Russian bureaucrats call the Arctic the “Zone of Absolute Discomfort” - an icy hinterland dotted with dilapidated towns and villages that are awful to live in, but just habitable enough for communities to extract billions of tons of oil, gas and metals trapped under the permafrost.

The Russian Arctic, stretching 7000 kilometers across the top of the planet, from Finland to Alaska, was, for thousands of years, home to indigenous herders only. The Soviet Union destroyed their lives when nomads were forced to settle in towns and work on collectivized farms.

The Arctic was further transformed when Stalin sent prisoners from all parts of the USSR to northern gulags to mine the riches there. While the concentration camps were destroyed after Stalin’s death, many people chose to stay, thus establishing the communities there today.

At the height of the Cold War, industrial output surged, and Arctic towns became havens offering jobs and prosperity, and boarding houses were set up to accommodate newcomers.

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In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia no longer wanted to support these isolated Arctic settlements. Many left, and those who stayed, mostly the old, sick and alcoholic, now live in poverty and misery as factories, schools and hospitals close down.

Recently, new life came to the Arctic region when billions of tons of oil and gas reserves were discovered under the tundra. Moscow is reasserting its might in the Far North, sending in super-machines and specialists and can now exploit its resources to bully gas-hungry European countries.

Since 2009 I have made six journeys to the Russian Arctic from my base in Moscow. I have read reports on resurgent Russia and the way it has turned the North Pole region into a potential battleground with the USA, Canada and Norway, not least, by planting a titanium flag on the Arctic seabed.

On my first trip, it took 40 hours by train to reach the town of Vorkuta, once part of the Gulag. There, and in other previously abandoned towns and villages, I met people who seemed to be from three different centuries: the indigenous people, the Soviet communities, and the modern oil and gas engineers. I was impressed by their will to live in this harsh land; I was also struck by the immense demographic and ecological crises as Putin’s government, following in Stalin’s footsteps, attempts to control the region.

While my scope is ambitious, the result is intimate. The body of work focuses on the people of the Arctic, their aspirations, their love and their survival, as history unfolds in a landscape of haunting fragility.

Justin Jin Also represented by Panos and Focus

Part of the project was shot for Geo Germany, and part of it was produced with support from the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund.

Justin Jin

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