches of the Ob. The following year, they equipped the Louise steamer in London, which, under Dahl's captainship, navigated the Kara Sea and the Gulf of Ob and safely delivered English goods to Tobolsk. In the same year, the Morning Dawn schooner (captained by Schwanenberg) made a commercial voyage from Yeniseisk to St. Petersburg that was organized by Sidorov and “laid the foundation for connecting Siberia by direct sea route with Russian ports in the Baltic.”11 In 1878, the Louise (captained by Rauzip) suffered a shipwreck in the Gulf of Ob on her way back to England. Still, the schooner Sibir’ (captained by Kurdzen) accompanying the Louise from Tobolsk safely reached London. As noted in the report by the West-Siberian Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, the expedition succeeded mainly due to “the possibility discovered [by Dahl] for large ships to navigate unimpeded the deep, but little-known water streams in the Gulf [of Ob].”12 They referred to the Khamanel Ob, a deep-water and wind-protected canal, which then became the main local commercial route. Thus, “a steamship communication from Europe to the Gulf of Ob and further along the Ob and Irtysh up to the agricultural zone of Western Siberia” was discovered.13
The porto franco (a.k.a. free port, a kind of free economic zone) regime established in 1877 intensified cooperation among all parties interested in the development of the “Siberian sea route.” At the same time, it caused constant protests by a significant part of the “Siberian merchants and their patrons among the Russian Nizhny Novgorod merchant class,” who did not want to lose their monopolist position on the Siberian market of household goods.14 As is often the case, business adorned itself with patriotic plumes. The transnational discourse was gradually pushed aside by “patriotic” arguments under the increasing “nationalization” of all aspects of imperial life. The program for the development of the Russian Far North that was put forward by Minister of Finance S. Iu. Witte was aimed primarily to “sovereignize” the Northern Sea Route. Vice-Admiral S. O. Makarov supported Witte in “securing” the north of the country and considered it a restoration of historical justice.15 At the turn of the twentieth century, the Russian authorities limited the porto franco regime in the Ob-Yenisei area and rejected several proposals from European trading and shipping companies “to establish sea routes through the Kara Sea.” The authorities argued that if those ideas were put into practice, “it would forever prevent the Russian merchant fleet from developing in our northern waters and at the same time would give a strong impetus to the development of foreign shipping.”16 The Northern Sea Route turn in Russian policy was of crucial importance for the development of international trade in the Ob River area. The above-cited report by L. L. Breitfuß suggested a certain plan for a comprehensive study and development of primary infrastructure for “our own national sea route.”17 One of the first tasks was to determine the priority location for Siberian goods to access the Arctic waterway.
Since then and until the end of the 1930s, the mouths of the Ob and the Yenisei Rivers vied to become the main Siberian harbor of the country. Expeditions by Lieutenant Colonel of the Hydrographer Corps A. I. Vilkitskii (1894–1896) as well as Makarov (1897) found out that, although the Ob route provided access to the rich agricultural regions of Western Siberia and had a large river fleet, it was not suitable for deep-draft ships due to a bar (an underwater sandbank). In its turn, “the Yenisei doesn't have a bar and is accessible for deep-sea vessels for more than fifteen hundred miles from the mouth.”18 Still, in terms of its export potential, the Yenisei governorate lagged far behind Tobolsk Province.19 Besides, the Yenisei River fleet was just then in the making. Nevertheless, Makarov argued that the Russian Empire should consider the “sea route to the Ob” as its priority and establish it on its own. The very same Vice-Admiral predicted “colossal development in the near future” for the Yenisei governorate.20 In other words, the business circles of Tobolsk Province had very little time to find a convenient place for a seaport at the mouth of the Ob River before their competitors from the Yenisei governorate caught up with them in their export and transport potential.
The Search for Harbors at the Mouth of the Ob River in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century
At the end of the nineteenth century, the tonnage of sea vessels increased significantly, so the route along the Khamanel Ob became inaccessible to them twenty years after it had been discovered by Captain Dahl in 1877. Thus, they were not able to reach Tyumen, Tobolsk, or even Obdorsk (now Salekhard), located on the Arctic Circle in the Ob Delta. For the latter, it meant that it would never be a seaport. The logistical solution was to transship cargoes from sea to river ships and vice versa in open waters, where suitable. Still, suitable places were not easy to find in the Gulf of Ob with its shallow shores, strong currents, and frequent storms.21
The first sea vessels chartered by Siberian merchants for voyages to the Ob River transshipped their goods onto river steamers and barges on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Ob near the Taz Peninsula at the mouth of the Lenzita (a.k.a. Linzita, Lidinzita) River, about 150 miles from Obdorsk. In 1878, goods of the Otto Bartning company (Hamburg) were delivered to the Lenzita estuary by the Neptun sailing steamer under order of the Barnaul merchant Funk. He then exchanged them for wheat brought there from Tomsk by the Sibiriak river steamer. That same year, the Warkworth steamship chartered by the Liverpool entrepreneur Oswald Catley and the Stepan steamship chartered by Tobolsk merchants exchanged goods at the mouth of the Lenzita. Lamp oil, kerosene, kitchenware, dried fruits, and cheese, among others, were the main items imported to the Ob north. Wheat, hemp, and flax were the main export items.22
In 1879, Siberian merchants chose the Nyda River estuary, located north of the mouth of the Lenzita River, for transshipment. But the four steamships they had chartered in England could not cross the Kara Sea due to difficult ice conditions. In the winter of 1879–1880, the military topographer N. K. Khondazhevskii visited the Ob Delta on behalf of the governor-general of Western Siberia and suggested establishing “a Russian sedentary settlement” on the Nyda River bank to facilitate “trading activities for the exchange of Siberian and foreign goods.”23 However, the special duty official Shubinskii, who traveled with the Siberian merchants along the Ob in 1879, opined that “it would be more convenient to exchange goods on the Yamal coast,” that is, on the opposite, western coast of the Gulf of Ob. He argued that “the berthing would be more secure there than on the Nyda,” where ships could strike aground due to strong water drops caused by the wind.24
The lack of a reliable transshipment place significantly limited the development of international commercial operations at the mouth of the Ob. In 1896, an expedition of Vilkitskii discovered “a good transshipment place” on the western coast of the Gulf of Ob, twenty miles from the outlet of the Khamanel Ob. They named that closed shallow bay Nakhodka.25 According to contemporaries, the discovery of the bay made it possible to “preserve the importance of the vast Ob water system for foreign maritime trade.”26 In 1897, the English company of Francis William Popham established a regular steamship connection between England and the Ob north through Nakhodka Bay. The company actively traded with Tobolsk, Tyumen, Tomsk, and Barnaul merchants. That fact could not but evoke a response from their competitors. Makarov (who, incidentally, visited Siberia on Popham's ship in 1897) argued that only foreign merchants benefited from trade along the Northern Sea Route under the porto franco regime.27
At the end of the nineteenth century, the imperial center ever more often perceived the sea route to Siberia as a national communication system of economic, military, and strategic importance, like the Trans-Siberian Railway. Makarov pleaded with the government to reject customs privileges and strengthen protectionist measures, contributing thereby to limiting the porto franco regime in the Ob-Yenisei area.28 At the beginning of the twentieth century, navigation of foreign ships in the mouth of the Ob ceased. In 1908, the polar explorer and Yenisei gold miner S. V. Vostrotin, who was also a public personality and statesman close to the regionalists, stated: “The abolition of the old-term duty-free import of foreign goods in 1898 finally killed trade relations across the Kara Sea, and since 1899, not a single foreign ship has come to the mouths of Siberian rivers. So, the vast and richest regions were sacrificed to a small handful of Russian manufacturers and factory owners and doomed again to stagnation and hibernation.”29 In fact, the porto franco regime persisted: at the beginning of the new century, a wide range of imported goods continued to be duty-free, and the profits from the export of Siberian products remained quite high.30 The volume of trade operations during that period was reduced to a large extent due to difficult ice conditions,31 and the lack of navigation infrastructure and ports along almost the entire length of the “Siberian sea route.”
During and after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, expert discussions about the prospects for trans-Arctic communication unfolded. They brought to light that the earlier popular thesis about the natural character of the Northern Sea Route was inconsistent. In March 1905, a special government meeting was held. According to the estimates voiced there, organizing “correct communication across the Kara Sea” would require funds comparable to the costs for the second track of the Trans-Siberian Railway.32 On the eve of the First World War, the Russian government made major efforts “to organize regular voyages under the Russian flag at the mouth of the Ob and Yenisei.”33 The first Russian Arctic Ocean flotilla was formed in 1916, and the first Russian commercial expedition to the area took place in July-September 1919.
That expedition had been intended earlier by the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR.34 After Soviet rule had fallen in Arkhangelsk, the expedition was carried out by the Provisional Government of the Northern Region (Arkhangelsk) along with the Committee for the Northern Sea Route (Komitet severnogo morskogo puti, shortened to Komsevmorput in Russian) under the Ministry of Trade and Industry of the Government of A. V. Kolchak (Omsk). In both cases, the expedition aimed to export Siberian grain to the European part of Russia. Therefore, two remote Northern and Siberian “regional” governments put into action the old idea of “a transit trade route from Siberia to Europe” while the all-imperial space was collapsing. Although Komsevmorput reported that transshipment operations “were easier on the Yenisei than on the Ob,” the Omsk government failed to deliver grain to the mouth of the Yenisei. Therefore, “since all the grain for Arkhangelsk would go along the Ob,” a decision was taken that “the entire Arkhangelsk flotilla would go to the mouth of the Ob.” After the 1919 expedition with its careful preparation, well-coordinated organization, and, on the whole, successful work of both the marine and river stages, it became clear that Nakhodka Bay was not suitable for the tasks of the voyage. First, it was impossible to hire the required number of loaders in the sparsely populated lower reaches of the Ob, so they were brought to Nakhodka from Tomsk, Tyumen, and Tobolsk. Second, the work of the expedition was seriously complicated by the lack of radio communications in Nakhodka Bay. Summarizing the results of the “trade-exchange expedition to Siberia,” the chairman of the Interdepartmental Commission responsible for its organization, Rear Admiral L. L. Ivanov, stated: “Transshipment on the Ob was the softest spot of exchanging goods with Siberia this year, and it is precisely this that needs to be rigorously reorganized for the further development of the Northern Sea Route.”35
In 1920, the Soviet government started preparing “trade-exchange expeditions to Siberia” known as the Kara Operations. In connection with this, Komsevmorput integrated into the Siberian Revolutionary Committee (Sibirskii revolutsionnii komitet, shortened to Sibrevkom in Russian) with almost the same membership and authorized a separate Ob hydrographic party of the Ob-Yenisei hydrographic detachment “to reconnoiter the Gulf of Ob searching for a more favorable place for transshipment operations than Nakhodka Bay.”36 The Orlik ship under the command of A. I. Osipov found such a place on 8 September 1920. He named it Novy Port. It was a bay formed by the Mar-Sale spit and Ostrovski Cape on the western coast of the Gulf of Ob, thirty miles north of Nakhodka Bay. A port survey expedition led by the hydrographer S. D. Lappo revealed that Novy Port Bay had clear advantages over Nakhodka Bay. In particular, Novy Port provided more favorable transshipment conditions for river vessels.37 Novy Port Bay was used as a transshipment point for the Kara Operations from 1921 until 1939 (when the Kara Operations ceased).38
Novy Port as an Outpost of Soviet Arctic Colonization
The discovery of Novy Port Bay made it possible to fully leverage the Ob-Irtysh waterway. It was closer to Northern Russian and Western European ports than Ust’-Yeniseisk, located at the mouth of the Yenisei River one and a half thousand kilometers north of Novy Port Bay, and covered the vast agricultural and industrial regions of the Urals, Siberia, and Kazakhstan, as well as connections with the main railways.39 The Siberian Revolutionary Committee announced the start of the urgent construction of a port in Novy Port Bay aiming to “comprehensively improve the transshipment point in the Gulf of Ob with the ultimate goal of bringing it up to an exemplary port that carries on mass trade with foreign countries.” On 11 September 1922, the official inauguration of Novy Port took place. “A red banner of the Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR granted to the workers of the North” was hoisted on the shore near the radio station. The banner stated: “To the knowledge, energy, and selfless work of a handful of workers of the Committee for the Northern Sea Route, workers and the crew of the expeditions, initiators of new routes for the future of Siberia.” The ceremony was attended by “representatives of the Committee for Northern Sea Route, the Hydrographic Detachment, ARCOS (All Russian Cooperative Society Limited), and other government agencies involved in the work, as well as ship crews, both Russian and foreign ones.”40
In the early 1920s, the bay bottom was dredged, navigation marks were set, and a badly-needed radio station in Nakhodka Bay was organized. Thanks to that, the major volume of the Kara Operations moved from the mouth of the Yenisei to the Gulf of Ob. Novy Port Bay was used to export agricultural products (bread, butter, flax, hemp, wool, raw leather, oilcake, etc.), canned fish (since 1933), and timber (sawn timber, square beams, railway sleepers; since 1927)41 along the Northern Sea Route (see Figure 2). The timber had been the main product exported along the Northern Sea Route from the end of the 1920s until the end of the Soviet period.42 Foreign ships delivered machinery and various manufactured products to Novy Port Bay. The 1920s were a time of great hope for Novy Port.43 The attention paid to it by central authorities echoed in local folklore. For instance, Novy Port residents thought that “Lenin himself had invented” the name of the bay.44 At the same time, Novy Port could hardly cope with the tasks assigned to it. Neither the port nor even a moorage wall had been built there. Goods were still transshipped at anchorage in open waters, with frequent downtime due to bad weather. In addition, there were few sufficiently skilled workers for such transshipment operations. An intermediate transshipment point established in the late 1920s in the village of Khalas-Pugor between Obdorsk and Novy Port, to some extent, saved the situation.45
Berths reached by sea fleets. In Pavel Lin, Zavoevanie Arktiki [Conquering the Arctic] (Moscow–Leningrad: OGIZ, 1931).
Citation: Sibirica 23, 1; 10.3167/sib.2024.230103
In 1933, a decision was taken to build a sawmill in Belogorsk (Ostyak-Vogul National District) based on surveys by the Salim timber expedition, and its products were supposed to be shipped abroad via Novy Port. The plant was thought to become the largest export center for Siberian timber.46 However, it failed to reach its estimated capacity.47 In addition, the budgeted costs for the port were recognized as unprofitable. As a result, as far back as the early 1930s, Novy Port proved inferior in terms of export operations to the Yenisei,48 where, in the late 1920s, “Siberian Arkhangelsk” had been created. It was a production and transport hub that included the Igarka sawmill and transshipment plant and the Igarka seaport.49
As Novy Port Bay was not provided with infrastructure, the Northern Sea Route literally passed by it. Throughout the Soviet period, Novy Port Bay remained only a point of “transit transshipment on open water”50 in the system of transnational trade. Its residents “saw big ships only on the horizon.”51 On the map, Novy Port looked like the most important infrastructure element of the Northern Sea Route, but it did not become such. Nevertheless, it did not fall into obscurity like many insufficiently convenient bays (like Nakhodka, Ust’-Port, etc.), nor did it stagnate for many years awaiting the promised port (like Indiga).52 An analysis of the situation of Novy Port in the “empire” of the Northern Sea Route in the 1920s–1940s allows us to better see its organizational and structural multidimensionality and social functionality. The latter largely consisted of a combination of unexpected social effects. The foundation of a hydrographic base near Novy Port Bay, the forerunner of the future village and “the outermost settlement on the Ob coast,”53 was one of those effects. The Port Survey Expedition led by Lappo built the first buildings there in the summer of 1921: a radio station, barracks, and a bathhouse.54 Hydrographers and workers of the Port Survey Expedition were the first inhabitants of Novy Port. After navigation ended, radio operators and meteorologists stayed in Novy Port to pass the winter. According to Novy Port legends, the first meteorologist, D. M. Chubinin, brought a cow, three bulls, two goats, and several pigs over.55 In 1922, the base of hydrographic ships was moved from Obdorsk to Novy Port Bay.56 Therefore, Novy Port base emerged as a typical outpost of Soviet Arctic colonization.
Policy towards the “aboriginal population” was the most important issue of the Soviet development of the Arctic.57 In the first half of the 1920s, ideas of “commercial colonization” dominated Soviet policy. According to them, the indigenous population was to become a supplier of food and raw materials for industrial production in the North in exchange, by default, for the benefits of civilization brought to them. The “only population” of the tundra adjacent to Novy Port were “nomadic Samoyeds” (this ethnonym was used to designate the Tundra Nenets). The Directorate for Navigation Safety in the Kara Sea and the mouths of the Siberian rivers (Upravlenie po obespecheniiu bezopasnosti korablevozhdeniia v Karskom more i ustiakh sibirskikh rek, shortened to Ubekosibir in Russian) mentioned them in its reports only in two contexts: as an object of care (the Soviet colonists provided them with medical and sanitary assistance and food, mainly bread) and at the same time as suppliers of “foodstuffs” (venison and fish).58 In 1927, Uralgostorg opened a trading post in Novy Port Bay “to buy fish caught by the Nenets.”59
The Soviet development of the Ob North relied on commercial networks created by Siberian merchants and resellers as early as the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Having laid trade and transport routes along the channels of the northern rivers and having opened the first polar trading posts in the region, they rewired the social fabric of indigenous communities, irreversibly changing their way of life and inextricably placing them under “friendship” (a system of obligations) with the “Russian long-term residents” (starozhily).60 Taking advantage of that “friendship,” Uralgostorg spread its network of trading posts “in the tundra of the Far North … on the Minor Yamal and in Taz region … up to Novy Port”61 in the early 1930s. The Novy Port trading post had authority over “three semi-stationary trading posts, in particular 1. Hei-Iaga, located on the coast of the Kara Sea; 2. Tarko-Sale on the Iuribei River; and 3. Liak-Koto, between Se-Iaga and N. Port” (see Figure 3).62
Gostorg trading posts, cooperative sales points, and camping grounds of reindeer herders in Obdorsk District. In Ivan Mikheev, “Za pushninoi na samolete” [For Furs by Plane] Vozdushnye Puti Severa (Moscow: Soviet Asia, 1933): 209.
Citation: Sibirica 23, 1; 10.3167/sib.2024.230103
The only republic trust in Siberia, Oblastryba, organized fishing in the region.63 The main catch item was the sturgeon. An organizer of trading posts in the Ob north, V. Kozlov, pointed out: “Sturgeon is hard currency. It is like a polar fox among the local furs, like gold among other fossil resources of the earth.” Starozhily and contracted fishermen from Tobolsk worked in cooperative associations established by the trust.64 They involved Astrakhan fishermen to train local fishermen in the methods of large-scale fishing. Soviet economic officials reported that “the Nenets worked shoulder to shoulder with Russian polar explorers on equal terms,” in cooperative associations, though specifying that the cases were rare and “exclusively among the poor [Nenets], who had lost their last reindeer.”65
On 10 December 1930, Novy Port hosted the Executive Committee of the Yamal District after national districts had been formed in the Soviet north, granting the indigenous population the status of Soviet nationalities.66 However, Novy Port did not serve as the capital of the entire Yamal Peninsula for very long. The district executive committee moved to Yar-Sale in 1932, despite the opinion of specialists from the Ural Committee for Assistance to the Peoples of the Northern Outskirts, who argued that in the Yamal tundra, “the concentration of poor chums … 6–8 chums in each ‘village’ … could be covered by cultural work only from Novy Port.”67 That was a great loss for Novy Port. Its residents and administrative workers still regard it as a “serious mistake.”68 Remarkably, the port function of the village was no longer considered an additional argument in its favor at that time. On the contrary, the previously cited document mentioned that “Novy Port Bay is so disappointing for Komsevmorput operations that it will be very soon redeployed from here.”69 In other words, Novy Port sharply lost its importance in the plans of all the institutions that previously relied on it. This meant the infrastructural degradation of Novy Port and, in the future, its complete desolation. Eloquent and generally sympathetic descriptions of Novy Port are found in texts by Soviet economic workers:
We anchored about five or six kilometers from the shore, and although we were looking from above the cargo as if from a bell tower, we could barely see the buildings. Squat and greyish, they stood out just slightly on the low bank. The impression was quite pathetic. As if they were inundated by an immense flood and were in distress. A grey sky with lead-colored clouds above, grey muddy waves with dirty foam on their ridges. It seemed that if a stronger wind blew, all this gloomy gray mass would close up, swallow up the huts, and roll across the flat, low shoal … Novy Port is disgraceful and fragile from the roadstead.70
This is how Soviet writers saw the village of Novy Port and featured it in their texts. A description of Novy Port at the end of the 1920s by a Moscow journalist participating in the Kara Operations represents a typical colonial narrative:
Obwards of the Kara expedition, they chose a place for a ship “rendezvous” and complex transshipment operations and daringly called it Novy Port. Unfortunately, this name reflects only the probable future of this bay and in no way reflects its present. The coast of Novy Port is the usual lifeless northern tundra, devoid of simple shrubs. There is no population on the coast, except for a few employees of the radio station and the Gostorg trading post, as well as a few random chums of nomadic Samoyeds, attracted to the coast in the summer as much by curiosity as by the hope of exchanging a couple of bottles of vodka smuggled in these latitudes.71
Acting as a progressive critic, the author of the cited passage condemned “aboriginal kulaks,” shamans, and dock workers forcing Nenets women into prostitution. He contrasted the legacy of the “tsarist times” with Soviet nationalities policy, which required “careful treatment of the indigenous population while developing the economy of the region.”72
In the late 1920s, according to the program of socialist industrialization, the authorities held a course for turning the Indigenous Peoples of the North into effective food producers.73 The people's commissar of the food industry, A. I. Mikoyan, initiated the establishment of centers for fish processing and canning throughout the country, especially in the north, where fish was caught.74 In 1930, Goslov (a state fishery, shortened from gosudarstvennaia ribnaia lovlia in Russian) was organized based on the traditional Nenets fishing industry in Novy Port Bay. The following year, a Novy Port fish factory was built that still exists today. It specialized in fishing sturgeon and harpooning beluga whales, and had a large fishing fleet by northern standards. The first berth, built at that time in Novy Port Bay, served as a mooring place for commercial fishing vessels, open barges, and scows. There was a floating fish cannery in the same place from 1933 to 1939.75
The internal colonization of the Soviet Arctic carried out by the Gulag was an important factor in the rapid development of Novy Port in the 1930s and 1940s.76 In the Ob north, “special settlers” (spetzposelentsy) were placed at the disposal of the Obgosrybtrest (Ob Public Fishing Trust, shortened from Obskii gosudarstvennii ribnii trest in Russian). “Special settlers” was a euphemism for a special category of people, namely, victims of Stalinist repressions. This was the name given to people forcibly evicted from their place of residence, mainly to remote areas of the country, without a court decision. On 20 February 1933, its Yamal branch, which desperately needed workers, advocated “the creation of settlements [for special settlers] in such places as Novy Port (for 100 families) and Tazovskii District (for 150 families).”77 It was the special settlers and the workers “recruited” on the “mainland,” and not the “aborigines,” who formed the team of fishermen and workers of the Novy Port fish factory (the first Nenets were taken on the staff of the Novy Port fish factory only in 1948).78 After a special settlement was organized in Novy Port Bay in 1933, “excessive” special settlers were regularly transferred there from the central and southern regions of Omsk (since 1944 known as Tyumen) Region. It caused additional difficulties for the Yamal branch of Obgosrybtrest. First, almost none of the exiles, who were “dispossessed” peasants from Astrakhan Region, were familiar with fishing.79 Besides, like many other Arctic special settlements (that is, places of residence of special settlers under the control of the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps, better known as the GULAG), Novy Port did not have enough residential premises and fuel supplies. Throughout the 1930s, the Ostyak-Vogul District committee of the AUCP(b) signalized the lack of dwellings and their “bad quality” in Obdorsk, Taz, and especially in Novy Port.80 In 1942, exiled Germans from the Volga Region, people from Western Ukraine and Bessarabia, and exiled evacuees from Leningrad were placed at the disposal of the Novy Port fish factory (see Figure 4). In 1950–1956, special settlers built a storage facility (so-called merzlotnik) for fresh-frozen fish in permafrost on the coast of Novy Port Bay. It was the largest facility of that type beyond the Arctic Circle. It was then that a second berth appeared in Novy Port Bay. It was equipped with a special conveyor belt that delivered fish from fishing boats to the womb of the storage facility.
Dugouts constructed by “special settlers.” Novy Port, July 2017 (photo by the author).
Citation: Sibirica 23, 1; 10.3167/sib.2024.230103
In the example of Novy Port, we can trace the main stages of how a Soviet Arctic outpost transformed into a village. A coincidence of random circumstances (a place of “transit transshipment,” a hydrographic base, and an area of traditional fishing) predetermined the place for a special settlement, where the village was established in 1942. The social sphere of Novy Port was formed in addition to the production field. In 1931, Novy Port winterers asked that a school be opened for their children. Later, children of special settlers began to study there. In 1940, a boarding school was established for the children of nomadic reindeer herders on the basis of the school. In 1940, a local hospital opened its doors in Novy Port. Boarding schools and health authorities became important agents of all campaigns carried out by the central authorities towards the northern indigenous population. First of all, it was about spreading among them a sedentary lifestyle and the norms of Soviet education, including ideological indoctrination, when schools had a strict policy of providing universal compulsory education to the nomadic population. In the 1940s and 1950s, the production and social spheres of the Yamal settlements began to absorb “unnecessary people” from the tundra with ever-increasing frequency.81 From that time on, a division into “tundra” and “settlement” Nenets appeared,82 and the concept of “national village” emerged in the language of northern administrators.
Novy Port in the System of the Deep Northern Sea Route
In 1931, the famous advocate of the Northern Sea Route, V. A. Itin, quoted his opponent V. M. Voblogo, who advocated for the development of the Great Northern Railway: “The Great Northern Route is not a railway line. It is a system of communications: railway lines, water, and air routes, a system that fills in the giant, the last remaining untouched ocean of land.”83 A systemic approach that united latitudinal and longitudinal communication routes was common to Itin and Voblogo. The Soviet government considered it to be a key task and placed that challenge before the leadership of the Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (CDNSR, Glavnoe upravlenie Sevmorputi, shortened to GUSMP in Russian), founded on 17 December 1932.84 Its first chief, O. Iu. Schmidt, considered the Northern Sea Route a link, “catching onto which you could master the entire North … start from the sea route, advance along the river routes, raise natural productive forces, ensure the economic and cultural growth of the population.”85 That approach implied the creation of a broad infrastructure based on a set of social, economic, institutional, and logistic links between the trans-Arctic route and the country's inland regions, which can be defined as the “deep Northern Sea Route.”86
By a Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on 26 January 1935, territorial administrations were formed, and the solution of specific tasks was entrusted to them. The territorial administrations (territorialnie upravleniia, shortened to terupravleniia in Russian) were superintended by political departments (politodeli), which, in turn, were directly subordinate to the Political Directorate of the CDNSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.87 The institution of political departments emerged during the Civil War. It aimed to control the work of non-Party “specialists.”88 Such control often took the form of petty interference in production affairs, and the “exposure” of Trotskyites, Zinovievists, and saboteurs.89 Therefore, the fact that “squabbles arose” and “an unhealthy situation was created” in the labor collectives90 should not evoke surprise. The wintering in Novy Port was no exception. In February 1937, Deputy Head of the Obdorsk Political Department S. D. Oshchepkov informed the Political Directorate of the CDNSR about a “series of excesses at winter camps.” In particular, he reported the following:
The situation at the winter camp in Novy Port is no better. Head of the winter camp Novikov, radio operator Parfenov, and former community leader of the winter camp Chernishev are accused of committing criminal offenses (beating radio operator Pilgun, robbery, rape, drunkenness, and sexual abuse). The case is now being considered at the Regional Prosecutor's Office. In addition to the above crimes, suppression of self-criticism and a complete collapse of party activities for the general public was present at the winter camp.91
In the meantime, Novy Port was supposed to play a decisive role in organizing the communication system of the “deep Northern Sea Route.” Reliable radio communication along the entire Arctic route was crucial for its functioning, and, according to the reports by the Committee for the Northern Sea Route, the radio station in Novy Port managed to provide “continuous communication with radio stations in Dixon, Ust’-Yeniseisk Port, Obdorsk, Iugorskii Shar, and ships arriving in the Gulf of Ob” (see Figure 5). In addition, it maintained “long-distance radio traffic” between Novy Port, Obdorsk, Novy Nikolaevsk, and Yekaterinburg as well as between Novy Port, Iugorsky Shar, and Arkhangelsk.92 Actually, the radio communication in Novy Port was far from being always “continuous.” In 1937, the Obdorsk Political Department reported to the Political Directorate of the CDNSR that the radio business in Novy Port was still “in an embryonic state.”93
Radio stations of the Chief Directorate of the NSR. In Vladimir Kantorovich, S Karskoi ekspeditsiei po Severnomu morskomu puti [With the Kara Expedition Along the Northern Sea Route] (Moscow: Young Guard, 1930): 43.
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After Novy Port had been included in the system of Soviet Arctic air traffic, the Novy Port station became a radio beacon for polar pilots (see Figure 6). Novy Port covered the second area (from the Ob River mouth to the Khatanga River mouth). It was an auxiliary base for “a possible landing [of an aircraft] in their area.”94 While the main task of the Air Service Directorate of the CDNSR was to carry out latitudinal ice reconnaissance along the Northern Sea Route, the Obdorsk air group created in 1934 was supposed to establish regular cargo and passenger flights in the Ob north. In 1937, the first aircraft landed in Novy Port, paving the way for regular flights from Obdorsk to Novy Port. It was difficult to lay air routes further north. In the summer of 1938, the head of the Obdorsk political department, I. V. Sabilin, reported to the Political Directorate of the CDNSR in an attempt to shift responsibilities for the delay in putting the polar air route into operation to another department, which was typical of that time:
Locations of the bases, from Vozdushnye Puti Severa [Air Routes of the North]. (Moscow: Soviet Asia, 1933): 449.
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The situation with the air group is still extremely tense. The Ob air group is short of passenger planes. The air group cannot operate the route north of Sale-Khard. The Polar Aviation Department of the CDNSR does not help the Ob air group … it has been promising to provide passenger aircraft for two years and hasn't supplied anything yet. We need planes to fly not only along the Tyumen–Obdorsk route, but also along the Tyumen–Obdorsk–Drovianoi–Dikson route approaching Khalmersed, Gidoiamo, and Beli Island. The organization of this route depends only on the Polar Aviation Administration of the CDNSR.95
Regular longitudinal air traffic in the Gulf of Ob area was established only after the end of World War II (1941–1945) thanks to a large number of demobilized qualified specialists, as well as trophy and lend-lease aviation equipment. In August 1938, the territorial departments of the CDNSR were dissolved. Their authority was transferred to the corresponding regional centers. Remarkably, the institution of a CDNSR representative was not established in the Ob north, unlike other areas of the “deep Northern Sea Route.” Most likely, this can be explained by the fact that the Gulf of Ob declined in importance for the Northern Sea Route after the export operations had been transferred to the Yenisei River in the second half of the 1930s.
On 22 April 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR issued the Decree “On the construction of a railway line to the seaport in the Gulf of Ob.” That decree initiated the largest and last project of the Stalin era for the development of the “deep Northern Sea Route.” It aimed to lay a rail track from Chum station of the Pechora Railway through the Urals to Cape Kamennyi (100 km north of Novy Port), where, in turn, it was planned to build a seaport.96 In 1948, prisoners were brought to Cape Kamennyi and Novy Port for the construction of the track and the port. The Baidar reeducation-through-labor camp (ispravitelno-trudovoi lager, shortened to ITL in Russian) was organized in Novy Port under the Northern Directorate of the Chief Directorate of Camp Railway Construction (Glavnoe upravlenie lagernogo zheleznodorozhnogo stroitelstva, shortened to GULZhDS in Russian).97 Cape Kamennyi repeated the history of Novy Port in a certain sense. In particular, the port survey works demonstrated that Cape Kamennyi was not suitable for the construction of a seaport. The Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of 29 January 1949 determined that Igarka would be the new site for the construction of the seaport.98 It was planned to lay a polar rail track there. In those days, a false narrative was widely spread in scientific and popular literature about plans to found a USSR naval base in Novy Port in the late 1940s. The famous Soviet port surveyor G. Ia. Nalivaiko mentioned that “the idea to set up a seaport at the Ob mouth nearby Novy Port” was definitively rejected in 1947.99 Therefore, Novy Port never switched from being an auxiliary to being a main base in the Northern Sea Route system.
“Gazprom Berth” of Novy Port village: Natural Gas and the Northern Sea Route
“Novy Port gas … A year ago, no one even imagined that there could be an oil and gas field in Yamal,” the district newspaper Krasnyi Sever reported on the discovery of the northernmost oil and gas condensate field (OGCF) near Novy Port in Yamal in early 1965. In fact, geological explorations had been carried out in Yamal since the late 1950s. The Novy Port prospective area was explored from November 1963 to June 1964.100 On 26 December 1964, gas gushed from a depth of almost two thousand meters during the testing of the first horizon of the R-50 well. About half a million cubic meters of gas were ejected per day.101 Pravda Tundry, a newspaper under the Yamal branch of the CPSU, remarked in this regard: “The first eruption on the peninsula! The All-Union Radio teletyped the words Novy Port for the first time.”102 According to geo-exploration data for 1987, the reserves of the Novy Port field were 250 million tons of oil and condensate and 270 billion cubic meters of gas. Thanks to its unique properties, such as a low content of water, sulfur, and other impurities, Novy Port oil was registered as an eponymous oil grade. The high quality of Novy Port oil made it the most valuable raw material for refineries. Nevertheless, its industrial production began only in 2012 due to the vast geographical distance of the field and the lack of transport infrastructure.103 The late Soviet oil and gas epic hardly affected the village of Novy Port. Its inhabitants, geologists, pilots, and sailors recall that Novy Port was no different from other “national settlements” in the 1970s and 1980s: “Small, dirty, impossible to go anywhere, the floor in the house is always cold.”104
At the same time, the formation of the West Siberian oil and gas complex led to a transport boom in the Soviet Arctic in the 1980s. New sea-going and river vessels were built to meet the needs of West Siberian geological exploration and oil and gas production. In the mid-1980s, at height of the oil and gas development in Western Siberia, over five hundred ships crossed the Western sector of the Northern Sea Route within one floating season.105 Novy Port on the eastern coast and Kharasavei rotational village on the western coast of the Yamal Peninsula were the endpoints of their routes. Kharasavei did not have any port infrastructure, which is why the equipment was unloaded directly onto the coastal ice (fast ice). Near Novy Port, the equipment was transshipped from sea to river vessels at anchorage as in the 1920s. For instance, large-diameter pipes (LDP) and other equipment for the construction of the main trans-European gas pipeline were brought to the Soviet Union that way, through Novy Port, from West Germany. That was how Novy Port played an important role in “the deal of the century.”106
From 1980 to 1987, from July to September, dozens of sea and river vessels were in the harbor of Novy Port. Sizable forces of the Murmansk and Northern Shipping Companies, as well as ships of the Black Sea Shipping Company, were redeployed to transport LDP. After they unloaded at Novy Port, sea convoys went to Tiksi and Igarka, where they took on timber to be delivered to Japan, then they headed to Europe through the Panama Canal to take on large diameter pipes. Sea vessels were often at a standstill on the roadstead of Novy Port for weeks waiting for their turn to unload due to the lack of floating cranes and barges. Unloading was often delayed due to frequent storms in the Gulf of Ob.107 Long-term residents of Novy Port recall that they had the feeling of being part of the global world in the 1980s:
They [sea vessels] were fifteen to twenty kilometers [from the shore], and there were barges and floating cranes here. [If] the weather was good, we would approach and transship. We were dirty like in the outhouse, but felt like we were in the penthouse (laughing). Everyone wore jeans here. I came here for practice and saw from the ship that everyone was so well dressed. So, I came, and they were selling all sorts of stuff: Sharps, Sony, cosmetics, Aviator sunglasses, suitcases, and jeans on the pier. Then they started chasing them. Then we ourselves began to approach on boats to them. Well, you still wanted to be dressed up. Back then, there was nothing. Then we ourselves came to Tyumen for the weekend and traded at the flea market. Well, that was life back then. All those steamships navigated until the 1990s.108
Large resource companies came to the Yamal region in the 1990s and 2000s and took “national villages” under their informal “patronage.” Each company was interested in having a positive international image and invests much funds in the development of its “territories.” New hospitals, kindergartens, and boarding schools were intended to demonstrate that the companies look out for the indigenous peoples of the North. Thus, these “national settlements” often seem like pockets of prosperity compared to other nearby communities. Companies and the indigenous population mainly have had conflicts over land use in the tundra.109 A new chapter was added to the history of the village of Novy Port in 2012 when Gazpromneft-Yamal OOO (a limited liability company under the laws of the Russian Federation), a subsidiary of Gazprom Neft PAO (a public joint-stock company under the laws of the Russian Federation), started commercial development of the Novy Port oil and gas condensate field. The village was rapidly changing. In one of his interviews, a veteran of the fish factory in the village of Novy Port said with delight:
Everything has changed. As if touched with a wand. Poles apart. You can look at the old pictures of Novy Port, you won't recognize it now. There was none of this, no school, no community center. There were some ruins, barracks, and “bochki.” If you had told me ten years ago that they would build decent houses here like on the “mainland,” I would not have believed it. Nobody would have believed it. They have even installed traffic lights.110
In 2016, a stand-alone subdivision of the Salekhard river port was created and a third berth, popularly called “Gazprom berth,” was built after the development of the Novy Port oil and gas condensate field had been started. The construction of the new berth, “big, with cranes, with ships,” became an important milestone in local history. The residents of the village repeatedly mentioned in interviews that it had changed their perception of the village:
“Novy Port, Novy Port,” we always said like this by force of habit. Still, it was a reindeer herding village. The reindeer herder's day is like an annual village day here. Then we come back from vacation—wow! This pier is as long as a street, there are cranes, trucks, and ships unloading there. We realized that it was indeed a port.111
In the 2020s, the transport and logistics company Gazpromneft-Snabzhenie (a subsidiary of Gazpromneft) is the primary user of the port infrastructure of the village. It delivers cargo by barge from the port of Labytnangi, and from there it is delivered to the Novy Port oil and gas condensate field by the road. Insufficient depths are still the major impediment to the development of the port infrastructure of the village of Novy Port. That's why the Gates of the Arctic terminal, intended to load Novy Port oil into tankers, was built near the village of Mys Kamennyi. Currently, ice-class oil tankers (going from the Gates of the Arctic) and gas carrier vessels (going from Yamal LNG to Sabetta) make up the main traffic along the NSR in the Ob area of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation.112
The new industrialization of Yamal focused on the export of hydrocarbons and made the coastal villages on the Gulf of Ob turn to their waterfront.113 This “turn to the waterfront” can be found in the narratives of various street-art projects sponsored by Gazpromneft-Yamal in its “patronaged” villages. The powerful branding potential of the name Novy Port has been evident to the marketing specialists of the company. Indeed, its main product has the same name. So, it is obvious that the company aims to strengthen its position in the global advertising and information space by investing in the “sea” branding of the village. This is an illustrative statement of one of the top managers of the company:
Novy Port is about the sea because it is called Port. Its name is Port, Novy Port. And it has been a real port. And plenty of old ships bear evidence [of this]. The nautical theme is interesting; it is a sea route, with access to the Northern Sea Route. Besides, there are fishermen, fishing traditions, history, hereditary fishermen and women fish net makers … We perceive ourselves and our project as a nautical one, too. Why? Water is our logistics. That's the first thing. Second, the transportation of oil by the Northern Sea Route. We are different from all other companies that work here in maritime logistics. This is not just transferring oil into a pipe, but there are challenges, all these difficulties with the ice, romanticism!114
Conclusion
Karl Polanyi paid special attention to the analysis of the port as a universal institution in one of his latest works dedicated to various forms of the organization of international trade.115 He identified the following major features of a port: neutral status, location on the border of two ecological regions, and wide variability of forms. These features are quite applicable to describe Novy Port. It emerged as a stronghold of Soviet foreign trade, and in the 1920s, it mainly followed the pre-revolutionary porto franco model. It was a zone of active international trade, associated with several preferences for its participants. Along with Ust’-Yeniseisk and Igarka, Novy Port was the gateway to Siberian timber export. Sea-going and river vessels fell in there. Thus, Novy Port connected the sea and river parts of the Northern Sea Route, which at that time was mainly referred to as “the sea route to Siberia.” In other words, the first period of the history of Novy Port was associated with the development of the Northern Sea Route as a regional Siberian project promoted by the Committee for the Northern Sea Route, which sought to comprehensively develop the productive forces of Siberia through its inclusion into global trade. In contradiction to its name, Novy Port was not a full-fledged port, since it served only offshore transshipment of goods. In Polanyi's system of distinctions, Novy Port was an emporium, the West Siberian Piraeus brought to the periphery. In the early 1930s, it proved inferior to Igarka and fell out of the system of Soviet transnational trade. Nevertheless, Novy Port did not disappear like other abandoned ports.
In the second period of its history, Novy Port played a role as an outpost of Soviet Arctic colonization in the Obdorsk north within the “empire” of the Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route, which had succeeded to the Committee for the Northern Sea Route. The CDNSR had a wide range of tasks, such as the development of the Northern Sea Route from Murmansk to the Bering Strait, industrial development of the north of the country, and the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the production processes. According to those tasks, agents of the Directorate in Novy Port achieved results with varying degrees of success. In particular, Novy Port became one of the largest centers of fishing and fish processing in the Obdorsk north in that period. Note that “special settlers” were the main subjects of colonization as in other areas of the Soviet Arctic at that time. The third period of the history of Novy Port began in the 1960s, when oil and gas development began in Western Siberia and the village gave its name to a large oil and gas condensate field discovered nearby, as well as to the oil grade produced there. The development of the Novy Port field radically changed the image of the village of Novy Port. It became “the village front” of Gazpromneft-Yamal company. In addition, the development of the field included the village of Novy Port in the system of sea transportation of liquefied natural gas from the Arctic coast of Russia, albeit as an auxiliary element.
As one can see, the modus vivendi of Novy Port was formulated anew at each stage of its history. According to the initial idea, it was supposed to become a major export port of the “Siberian sea route.” During the CDNSR era, it actually fell away from the Northern Sea Route, which developed primarily as a strategic communication system of the Soviet state. Thus, Novy Port became a regional center for fishing and fish processing. Finally, when the oil and gas era began, Novy Port was again included in the logistics system of the Northern Sea Route with Arctic gas carrier ships as its major traffic. Therefore, we can retrospectively see three settlements that differ in their status, economic basis, and composition of residents–—each of them having its own berth.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grant No. 23-28-00868 of the Russian Scientific Fund “Siberian and Far Eastern porto franco regimes in the history of the economic development of the Russian imperial periphery (second half of the nineteenth–early twentieth centuries).”
Notes
Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016),
Federal Law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation Regarding the State Regulation of merchant Shipping in the waters of the Northern Sea Route” dated 28 July 2012 No. 132-FZ URL: http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/bank/35786.
Albina I. Timoshenko, “Sovetskii opyt osvoeniia Arktiki i Severnogo morskogo puti: formirovanie mobilizatsionnoi ekonomiki” [Soviet Experience in the Development of the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route: Formation Mobilization Economy], Istoriko-ekonomicheskie issledovaniia 1 (2013): 73–95.
Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History? 129.
Editors. “Voina, gosudarstvo i sostoianie istoricheskoi professii” [War, the State and the State of the Historical Profession], Ab Imperio 1 (2022): 19–30.
Leonid Breitfuß, Morskoi sibirskii put’ na Dal'nii Vostok [The Siberian Sea Route to the Far East] (St. Petersburg: Goldberg Printing House, 1904), 13.
Joseph Viggins, Morskoe soobshhenie s Sibiriu [Sea Communication with Siberia]. (Tomsk: Printing House of the Siberian Bulletin, 1887), 2, 5.
Anatolii Remnev, “Koloniia ili okraina? Sibir’ v imperskom diskurse XIX veka” [Colony or Outskirts? Siberia in the Imperial Discourse of the XIX century], Sibirskaia zaimka (2013). http: //www.nsu.ru.
Mikhail Sidorov, Proekt kuptsa Sidorova o zaselenii Severa Sibiri putem promyshlennosti i torgovli i o razvitii vneshnei torgovli Sibiri [Merchant Sidorov's Project on the Settlement of the North of Siberia through Industry and Trade and on the Development of Foreign Trade in Siberia] (Tobolsk: Printing House of the Provincial Government, 1864), 2.
Henry Johnson, The Life and Voyages of Joseph Wiggins, F.R.G.S.: Modern Discoverer of the Kara Sea Route to Siberia Based on his Journal and Letters (London: John Murray, 1907), 130.
Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperii [The Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation] (hereinafter AVPRI), fond 155, opis 445, delo 8, list 35.
Georgii Katanaev, “Otchet o deiatelnosti Otdela za 1878 g.” [Report on the Activities of the Department for 1878], Zapiski Zapadno-Sibirskogo Otdela Imperatorskogo russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva (1879): 16.
Nikolai Balkashin, “O parokhodstve v Obskoi gube i o morskoi torgovli Zapadnoi Sibiri s Evropoi v 1877–1878 gg.” [On Shipping in the Gulf of Ob and on the Maritime Trade of Western Siberia with Europe in 1877–1878], Zapiski Zapadno-Sibirskogo otdela Imperatorskogo russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva (1879): 8.
Vladimir Turbin. Morskoi polyarnyi put’ v Sibir i ego znachenie dlia ekonomicheskogo i kulturnogo razvitiia kraia [The Polar Sea Route to Siberia and its Significance for the Economic and Cultural Development of the Region] (St. Petersburg: Printing House of the Northern Telegraph Agency, 1891), 26.
Stepan Makarov, Otchet vitse-admirala Makarova ob osmotre im letom 1897 goda, po porucheniiu ministra finansov S. Iu. Vitte, morskogo puti na reki Ob i Enisei [Report of Vice Admiral Makarov on his inspection in the summer of 1897, on behalf of Finance Minister S. Y. Witte, of the sea route to the Ob and Yenisei rivers] (St. Petersburg: Printing house of V. Kirshbaum, 1898), 12–13.
AVPRI 155-445-42: 19. In 1899, the Ministry of Finance established customhouses in Tiumen and Cheliabinsk to protect the European part of Russia from duty-free goods exported to Siberia via the NSR. Sergei Loskutov, Vorota v Sibir [The Gateway to Siberia] (Ekaterinburg: UrGUPS, 2014), 62–71.
Leonid Breitfuß, Morskoi sibirskii put’, 22.
Stepan Makarov, Otchet vitse-admirala Makarova, 75.
The French economist and traveler C. Aulagnon distinguished three regions in Siberia: the western, with “overabundance”; the middle, “which consumes what it produces”; and the eastern, “which consumes more than it produces.” Tobolsk Province was part of the first region, and the Yenisei Governorate fell into the second one. Klod Olan'ona (Claudius Aulagnon), Sibir i ee ekonomicheskaia budushchnost’ [Siberia and its economic future] (St. Petersburg: Printing House “Enlightenment,” 1903), 100.
Stepan Makarov, Otchet vitse-admirala Makarova, 39.
Andrei Vilkitskii, “Obzor rabot gidrograficheskoi ekspeditsii v 1895 godu v ustiakh rek Eniseia i Obi v 1894–1895 gg.” [Review of the Works of the Hydrographic Expedition in 1895 at the Mouths of the Yenisei and Ob Rivers in 1894-1895], Morskoi sbornik 5 (1896): 20.
Nikolai Balkashin, “O parokhodstve v Obskoi gube,” 10.
Nikolai Khondazhevskii, “Zimnee issledovanie nagornogo berega Irtysha ot Tobolska do Samarova i severnyh tundr mezhdu Obskoi guboiu i Surgutom” [Winter Research of the Upland Coast of the Irtysh from Tobolsk to Samara and the Northern Tundra between the Gulf of Ob and Surgut], Zapiski Zapadno-Sibirskogo otdela Imperatorskogo russkogo geograficheskogo obshhestva (1880): 15.
Nikolai Balkashin, “O parokhodstve v Obskoi gube,” 10.
Andrei Vilkitskii, Severnyi morskoi put’ [The Northern Sea Route] (St. Petersburg: Printing House of the Maritime Ministry, 1912), 24.
Otchet o deistviiakh Glavnogo gidrograficheskogo upravleniia Morskogo ministerstva za 1896 god [Report on the Actions of the Main Hydrographic Department of the Maritime Ministry for 1896] (St. Petersburg: Printing House of the Maritime Ministry, 1897), 92.
Stepan Makarov, Otchet vitse-admirala Makarova, 8, 12-13.
David Saunders, “Captain Wiggins and Admiral Makarov: Commerce and Politics in the Russian Arctic (1874–1904),” Polar Record 4 (2017): 427–435.
Stepan Vostrotin, “Severnyi morskoi torgovyi put’” [Northern Sea Trade Route], Sibirskie voprosy 1 (1905): 358, 359.
I. V. Poberezhnikov, ed., Istoriia Yamala [History of Yamal]. Vol. I: Yamal traditsionnyi. [Traditional Yamal]. Book. 2. Rossiiskaia kolonizatsiia [Russian Colonization] (Ekaterinburg: Basko, 2010): 282.
Due to difficult ice conditions, neither of the five ships of Francis William Popham's company heading the Gulf of Ob could enter the Kara Sea in 1899. Klod Olan'ona (Claudius Aulagnon), Sibir i ee ekonomicheskaia budushchnost’, 37.
Jens Petter Nielsen and Edwin Okhuizen, eds., From Northeast Passage to Northern Sea Route: A History of the Waterway North of Eurasia (Leiden: Brill, 2022): 256.
Aleksandr Vikhman, Izyskaniia porta v uste reki Eniseia 1916 goda [Port Surveys at the Mouth of the Yenisei River in 1916] (Krasnoiarsk: Yenisei Provincial Printing House, 1919): 23.
Boris Vilkitski, Kogda, kak i komu ia sluzhil pod bol'shevikami: Vospominaniia belogvardeiskogo kontr-admirala [When, How and to Whom I Served under the Bolsheviks. Memoirs of a White Guard Rear Admiral] (Moscow: Direkt-Media, 2016).
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Voenno-morskogo flota [The Russian State Archive of the Navy] (hereinafter RGAVMF), fond Р-129, opis 1, delo 46, list 145, 148, 168.
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Novosibirsko oblasti [The State Archive of the Novosibirsk Region] (hereinafter GANO), fond 271, opis 1, delo 32, list 2.
F. A. Scholz, ed., Severnyi morskoi put’ i ego znachenie vo vneshnem tovaroobmene Sibiri [The Northern Sea Route and its Significance in the External Commodity Exchange of Siberia] (Omsk: Central Printing House, 1921): 22.
Margarita Emelina and Mikhail Savinov, “Karskie operatsii” [Kara Operations] Karskie ekspeditsii 1920–1930-x godov (Moscow: Paulsen, 2019): 49.
Konstantin Zubkov and Viktor Karpov, Razvitie rossiiskoi Arktiki: Sovetskii opyt v kontekste sovremennykh strategii (na materialakh Krainego Severa Urala i Zapadnoi Sibiri) [Development of the Russian Arctic: Soviet Experience in the Context of Modern Strategies (Based on the Materials of the Far North of the Urals and Western Siberia)] (Moscow: Political Encyclopedia, 2019): 69.
GANO 271-1-32: 2–3, 11.
“Novy Port” [New Port] Sibirskaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 3 (Novosibirsk: West Siberian branch of the OGIZ, 1931): 793.
Fedor Korandei, “Ekonomisty v pole: Karskaia ekspeditsiia 1924 g. i praktiki sozdaniia ekonomicheskogo znaniia” [Economists in the Field: The Kara Expedition of 1924 and the Practice of Creating Economic Knowledge], Ab Imperio 2 (2020): 51–56.
F. A. Scholz, ed. Severnyi morskoi put’, 31.
Field Notes. Novy Port, 2018.
Nikolai Sibirtsev and Vivian Itin, Severnyi morskoi put’ i Karskie ekspeditsii [The Northern Sea Route and the Kara Expeditions] (Novosibirsk: West Siberian Regional Publishing House, 1936): 101.
Nikolai Beretti, “Belogorskii gigant” [Belogorskii Giant], Udarnik Arktiki 10 July (1936)
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsialno-politicheskoi istorii Tiumenskoi oblasti [The State Archive of the Sociopolitical History of the Tiumen Region] (hereinafter GASPITO), fond P 145, opis 1, delo 13, list 76.
Thirteen, twenty, and five ships entered the Novy Port Bay in 1929, 1930, and 1931 respectively. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki [The Russian State Archive of the Economy] (hereinafter RSAE), fond 9570, opis 1, delo 537, list 60.
Vivian Itin, Kakoi put’? O proekte Velikogo severnogo puti v sviazi s vykhodom na Ural i Severnym morskim putem [Which way? About the Project of the Great Northern Route in Connection with Access to the Urals and the Northern Sea Route] (Novosibirsk: West Siberian branch of OGIZ, 1931): 53, 58.
GANO 271-1-32: 4, 6; Vladimir Kantorovich, S Karskoi Ekspeditsiei po Severnomu morskomu puti [With the Kara Expedition along the Northern Sea Route] (Moscow: Young Guard, 1930): 110, 133-146.
Field Notes. Novy Port, 2018.
Albina Timoshenko, “Indiga ili Sabetta? Iz istorii poiska punktov ekonomicheskogo bazirovaniia v Rossiiskoi Arktike” [Indiga or Sabetta? From the History of the Search for Points of Economic Basing in the Russian Arctic], Gornye vedomosti 11 (2015): 86–94.
Vladimir Kozlov, Poliarnaia faktoriia [Polar trading post] (Sverdlovsk: Ural OGIZ, 1933): 4.
GANO 271-1-32: 9–10.
No author, Krai Zemli, ustremlennyi v budushchee [The edge of the Earth, looking into the future] (Yar-Sale: Red North, 2005): 140.
GANO 271-1-32: 2.
Slezkine Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
GANO 271-1-32: 6, 10.
A. V. Golovnev and E. A. Volzhanina, eds., Ekonomika i naselenie Iamala v pervoi treti XX v. [Economy and Population of Yamal in the First Third of the Twentieth Century] (Novosibirsk: GEO, 2014): 173.
Sergei Gulishambarov, Torgovlia, promyshlennost’ i puti soobshheniia v Sibiri [Trade, Industry and Communication Routes in Siberia] (St. Petersburg: Printing house of V. Kirshbaum, 1893): 9; Slezkine Yuri, Arctic Mirrors, 63.
Vladimir Kozlov, Poliarnaia faktoriia, 4.
GASPITO P 145-1-64: 104.
Nikolai Valikov, “Rybokhoziaistvennoe znachenie Novogo Porta” [Fishing Significance of the Novy Port], Sovetskaia Arktika 4 (1938): 73–75.
RSAE 9570-1-537: 60.
Vladimir Kozlov, Poliarnaia faktoriia, 7. Compare: “There are no chums in the vicinity of Yar-Sale in summer, except for those who don't have reindeer: sometimes they are in Yar-Sale, other times in Novy Port depending on the fish run.” Tobolskii filial Gosudarstvennogo arkhiva Tiumenskoi oblasti [Tobolskbranch of the State Archive of the Tyumen region] (hereinafter TFGATO), fond 691, opis 1, delo 274, list 77.
Igor Stas, “An Indigenous Anthropocene: Subsistence Colonization and Ecological Imperialism in the Soviet Arctic in the 1920s and Early 1930s,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 49 (2022): 39–66.
TFGATO 691-1-274: 77.
Field Notes. Novy Port, 2018.
TFGATO 691-1-274: 77.
Vladimir Kozlov, Poliarnaia faktoriia, 7.
Vladimir Kantorovich, S Karskoi Ekspeditsiei, 133.
Ibid., 110, 172–181.
Slezkine Yuri, Arctic Mirrors, 270.
Larisa Roshchevskaia and Evgenii Rozhkin, “Konservnaia promyshlennost’ poliarnoi zony Evropeiskogo Severa SSSR v 1930–1950-e gg.” [Canning Industry of the Polar Zone of the European North of the USSR in the 1930s–1950s], in Poliarnie chteniia–2019 (St. Petersburg: Paulsen, 2020): 262–281.
A. V. Golovnev and E. A. Volzhanina, eds. Ekonomika i naselenie Iamala, 174.
Dan Healey, “Nasledie GULAGa: Prinuditelnyi trud sovetskoi epokhi kak vnutrenniaia kolonizatsiia” [The Legacy of the GULAG: Forced Labor of the Soviet Era as Internal Colonization], in Tam, vnutri: Praktiki vnutrennei kolonizatsii v kulturnoi istorii Rossii, edited by A. Etkind, D. Uffellmann, and I. Kukulin (Moscow: New Literary Review, 2012): 692.
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Tiumenskoi oblasti [The State Archive of the Tiumen Region] (hereinafter GATO), fond 1785, opis 5, delo 78, list 22–23.
Mainly, the Yamal Nenets were nomadic reindeer herders; they considered fishing only as an additional activity, and only those Nenets who did not have reindeer went fishing. Being a fisherman meant a decrease in social status because only reindeer herders were considered the true Nenets. Elena Volzhanina, “Puti perekhoda s kochevogo na osedlyi obraz zhizni i obratno na Iamale v pervoi treti 30-kh gg. XX v.” [Ways of Transition from Nomadic to Sedentary Lifestyle and Back in Yamal in the first third of the ’30s of the twentieth century], Vestnik arheologii, antropologii i etnografii 2 (2013): 98–104.
GATO 1785-5-78: 22–23.
GATO 1785-5-117: 57.
Elena Volzhanina, Etnodemograficheskie processy v srede nentsev Iamala v XX–nach. XXI vv. [Ethnodemographic Processes among the Nenets of Yamal in the Twentieth Century and the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century] (Novosibirsk: The Science, 2010): 243.
Elena Liarskaia, “‘Komu-to tozhe nado i v gorode zhit’…”: nekotore osobennosti transformatsii sotsialnoi struktury nentsev Iamala” [“Someone Also Needs to Live in the City…”: Some Features of the Transformation of the Social Structure of the Nenets of Yamal], Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 1 (2016): 54–70.
Vivian Itin, Kakoi put’?, 14.
Webster James, “The Russian Arctic Sea Lane: Endeavour and Achievement,” Review of The Northern Sea Route: Soviet Exploration of the North East Passage by Terence Armstrong (Cambridge: Scott Polar Research Institute, 1952), Arctic 4 (1952): 241–249.
Otto Shmidt, “Osnovnie zadachi Glavsevmorputi v 1936 godu” [The main tasks of the Glavsevmorput in 1936], in Soveshhanie khoziaistvennykh rabotnikov sistemy Glavsevmorputi (Leningrad: Glavsevmorput Publishing House, 1936): 11.
The term was suggested by F. S. Korandei.
Svetlana Boiakova, Glavsevmorput’ v osvoenii i razvitii Severa Iakutii [Glavsevmorput’ in the Mastering and Development of the North of Yakutia (1932–June 1941)] (Novosibirsk: The Science, 1995): 15–16.
Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York: Penguin Press, 2014).
Tsentralnyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskikh dokumentov Sankt-Peterburga [Central State Archive of Historical and Political Documents of St. Petersburg] (hereinafter TSGAIPD SPb), fond 2017, opis 1, delo 373, list 15–17.
GASPITO P 145-1-44: 131.
GASPITO P 145-1-64: 149.
GANO 271-1-32: 10.
GASPITO P 145-1-64: 149.
Ia. Ia. Anvelt, B. N. Vorobiov, and S. S. Kamenev, eds., Vozdushnie puti Severa [Airways of the North]. (Moscow: Soviet Asia, 1933): 6, 451-452.
GASPITO P 145-1-13: 72, 75–76.
Samuel Slavin, “Planirovanie deiatelnosti Glavsevmorputi i pervye issledovaniia po ekonomike Severnogo morskogo puti,” Letopis Severa 7 (1975): 21.
Aleksandr Pimanov, Istoriia stroitel'stva zheleznoi dorogi “Chum–Salekhard–Igarka” (1947–1955 gg.) [The History of the Construction of the Railway “Chum–Salekhard–Igarka” (1947-1955)] (Tiumen: TOGIRRO, 1998): 5–6.
Konstantin Zubkov and Viktor Karpov, Razvitie rossiiskii Arktiki, 167–169.
Georgii Nalivaiko, “Izyskaniia porta v uste reki Indigi,” Letopis Severa 4 (1964):79.
Yurii Teterin, “Tak nachinalos otkrytie” [Thus Began the Opening], Krasnyi Sever 29 January 1965.
“Gaz na Iamale” [Gas on Yamal], Krasnyi Sever January 29, 1965.
“Novy Port–strana otkrytii” [Novy Port–the land of discoveries], Pravda tundry 1 April 1965.
Konstantin Povyshev, Sergei Vershinin, Anton Bliablias and Olga Vernikovskaia, “Povyshenie effektivnosti ekspluatatsii mestorozhdenii s vysokim soderzhaniem gaza (na primere Novoportovskogo mestorozhdeniia) [Improving the Efficiency of Exploitation of Deposits with a High Gas Content(on the Example of the Novoportovskoe Field)], Gazovaia promyshlennost’ 9 (2019): 46–51.
Field Notes. Novy Port, 2018.
Yurii Utusikov, Arkticheskii bum [Arctic Boom] (St. Petersburg: Sense Publications, 2016): 97, 133.
Mikhail Lipkin, Sovetskii Soiuz i integratsionnye processy v Evrope: Seredina 1940-kh–konets 1960-kh godov [The Soviet Union and Integration Processes in Europe: Mid-1940s–late 1960s.] (Moscow: Russian Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Science, 2016): 467.
Yurii Utusikov, Arkticheskii bum, 86, 112–114, 118, 165.
Field Notes. Novy Port, 2018.
Vladimir Adaev, Elena Martynova, and Natalia Novikova, Kachestvo zhizni v kontekste ekologicheskoi ekspertizy v Rossiiskoi Arktike [Quality of Life in the Context of Environmental Assessment in the Russian Arctic] (Moscow: Nestor-History, 2019).
Field Notes. Novy Port, 2018. Bochki–literally, “barrels.” They were cylindrical barrel-like accommodation buildings for four to six people used in the 1970s and 1980s during the development of the North.
Field Notes. Novy Port, 2018.
Roman Kasatkin, Sistema morskoi transportirovki szhizhennogo prirodnogo gaza iz Arktiki [The System of Sea Transportation of Liquefied Natural Gas from the Arctic] (Moscow: LKI, 2008): 17–18.
Worden Nigel, “Contested Heritage at the Cape Town Waterfront,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 2 (1996): 59–75.
Field Notes. Novy Port, 2018.
Karl Polanyi, “Ports of Trade in Early Societies,” Journal of Economic History 1 (1963): 30–45.
