The importance of North European Russia’s industrial minerals for the country’s mineral raw materials economy is shown with regard for the fact that a large part of the territory is in the Arctic Zone. The history of the study and use of mineral resources in northern parts of the Old Russian state, from the start of large-scale mica and salt production and pearl harvesting to the industrial appraisal and mining of muscovite, phlogopite, vermiculite, feldspar and baddeleyite deposits, and the launching of the large-scale production of apatitnepheline, diamond, salt, barite, shungite and other commercial minerals.
It is stressed that the structure of continental North European Russia has been forming through a long geological evolution from 3.5 Ga to the present day. Geologically, it is composed of the East European Platform basement (Fennoscandian Shield) consisting of Precambrian rocks subsiding gently under the sedimentary cover of the Russian Plate, the Timan-Pechora Platform with a Riphean basement, and the Timan-Pechora Platform lying farther eastwards. The mineral genesis of the Precambrian and the Phanerozoic provinces displays a contrasting pattern. The industrial mineral deposits and largescale occurrences of North European Russia, differing in genesis and age, are reviewed and a sketch map of their distribution is supplemented. North Russia’s mineral potential could be enlarged by the prospecting, appraisal and mining of some new localities.