Infrastructure beyond the State: “Wild” Winter Roads and Export of Fishery and Hunting Goods in the Taimyr Peninsula

Abstract

The article discusses “wild” winter roads — seasonal roads privately created by a group of drivers, mainly having a background in geology, who were in a unique position during the early post-Soviet time: they were skilled for navigation in tundra and had all-terrain vehicles in their possession. These roads help to serve goods to remote villages, as well as to export hunting and fishery products — wild reindeer meat and fish. Exporting large quantities of illegal meat is only possible due to the weakness of state control overcargo traffic on “wild” winter roads; local authorities are to some extent involved in social networks forming around this practice, while for higher level authorities this infrastructure is “unobserved” becauseof the lack of information about it in official documents. This infrastructure is characterized by considerable “fluidity” — from laying a new route after a blizzard to a complete rerouting due to changes in theeconomic situation, which is also a consequence of the lack of a big actor behind its construction.