Arkhangelsk Oblast Arkhangelsk Oblast Arkhangelsk Oblast (, "Arkhangelskaya oblast") is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). It includes the Arctic archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya, as well as the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. Arkhangelsk Oblast also has administrative jurisdiction over Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Including Nenetsia, Arkhangelsk Oblast has an area of 587,400 km. Its population (including Nenetsia) was 1,227,626 as of the 2010 Census. The city of Arkhangelsk, with a population of 348,716 as of the 2010 Census, is the administrative center of the oblast. The second largest city is the nearby Severodvinsk, home to Sevmash,
Arkhangelsk Oblast the 1970s and is expected to become part of the Belkomur project — a railway line connecting Arkhangelsk via the Komi Republic with the Perm Krai and the Ural mountains. Almost the entire rail network belongs to the Northern Railway, which west of Onega connects to the Oktyabrskaya Railway. There is also a railway line from Severoonezhsk west to Yangory (an extension of the line from Puksa to Navolok), which belongs to the Department of Corrections. A big number of narrow gauge railways have been built in the 1950s and 1960s to facilitate the transport of timber, but since then