The Northern Sea Route in Russian official discourse: Strategies for determining functional and geographical boundaries

The article explores strategies of conceptualization of the Northern Sea Route as these manifest themselves in federal and Russian Arctic regional authorities' discourse. Official discourse presents the NSR as an infrastructural megaproject capable of both reshaping the global maritime logistics and connecting the Russian Arctic from within. Discursive presentation of the NSR has both global and regional perspectives. In the global perspective, the NSR is thought of either as a 'transport corridor' connecting European and Asian markets or as an economically advantageous alternative to southern shipping routes. In the regional perspective, the proclaimed ties between the NSR and Arctic regions implicate the incorporation of the latter into the state's Arctic agenda and serve to legitimize costly regional projects. The NSR boundaries are regularly contested by those Arctic regions that are not adjacent to the NSR area but strive to participate in its development. According to official discourse on the Arctic, the NSR is a complex infrastructural system designed to unite territories and regional transport subsystems. At the same time, the NSR is considered Russia's northern border going through the area where the state asserts its sovereignty through conventional signs of state presence such as, for example, rhetorically well-established but physically amorphous infrastructural megaprojects.

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