Russia's Arctic region has received focused attention during the last decade due to its importance for both geopolitical and global environmental concerns. At the same time, our understanding of Russian policy and activity in the region remains relatively limited. As such, this edited collection (the second volume in Berghahn's Studies in the Circumpolar North series) is a welcome effort to provide insight into current trends of importance for the medium- to long-term future of the region.

The edited volume brings together a range of authors from Russia, Europe, and the US in order to reflect on substantive issues and their consequences for Russia's Arctic urban areas. More specifically, the book's focus is underpinned by a belief that the policy-making process, resource development, and climate change are key factors with respect to shaping the sustainability of the region going forward. These concerns provide a basic structure for the collection, which covers “decision making,” “migration trends in Russian Arctic cities,” and “climate change.”

In order to provide a context for the various contributions, Colin Reisser opens up the collection with a general examination of the evolution of Russia's Arctic cities in the recent past. He notes the importance of the process of political centralization under Putin and associated efforts to expand energy development within the region. The territory's demographic decline post-1991 is also highlighted. The two following chapters by Wilson Rowe and Nadezhda Zamyatina & Alexander Pelyasov address different aspects of the “decision making” process affecting the region. Wilson Rowe provides a useful chapter on the place of the Arctic within Russia's domestic politics, highlighting the inherent tension between the noted centralizing tendency within Russia's Arctic policy, regional development imperatives, and the need for international openness. The policy-making environment is further complicated by the evident growing number of actors involved in Arctic policy within Russia. The Arctic region's central importance to concerns around climate change ensures that this tension will likely intensify over the short-term. Zamyatina and Pelyasov shift the focus to the regional level and explore the issue of how to deal with the Arctic region's legacy of monocities. Through a focus on two monocities, Muravlenko and Gubkinsky, in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug specializing in the extraction of hydrocarbons, the authors reflect on the reasons behind their markedly differing fortunes in the twenty-first century. The fact that Gubkinsky has been able to grow and succeed economically while Muravlenko has endured stagnation and decline is linked to a range of factors. Interestingly, the ability of Gubkinsky's administration to develop a strong local identity and local patriotism amongst its small business sector is highlighted as a key area for further investigation. They also note the strong correlation between Gubkinsky's relative economic success and factors such as “a more democratic system of local government, generous financing for the cultural sphere, and the relatively positive mood of young people” (44). The fact that Gubkinsky is located at greater distance from the sub-regional center than Muravlenko is also seen as a catalyst for the city's positive development of recent years, encouraging amongst other things a more independent-minded institutional framework.

The following three chapters focus on migration flows and movements of people within the region. Timothy Heleniak provides a general overview of population change within the region. Beyond the well-known decline in numbers post-1991, he draws attention to the slowing rate of decline in addition to a relative stabilization of population numbers in some areas, as well as a marked “churn” of population in others (such as an interplay of both out- and in-migration flows). This mixed picture is reflected in Marlene Laruelle's chapter, which also provides insight into the varied quality of life of the region's population, highlighting amongst other things evidence of a more permanent population in the Central Arctic region with reduced dependence on seasonal migration. The final chapter in this section by Gertrude Saxinger, Elena Nuykina, and Elizabeth Öfner focuses on the specific—and largely ignored—phenomenon of long-distance commuting within the region, a flow of people driven primarily by the energy sector. Such flows have both positive (spending per capita) and negative (anti-social behavior) aspects for the receiving regions. More broadly, such flows are seen as a positive development helping to bind Russia's Arctic region into the rest of the country.

The final section shifts the focus to that of climate change. Oleg Anisimov's and Vasily Kokorev's chapter provides a useful context for the subsequent contributions, and notes the growing importance of the climate issue—and climate as a resource—for the Russian Arctic. Acknowledging the anticipated warming scenarios for the region, the two authors stress the likelihood of varied outcomes across the territory. Economic development will be encouraged in certain instances; at the same time, events such as the devastating 2001 flood in Lensk are likely to increase in frequency. The remaining chapters pick up on aspects of this uncertain future, with Scott R. Stephenson dwelling in particular on the potential opening up of the Arctic regions via the shrinking ice, and Dmitry Streletskiy and Nikolay Shiklomanov reflecting on the consequence of permafrost removal for the region's infrastructure. Jessica K. Graybill rounds off this section by reflecting on the vulnerability of the region's urban areas primarily due to the lack of effective policy planning.

The contributions to the edited collection are a little uneven in places, but overall provide an effective introduction to some of the key issues facing Russia's Arctic urban regions over the short- to medium-term. They also provide a useful framework for further work focusing on the area. Orttung's afterword makes it clear that the region's future remains uncertain and thus presents an ongoing concern for Russia as well as the global community.