A Review of Valeriya Vasilyeva, Kseniya Gavrilova (eds.), Severnye morskie puti Rossii [The Northern Sea Routes of Russia]. Moscow: NLO, 2023, 672 pp.

Abstract

What is the Northern Sea Route? Valeria Vasilyeva and Ksenia Gavrilova, editors of the collective monograph, Northern Sea Routes of Russia, invited specialists in the fields of social anthropology, history, and economic geography to explore this question. A unique collection of interviews conducted by the participants of the research project, which formed the basis of several chapters, is one of the strengths of the book. The authors convincingly prove the book’s central argument about the “multiplicity of northern sea routes,” thus challenging established images of the Northern Sea Route in contemporary popular imagination and official discourse. This in turn inspires us to think about the possibilities of an interdisciplinary approach and potential new directions of research.