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Mass exodus from Arctic Russia

Nina Merzlikina, 75, and Sergei Kostenko, 45, have packed up their belongings at this apartment in Yor Shor village in expectation of eviction by bailiffs. Local officials want to close the village, near Vorkuta town, so they can shut off supplies of gas and electricity..Vorkuta is a coal mining and former Gulag town 1,200 miles north east of Moscow, beyond the Arctic Circle, where temperatures in winter drop to -50C. .Here, whole villages are being slowly deserted and reclaimed by snow, while the financial crisis is squeezing coal mining companies that already struggle to find workers..Moscow says its Far North is a strategic region, targeting huge investment to exploit its oil and gas resources. But there is a paradox: the Far North is actually dying. Every year thousands of people from towns and cities in the Russian Arctic are fleeing south. The system of subsidies that propped up Siberia and the Arctic in the Soviet times has crumbled. Now there’s no advantage to living in the Far North - salaries are no higher than in central Russia and prices for goods are higher.

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Copyright 2009 by Justin Jin. All rights reserved.
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Nina Merzlikina, 75, and Sergei Kostenko, 45, have packed up their belongings at this apartment in Yor Shor village in expectation of eviction by bailiffs. Local officials want to close the village, near Vorkuta town, so they can shut off supplies of gas and electricity..Vorkuta is a coal mining and former Gulag town 1,200 miles north east of Moscow, beyond the Arctic Circle, where temperatures in winter drop to -50C. .Here, whole villages are being slowly deserted and reclaimed by snow, while the financial crisis is squeezing coal mining companies that already struggle to find workers..Moscow says its Far North is a strategic region, targeting huge investment to exploit its oil and gas resources. But there is a paradox: the Far North is actually dying. Every year thousands of people from towns and cities in the Russian Arctic are fleeing south. The system of subsidies that propped up Siberia and the Arctic in the Soviet times has crumbled. Now there’s no advantage to living in the Far North - salaries are no higher than in central Russia and prices for goods are higher.