This paper uses recent transportation infrastructure projects in Russia to address contemporary Russian state territorialization practices. Yakutsk, capital of Russia’s Sakha Republic, is one of the world’s most remote cities. 5,000 kilometers from Moscow, it has no overland connections to the outside world except in winter, when an ice road is built atop the frozen Lena River that separates it from the Russian transportation system. Despite strong local support for a bridge, it has not been built, although a Chinese state-owned company has offered to construct it. Meanwhile, resources like diamonds and oil in Sakha are being connected into global commodity circuits, suggesting that Yakutsk’s remoteness is importantly shaped by political and economic decisions rather than purely environmental conditions. The USSR promoted the conquest of nature as a reason to build infrastructure across the country’s vast territory. But now, the Russian state presents an inability to conquer nature as a reason for not building infrastructure, masking ulterior political and economic imperatives. The Kremlin focuses on transportation infrastructure investments tied to the export of natural resources and politically strategic projects like two new bridges in the Pacific Coast city of Vladivostok built specifically for the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit. Whereas the Kremlin welcomes Chinese and foreign investment in infrastructure projects in Russia’s interior, highly visible projects on its borders are carried out entirely with Russian capital and contractors. This suggests a softening of infrastructure nationalism within Russia but a hardening of it on the country’s outer edges.
Sponsor(s): Program on Central Asia, APC