"Russia and the North" is the title of Centre for Russian Studies 2007 Annual Conference on 28 and 29 November.

Russia has a key role to play in the international politics of the North, being the largest ‘Arctic’ state geographically and an important regional and global actor in an energy market that is increasingly looking northwards. Russia, unlike Norway, does not have a single strategy outlining economic and political aims for the North. Rather, Putin’s administration has aimed to handle development issues and challenges in this area through channels not specific to the North. However, a number of opportunities and challenges unique to the northern areas remain, requiring specifically northern policy responses. Consequently, the outline of what could be called a Russian northern policy is dispersed across a variety of fields from domestic migration politics to oil and gas development.

The aim of this conference is to pick up these threads of northern policy to present a picture of the key features of Russian northern politics.

A complete programme will be posted shortly.