This paper identifies education, skills training and improved social infrastructure as key development issues to address population decline in regions of steady out-migration from the Russian Arctic. Migration flows have mostly stabilised after the sharp and unexpectedly large population decline in the Arctic in the 1990s, during the transition to a market economy. However, the trends set in motion during that collapse, including falling general levels of education, declining size of all but the largest cities, and ageing of the populace, are becoming more serious for some regions, even where government resettlement programmes exist. As young professionals continue to leave, resettling compatriots and hiring shift labour may contribute to the vitality of more resilient regions, for example, Krasnoyarsk and Yamalo-Nenets. However, the European part of the Russian Arctic, despite its critical importance to commerce and to military security, and despite assistance programmes and subsidies, is conforming more to the ageing, less productive contours of neighbouring Arctic states on the periphery of Europe.

The rapid spread of online learning demonstrates that it is becoming one of the trends in the development of vocational education in the modern world. Along with the obvious advantages of online learning such as cost reduction, cross-border opportunities for receiving it, and adaptability for students, educational institutions encounter specific difficulties: a lack of optimal teaching methods, inflexibility of the institutional environment to the use of new teaching technologies, the transformation of communication between teachers and students, and technological unpreparedness for the development of online learning. At the same time, the need to solve the problem of accessibility of education and fill the shortage of labor resources in Russia, in particular its Arctic zone (AZRF), will contribute to the spread of online learning practices. To consider developing online education, this article, on the one hand, presents the results of a study of the regional employers’ confidence in education in a non-traditional format and, on the other hand, shows the readiness of vocational educational institutions to implement training programs in a distance format. The main research method was a questionnaire survey, in which 2240 organizations and 344 professional educational institutions located in the Russian Arctic took part. The survey results indicate that more than half of employers (58%) declared the applicability of online learning in the Russian Arctic, but about 40.6% of companies do not consider applicants with a diploma from online education. At the same time, employers’ confidence in distance learning in higher education is lower than in vocational secondary education. Additionally, the majority of institutions of higher education (62.5%) believe in the possibility of using distance education in the Russian Arctic, while organizations of vocational secondary education (64.98%) have the opposite opinion. Based on the results of the study, recommendations for federal and regional authorities were prepared.

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Theoretical significance, practical relevance and urgency of research regarding ecology of memory within the framework of the northern peoples' ethnocultural tradition is determined by both lack of advanced studies in the area in question and the necessity for development of scientifically valid regional memory policy that would give consideration to the contemporary drift of cultural, ethnical, and ideological identities, while at the same time relying on the traditional mechanisms, forms and institutions of memorial culture in the European North of Russia. The paper mainly aims at the semiotic analysis of a sacred status and stereotypes of behavior typical of the ethnic memory keepers, as well as of mythopoetic algorithms and ritual practices for preservation, interpretation and translation of sociocultural values, codes and meanings within the mental space of the northern peoples' ethnocultural tradition. In reliance upon the analysis of the existing historiographical circumstances, it may be deduced that the scope of ecology of memory as a transdisciplinary research area has not yet overcome its fledging period, which is why the present article shall be considered an attempt to thematize and problematize ecological and commemorative discourse. Methodological background of the research involves the theory of communication along with the phenomenological approach and the methods of structural and semiotic analysis. The main purpose of the article is presentation of scientific results of research on the mental-ecological functionality of ethnic memory keepers, related with mythopoetic algorithms and ritual practices of preservation, interpretation and transmission of sociocultural values, codes and meanings within mental space of the northern peoples' ethnocultural traditions. Close observation of forms, mechanisms and functions of the ethnical ecology of memory within the mental space of archaic and traditional communities of the North and the Arctic has allowed obtaining new scientific results. These are in the first place related to the revealing of mental-ecological functionality of carriers and keepers of the ethnic «deified memory». In the second place, the results contribute to the identification of crucial role of Orthodox hierotopy' heritage in the sacred mental ecology of the Pomor Land. Geocultural space of it was "territory of memory and meanings" accomplishing a higher prototypical mission of a memorial within Russian and world culture.