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Russians begin exodus from arctic regions

Up to 600,000 Russians are to be moved from remote parts of Siberia and the Arctic, officials in Moscow announced on Thursday. The move will be one of the biggest population relocations since the Stalin era.

Large swaths of Russia's northern regions, which include mining towns, have decayed since the collapse of communism.

Without government subsidies families have been forced to endure poverty and the extreme climate.

The areas to be assisted by the government's program, which is being partly financed by the World Bank, include Yakutia, in central Russia, Kamchatka, a peninsula north of Japan, and Chukotka in the north-east.

Inhabitants would be resettled near urban centers where they could find work and cheap accommodation.

The project, which has been in a pilot phase for several years, has rekindled memories of the forced resettlements under Stalin when minorities, such as Chechens and Jews, were moved at the regime's will.

However, the latest effort is intended to provide assistance only to those who want to leave the hostile regions they once came to in search of the higher wages the Soviet government paid to miners.

The ministry of economic development and trade said that between 200,000 and 600,000 people would be moved. A budget of US$30 million would be allocated for this purpose this year and next.

Mukhamed Tsikanov, the deputy minister of development, said that he wanted companies in the remote areas to use "shift work wherever necessary," and for "people to be resettled wherever possible."

Andrei Markov, the coordinator of a World Bank project called Russia's Northern Restructuring, said: "The idea came in 1998 when the Russian government approached the World Bank for support.

"We decided to run a pilot project in the coal-mining town of Vorkuta, the nickel town of Norilsk and the gold-rich Susuman district of Magadan."

Norilsk, which began as a gulag, is believed to be Russia's most polluted town. Life expectancy is 10 years below the average for Russia. The air is thick with sulfur which turns the snow yellow.

Markov said that the project was more a "migration assistance scheme" than resettlement, which aimed to "provide only migration assistance on a voluntary basis for families who ask for it." It began in August last year, and its total cost is estimated at US$80 million.

He said: "About 1,800 families now have applied for participation in the project, 600 of whom have already received housing costs.

"In the Soviet times these places were heavily subsidized by the state as they were very interested in developing the areas at all costs to generate natural resources. After the economic reform [of the 1990s], the subsidies are unaffordable," he said.

The subsidized industries have been sold to the private sector, which, Markov said, was "downsizing and restructuring," leading to cuts in jobs. He said that 800,000 people out of a total population of 11 million had left the affected areas.
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