The Soviet Arctic

The Soviet Arctic Pier Horensma

London and New York

First published l991 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. , “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1991 P.Horensma All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Horensma, Pier 1955– The Soviet Arctic. 1. Soviet Union. Arctic. Policies on Soviet Arctic government I. Title 998 ISBN 0-415-05537-7 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Horensma, Pier, 1955– The Soviet Arctic/Pier Horensma. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Russian S.F.S.R.—History. 2. Soviet Union, Northern—History. 3. Arctic regions— Discovery and exploration—Russian. 4. Arctic regions— Historiography. 5. Soviet Union—History—1925–1953. I. Title. DK510.7.H67 1991 947–dc20 90–25309 CIP

ISBN 0-203-16806-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26324-3 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-05537-7 (Print Edition)

aan mijn Vader

The Soviet Arctic before 1917

iv

The Soviet Arctic 1917-40

v

The Soviet Arctic after 1940

vi

vii

Chukotka

Contents

Acknowledgements

1

2

3

xii

Introduction

1

Russian policy in the far North 1897–1917

7

Introduction

7

Bear Island and Spitsbergen

8

The Kara Sea and Novaya Zemlya

10

Polar exploration

13

Exploitation of the North

17

Soviet sovereignty in the Arctic and the advent of flying 1917–32

21

Arctic flying and its legal consequences

21

Canada’s choice between sector theory and effective occupation

22

Shenandoah: the United States reject a sectorial division

25

No theoretical alternatives to the sector theory

28

Norge: the Soviet Union adopts the sector theory

29

Trans-Arctic air routes: the sector becomes a ‘historical reality’

30

The Stalinization of Arctic exploration

35

The Krasin affair

35

Soviet expeditions after the Krasin

40

The Krasin; increasing public attention for the Arctic

45

The flrst communist books about the Arctic

46

Vize: the 'founding father’ of Arctic history in the Soviet Union

47

Vize’s flrst book

49

ix

4

5

6

7

Samoylovich as a historian

50

In Stalin’s time 1932–53

53

The Northern Sea Route as a legitimationfor the Soviet sector?

53

The Chelyuskin: Stalin discovers the propaganda value of the Arctic

57

Consequences for Arctic historiography and shipping

60

1937: the flrst Soviet air expedition

61

Soviet criticism of the sector theory

62

The Northern Sea Route in 1937

64

Arctic policy during the Cold War

67

The Northern Sea Route as a theme

67

The Passage as a regular sea route

68

The Cold War: the Soviet Union falls back on the sector theory

72

The sector, the Antarctic and Russo-American relations

74

The revision of the sector theory by the Soviet Union

77

The North: the historic waters doctrine

79

The historic waters doctrine and the West

81

Historiography in the Cold War

83

The influence of the historic waters doctrine on historiography

83

The Zaliv Simsa flndings

83

First attempts to develop an early history of Arctic Russia

85

The professionalization of Arctic studies

88

Belov’s early work: Semen Dezhnev

89

Belov’s first major work: Volume I

91

Pinkhenson’s Volume II: theoretical framework and implications

94

Lenin’s influence

97

Classics of polar literature

100

Literature about high-latitude expeditions

104

The age of the nuclear submarine

107

The nuclear submarine: the doctrine in practice

107

x

8

9

10

11

The Soviet reaction

110

The doctrine and the Law of the Sea

111

Support from Canada

112

Alternative theories

114

Arctic shipping since 1953

117

Destalinization and sea power

117

Expansion of Arctic shipping

118

Specialization

122

The western section: winter navigation

125

Introduction

125

The Noril’ sk mines

126

Soviet attempts

127

The season of 1983

137

The eastern section

137

‘Arktika-1983’

139

Shipping used on the eastern section

143

Arctic studies since 1953

149

Broadening the field

149

Archaeological expeditions

151

Historical monuments

156

The early nineteenth century: a success story

158

Volume IV

160

General works and new lines of enquiry after Belov

161

New topics

163

Conclusion

167

Appendix

173

Glossary

177

Bibliography

179

Index

223

xi

Acknowledgements

The inspiration to write this book came from Professor R.Vaughan who, in his attempt to overcome the nationalist bias so clearly apparent in most Arctic history, encouraged several of his students to look across national borders and study the Arctic from a circumpolar point of view. It was Professor Vaughan who suggested the Soviet Arctic to me as a subject and introduced me to Dr T.E. Armstrong of the Scott Polar Research Institute. Dr Armstrong, whose expertise in the Soviet Arctic is well known, helped me to find my way in this field. His book on the Northern Sea Route greatly impressed and influenced me. His conversations with me were always enlightening as were his helpful comments on my book. Of course, I also received many valuable remarks and suggestions from my supervisor, Professor B.N.Naarden, of the Oost Europa Instituut of the University of Amsterdam, and his colleagues Professor J.W.Bezemer, Professor H.J. Wagener of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and Dr Ph. Bosscher of the Marine Museum at Den Helder. Dr G.P.van den Berg, of the Documentatiebureau Oost-Europees Recht, Leiden, provided some much-needed criticism on legal matters. Parts of the manuscript were read by Dr M.Broekmeyer, Dr H.de Lange, W.A.Timmermans and L.Reyntjes. I received valuable information from J.Braat, Custodian of the Willem Barents collection in the Rijksmuseum, and from W.F.Mörzer Bruyns of the Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam. Since most books for this study were obtained from foreign libraries, I owe much gratitude to the staff of the interlibrary loan department of the University of Groningen and their colleagues abroad, especially in the Lenin Library in Moscow. Also very helpful were B.Schellekens, librarian of the Oost-Europa Instituut, and F.Steneker of the Arctisch Centrum, Groningen. For correcting my use of the English language, I am indebted to Ms A.C. Bardet, Mrs M.Vaughan and J.A.de Roos. T.de Vries, from the Computer Department of the Letteren Faculty of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, aided me in sorting out various computer riddles. Finally, I am grateful to my friends Marijke, Frans, Berent and Zweder for their interest and unfailing support.

Introduction

Polar exploration is much more important to the Soviet mind than it is to the West Some of the Soviet Union’s greatest successes have been achieved in the Arctic. For example, the sailing of the Northeast Passage was realized in less than a generation—a feat that for centuries had been considered impossible. Even today observers admire the frequent shipping along that passage, called the Northern Sea Route by the Russians. What to many had been a cold and empty area has been changed by icebreaker expeditions and polar stations into a miraculous empire, in which heroic battles were fought and records achieved. Polar exploration has been used as propaganda, with newspapers balancing stories about spies and sabotage with accounts of successful polar voyages. For example, the conviction of Bukharin was put in the shade by the last-minute rescue of I.D. Papanin and his three comrades, after their hazardous drifting voyage of seven months on an icefloe. Polar exploration has held, and to some extent still holds, the same fascination as space voyages did before an American spacecraft landed on the moon. Now we know only too well that the glamour of the Soviet empire in the Arctic hid the horrible misery of the Kolyma camps, that the achievements of aviation in 1937 were paid for with costly and dangerous winterings of ships, because everything that could fly was needed for record flights and little remained for guiding icebreakers. These horror stories slowly trickled through to the West, by survivors of the camps who returned and by chance remarks in Soviet publications. Nevertheless, much remains unknown, since the Soviet Arctic is first of all a secret empire, to which foreigners only seldom have access. And while everybody knows the names of Fridtjof Nansen or Robert Scott, there are not very many people who can name even one Russian polar explorer. Some authors such as the American historian R.Conquest in his book Kolyma; the Arctic Death Camps, have tried to break the spell of the Arctic. However, the Arctic camps initially were not meant to be extermination camps, which is shown by the sad story of one of the gravediggers in a camp on the Kolyma, quoted by Conquest, who relates that until 1936 or 1937 his job had been one of the best, with little work and next to no supervision. Only later hundreds of bodies had to be buried (Conquest 1978:174). At first, the camps were not meant to kill; they were part of a certain policy, of an attempt to gain the Arctic for Soviet economy, and where to us the camps stand for hunger, death and misery, followers of Stalin will see the prisoners as pioneers, who paid for their misdoings by achieving great things in the Arctic. But it is rarely asked in the West what it was that the Russians actually did achieve in the Arctic.

2 THE SOVIET ARCTIC

Even now, study of the Stalin period confines itself to the repressive aspects and ignores those fields which the Stalinists saw as their greatest successes. This concentration on the repressive element is completely justifled. It is still difficult to accept the bitter truth of the camps, the torture and persecutions, not only for us but also for the Soviet people. In principle, the consequences of Stalin’s authoritarianism could have been removed as quickly as Hitler’s institutions were after the Second World War. This never happened in the Soviet Union, where resistance against destalinization, against the rehabilitation of victims still remains. Why this resistance? Little is known about it. Clearly, the fact that the responsible government in Germany was overthrown and put to trial has been a great asset. The trials brought into the limelight much of what had happened in the concentration camps, so that there was no escaping from reality. This never happened in Russia, where the truth about the Soviet camps still has not been publicly acknowledged and circulates in Soviet society like a contagious disease. The effects of repression are not removed, because many people in the Soviet Union are not convinced of Stalin’s atrocities. The thirties and the forties were a period of unprecedented growth: there were successes in aviation, the building of the Dnepr hydropower stations, the first Five-Year Plans. These were and still are facts that mean much to the Soviet people, things that they are proud of. These still stand uncontradicted, so that if one points to repression, then these successes can be offered as an excuse. Therefore, if the true effects of Stalinist repression are ever to be appreciated, then it will be necessary to consider these aspects of the Stalin period as well. But there is another reason to look at this facet of the Stalin era. In this period, many things changed fundamentally in literature, in the economy, in politics. Stalinist society became a totalitarian society in the sense that all aspects of life were touched by it As Robert Conquest wrote in 1968, ‘the Stalin era was a past so atrocious that its repudiation brought obvious dividends to any succeeding regime, but its successors also inherited a set of institutions and a ruling caste indoctrinated in certain habits and beliefs’ (p. 520). Unfortunately, Conquest never got round to explaining the nature of this Stalinist inheritance, because at the time too little was yet known about the Great Terror, the purges, the repression, and these had to be studied first. This was unfortunate because knowledge of these ‘institutions’, ‘habits’ and ‘beliefs’ might have helped us to understand more of Soviet society, by tracing these Stalinist influences in current developments. In other words, if the ideas about a subject in the Stalin period are known, then it may well be easier to understand what is currently thought about that subject. The reason for this is that the Stalin years profoundly changed and still influence most aspects of Soviet society. In some cases this Stalinist influence is plain to see, for example in Gorbachev’s attempted changes to the Soviet economy directed at the command system in the economy, which was introduced by Stalin. Changing this system has been qualified by some as ‘economic destalinization’. Similar situations can be found in other fields of society that saw rapid development in the Stalin years, such as polar exploration. It will be attempted here to see what changes came about in polar exploration under Stalin, and how they influence Soviet thinking on polar exploration to this day. In order to understand the Soviet attitude towards polar exploration, it is necessary to consider general political developments in the Arctic. This topic has

INTRODUCTION 3

not, until recently, been studied seriously. Most studies confine themselves to the history of exploration, taking little notice of the political circumstances. The jocular reaction of US President William Taft on receiving the North Pole as a gift from Peary is too often mentioned, while frequently the fact is overlooked that it was in reaction to Peary’s voyage that the Canadian senator P.Poirier put forward the idea of dividing the Pole into sectors. Arctic exploration never took place in a political vacuum. It may even be said that Arctic politics have their own rules. An interesting attempt to summarize these rules has been G.Skagestad’s book on Norwegian polar politics (Skagestad 1975), which deals with the political value and consequences of expeditions. The major difference from most other foreign political issues is that Arctic policy mainly concerns long-term interests, since resources in this region are difficult to tap. Many governments are reluctant to take risks over something that will be of value only in the distant future. For the same reason, military action in the Arctic is rare. Battles in the Arctic as a rule concern issues from the temperate zones. Few shots have been fired in anger over Arctic matters, but there have been warning shots, like those fired by the Argentines over the heads of a British party in Hope Bay, Antarctica, in 1952. So far, nobody has risked his life in a battle over Arctic territory. This does not indicate an extraordinary willingness to concede claims. On the contrary, Arctic conflicts have proved a rich field for international lawyers and courts, and there is a vast legal literature on these topics. Little of this has been studied by historians, although impressive exceptions to this rule can be found in Canada and Norway. Fitting the Arctic history of the Soviet Union into this framework is clearly a puzzle with some parts missing, because Soviet archives, especially on twentiethcentury topics, have, as a rule, remained closed to Western students. Similarly, a request on behalf of this study, made by the Dutch Ministry of Education under the Soviet-Dutch Cultural Treaty, has not been accepted by the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, an attempt at describing the developments of Soviet Arctic policy can be made by using published sources, official documents, articles by international lawyers and press clippings. In this respect, I owe much to the work and examples of T.E.Armstrong and W.Butler. Most legal literature was available in the library of the Documentatiebureau voor Oost-Europees Recht in Leiden, while many newspapers were found in the Oost-Europa Instituut of the University of Amsterdam. An important source to supplement this has been Soviet literature on Arctic history. Owing to the special circumstances of the Stalin period, most Soviet books on Arctic history show a remarkable uniformity in their political ideas. This sometimes gives us an enlightening view of the Soviet mind on polar affairs. The remarkable thing is that a close relationship can be shown to exist between literature and legal concepts. Using Soviet literature on the Arctic has not turned out to be an easy task. No specialized bibliography is available on the subject and one of the secondary aims of this study is to provide at least a modest bibliographic contribution. Several prolonged visits to the Lenin Library in Moscow were the basis for this study, supplemented by one or two visits to the rich collection of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. In addition, much was found in relevant Dutch libraries, such as that of the Oost-Europa Instituut in Amsterdam. Given the aim of this

4 THE SOVIET ARCTIC

study, literature has been chosen for its value in understanding the Soviet political attitude towards the Arctic. This means that not only scholarly works are included, but also books of a general nature, histories, popular works as well as books for children. Literature on technical matters has largely been avoided. Clearly, Soviet Arctic historiography consists of a fairly coherent and systematic literature, which makes it possible to study its selection of topics, source material, relation to previous literature and other aspects with which historiography is usually concerned. It will be shown that Western influence almost stopped in 1930 when, after the translation of a Danish general history, the Soviets began to develop their own general histories, incorporating Western sources such as books by Shackleton, Nansen, Mawson, Stefansson and others. There will be little or no comparison between Western literature and Soviet works of history here, since in this book we mainly concentrate on the relation between Arctic policy and historiography and so are more interested in the Soviet Union than in the Arctic. It would therefore be unfair not to point out that Soviet literature on Arctic matters is very rich and contains many excellent studies, like Belov’s official history or his book on Arctic monuments. Such a book, which lists all cairns, graves, camps, shipwrecks and other interesting places in the Arctic, is completely lacking in Western literature, as are biographical dictionaries of polar explorers and descriptions of Arctic collections in museums. Belov’s official history is based on extensive research, and although one may want to criticize some of its aspects, it cannot be denied that, as far as the present writer knows, nothing similar has been written in the West. Although source material is not overwhelming in quantity, it still offers the possibility of drawing a picture of the developments in the Soviet Arctic against a general background. In order to do this, some preparatory work is done in the first two chapters. Our century has seen a number of substantial improvements in polar exploration by the introduction of new means of transport, such as air craft. But even travel in dogsleds profoundly changed the political situation in the Arctic. To the Soviet Union especially, these changes meant a considerable threat, which by 1932, however, had been brought under control. Nevertheless, this early period left its mark on the Arctic legislation of the Soviet Union and its political aims in the Arctic. It is therefore necessary to follow these developments in legal literature from the turn of the century onwards. The second part begins with the voyage of the Krasin in 1928, which for the first time made the Soviet Union appear as an Arctic power of some consequence. After this expedition a new view developed on the Soviet Union’s position in the Arctic. Changes can be seen in policy as well as in historical and other literature. At this point Stalinism exerted much influence, which grew even stronger after 1934, when polar literature was clearly assigned a propaganda task. This makes it more difficult to detect what really happened in the Soviet Arctic, but memoirs and other literature on the Arctic do provide clues. It was altogether a highly fascinating period, in which a secret empire was built in a country with gold and uranium mines, with routes that allowed ships to pass unseen from Europe to the Far East, with drifting islands of ice, with horrible secrets to hide. And it was, in fact, the land of the Cold War, unseen and unknown by the general public. On a more prosaic level, the Stalin period was also a time in which new theories were developed. For example, the legal views on sovereignty in the Arctic were

INTRODUCTION 5

put on an ideological basis. In this respect much work was done after the Second World War. The third part considers polar exploration since Stalin. Although after Stalin’s demise a completely different policy was adopted in the Arctic, many old Stalinist ideas retained their influence, in the legal as well as in the literary or historical sphere. The importance of this part lies in the fact that awareness of these ideas will help us to understand the current Arctic policy of the Soviet Union.

6

1 Russian policy in the far North 1897–1917

INTRODUCTION Around the turn of the century knowledge of the Arctic increased rapidly. Countries like Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, the United States and Germany sent expeditions to the North which investigated the possibilities of fisheries in the Barents Sea, coal mining on Spitsbergen and a revival of whaling. Under these circumstances Russia was forced to a more aggressive northern policy. Like Norway, Russia believed certain Arctic areas to be hers by right from time immemorial. Foreign expeditions were thus seen as unlawful intruders. This perception of foreign exploration was reinforced by two factors. First, there were strategic considerations. A foreign power could use Spitsbergen to interdict the sea lanes to Northern Russia. Such a power could be Germany, which was also able to close the Baltic Sea. This made it unthinkable to St Petersburg that Spitsbergen should become part of a country like Norway, which would make it impossible to protect from foreign occupation in times of war (Vaultrin 1908: 103). Russian concerns were therefore purely negative and aimed at avoiding foreign settlement. Sweden, for instance, was showing its interest by actively taking part in the exploitation of Spitsbergen. It was therefore suggested that Russia should follow Sweden’s example. Indeed, at the turn of the century, Russia took that stand and began to involve itself more in Arctic exploration. In consequence, the first seagoing icebreaker in the world, the Yermak, visited Spitsbergen in 1899. At the same time Russia and Sweden began a joint exploration programme which lasted several years, from 1899 to 1901. In 1912 Russia’s foreign ministry decided to take part in the coal mining on Spitsbergen in order to strengthen Russia’s foothold. In 1912 a first expedition was sent out, but after that the plan was delayed by the First World War. Finally, in 1919 a Russian mine began to operate, but during the Revolution its ties with Russia were severed and it became a private enterprise (Pasetsky 1964b). Thus, moved by strategic considerations, Russia became interested in the economic possibilities of the far North. This was also greatly encouraged by M.K.Sidorov, a Siberian financier, who used the wealth from his gold mines to further the development of his native country. He felt that the North was worth developing for economic reasons only and propagated this idea in open lectures, which spread his ideas to the public.

8 RUSSIAN POLICY IN THE FAR NORTH 1897–1917

These years saw the gradual emergence of a new policy in reaction to clashes and contacts with other countries like Norway and Sweden concerning the legal status of Spitsbergen, Bear Island and Novaya Zemlya. The new policy showed itself in a changing attitude towards Arctic exploration and the development of the Murman Coast. Political questions had forced Russia to decide whether she really wanted to retain what she considered her possessions in the Arctic. In view of the increased polar exploration in the second half of the nineteenth century, Russia had to choose either to take action or to lose these islands to other nations. The territories in question consisted of the Spitsbergen archipelago, Novaya Zemlya and Bear Island. We shall now consider each of these areas in turn. BEAR ISLAND AND SPITSBERGEN The least substantial were the events on Bear Island, where Germany showed itself. Germany was one of the nations that began to pay increasing attention to polar exploration. In 1898 the Deutsche Seefischereiverein sent an expedition to Bear Island, a small island halfway between Spitsbergen and the North Cape. This island offered great opportunities as it could serve as a port for coaling and fish processing for the new generation of fishing ships with steam propulsion. Spitsbergen was no less suitable for this, but Bear Island was closer by, an important advantage to German ships. Also, like Spitsbergen, Bear Island was a terra nullius, a no man’s land. This signified the absence of any customs or legal arrangement, so if Germany wanted to annex it, it would be free to do so (Vaultrin 1909:192). Some people in Germany, like the journalist Theodore Lerner, clearly aspired to annexation. That same year, 1898, Lerner himself mounted an expedition to Bear Island (which had no relation whatsoever to the Seefischereiverein). He took possession of part of the island and, as a German citizen, sent a telegram to the Imperial Chancellery in which he asked for protection of this area by the German state. Then, Lerner proceeded to dig a coal mine. The year 1898 was a busy year for Bear Island. Besides the two German expeditions a Swedish expedition also visited the island. This undertaking was purely scientific and confined itself to astronomical observations. Nevertheless, Sweden was clearly worried about German intentions. This is apparent in newspaper reports which a French consul in Sweden, R.Dollot, cited in his article on Bear Island. Dagens Nyheter pointed out that from Bear Island a few fast warships could control not only the fishing grounds, but also the increasing merchant shipping to Arkhangel’sk (Vaultrin 1908:195). It therefore came as no surprise that the following year the Russians sent a warship, the Svetlana, to visit Lerner’s mine on Bear Island. The whole visit had a somewhat farcical nature. Lerner boarded the Russian ship to learn that the captain was under orders to search for the remnants of ancient Russian settlements on the island. These he was to mark with a sign, in order to safeguard Russian claims to the island. The German saw this as a threat to his coal mine and declared his intention to fight to the bitter end to prevent it. The commander of the warship smiled at this and suggested that Lerner, then, must have secret instructions from his government to do so. In that case, he would return home to discuss matters

THE SOVIET ARCTIC 9

with his superiors. The journalist, who had obtained no encouragement whatsoever from the German government, realized that this would be a gaffe and changed his behaviour. After that the two gentlemen became the best of friends. Lerner stayed for dinner on the ship and the next day he sent the captain a small present of some coals. The captain then did what he had been told to do, to stake out a Russian claim. On the island he found the remains of a small house in which a skeleton was found, still wearing the shreds of what had been typical Russian boots. On the debris a sign was posted reading 'belongs to Russia' and the captain, satisfied, returned to Russia. The exchange of communiqués about this matter was more business-like. The German government declared that neither Lerner nor the Seefischereiverein had obtained any permission to claim Bear Island, to which St Petersburg replied that it did not object to the presence of German citizens on the island. At this point, Sweden proposed an international conference to discuss the legal position of Bear Island. Spitsbergen could then be discussed as well. The proposal was not accepted, since it was generally felt that the status of a no man's land would suffice. Fishing and coal mining were not expected to cause such legal complications that another form of political organization, for instance annexation, would become necessary. Thus, as long as other nations did not expand their sovereignty to the North, neither would Russia. But because of strategic considerations the Russians would not tolerate annexation by other states. The situation on Spitsbergen was comparable in theory, but the status of this archipelago, called Svalbard by the Scandinavians, was more complicated. Discovered by Willem Barents in 1596, it had never been claimed by the Dutch. Inslead the British crown had claimed it in 1614. Both the Dutch and the British had lost all inerest after whaling became unprofitable there. Spitsbergen had no indigenous population but, to complicate things, it was visited on a regular basis by Russian as well as Norwegian trappers. The Norwegians had claimed discovery by asserting, as F.Nansen did, that Norsemen visited the archipelago between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, calling it Svalbard. The discovery, according to an Icelandic source, had taken place in the year 1194 (Østreng 1978: 2). The Russians had also claimed discovery, which they based on certain oral traditions. Several countries thus believed they had rights of discovery to the area, but none of them seemed to be interested. This changed when, in 1871, the Swedish professor A.E.Nordenskiöld planned the exploitation of its natural resources. To simplify matters legally, the Swedish government then proposed to annex Spitsbergen. In order to do so, all countries which in the past had shown any interest in the archipelago were asked to consent. The United Kingdom agreed. The Netherlands agreed on condition that all countries agreed unanimously. The Russian ambassador initially replied that he expected little objection from his government. But, surprisingly, the Russian answer turned out to be negative (Mathisen 1951: 28). Under pressure of public opinion, formed to a great extent by Sidorov’s lectures, the government had been forced to take a different stand. It had to declare that Swedish annexation was out of the question, but there was no objection to the exploitation of natural resources. The Nordenskiöld undertaking could go ahead, but the legal regime was to remain ambiguous. Mining soon proved a profitable venture which attracted much British and American capital. Legal difficulties did not appear until much later when conflicts arose between

10 RUSSIAN POLICY IN THE FAR NORTH 1897–1917

Norwegian workers and their American directors. Norway, which seceded from Sweden in 1905 to become an independent state, once more studied the question of Spitsbergen. In view of the Russian stand it could not hope for a simple annexation, but an internationally acceptable arrangement might be achieved. This led to a number of conferences in Oslo, at the time still called Christiania, but a solution was not found before the First World War (Østreng 1978:2). THE KARA SEA AND NOVAYA ZEMLYA To sum up, the vetoing of the Swedish annexation of the Svalbard islands in 1871 was another sign of the changing attitude in Russia to the Northern territories. This new attitude showed itself in a new policy that explicitly aimed at maintaining ancient rights over Spitsbergen and Bear Island. The same development can be seen where Novaya Zemlya and, east of it, the Kara Sea are concerned. The same Sidorov who had so effectively defended Russian claims to Spitsbergen attempted to do the same for the Kara Sea. This sea between Novaya Zemlya and Siberia can be reached only from the west, through the three straits of Novaya Zemlya, Yugorsky Shar, Matochkin Shar and the Karskie Vorota, unless one wants to round its northernmost cape, Mys Zhelaniya. The Kara Sea can therefore be considered an inland sea. For this reason, Sidorov proposed to have the Kara Sea declared a mer enclavée: the whole sea should be considered Russian territory, with no access for foreigners (Studitsky 1883:44). The Siberian merchant had an excellent reason for this, because in 1869 he had obtained, from his government, the monopoly on shipping, fishing and hunting in this area. In fact fishing and hunting sea mammals had become a purely Norwegian affair, while shipping via the Kara Sea was quickly becoming a British undertaking. Claiming a sea proved not so simple. The sea has been free since time immemorial, so that convincing arguments had to be found to depart from this rule. One of these was that this sea was completely surrounded by land, comparable with the Caspian. Another reason was that the Kara Sea was frozen solid for nine months of the year, so that it was virtually part of the mainland. Finally, Sidorov claimed that the Kara Sea had been undisputed Russian property for more than 300 years, since 1619, when Tsar Michael Romanov had prohibited all shipping on that sea (ibid.: 48). Such a prohibition, according to Sidorov, would have been possible only if this sea belonged to Russia. His arguments were soon rejected by Russian lawyers. F. de Martens, at the time a widely known specialist of international law, denied that ice could be a continuation of land. His lesser-known compatriot Ulyanitsky refuted the next argument by pointing to the map, which showed that the Kara Sea was most definitely not surrounded by land (Butler 1978:78). The last argument, which is in fact of historic nature, is still used by Soviet lawyers and therefore merits more attention. In 1871 it was an obvious argument since at that point little was known about Western expeditions to that area. Only in the following years would the remains of the Behouden Huis, Barents’ winter bivouac, be found, the discovery of which was an important stimulus to the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch Arctic voyages. A new English translation of Gerrit de Veer’s diary appeared.

THE SOVIET ARCTIC 11

In 1874 Samuel Muller published his history of the Noordsche Compagnie, which discussed the link between Dutch whaling and the Barents expeditions. It soon appeared that Barents’ voyage happened to be the best-known example, but that there were several others. From studying source material Muller learned about a number of such voyages, like the one Cornelis Bosman made in 1625, in an attempt to repeat Barents’ expedition. The so-called Resolutiën of the States General showed that Bosman meant to sail through the Nassau Straits (the Dutch name for Yugorsky Shar) to the Far East. Bosman indeed reached the Kara Sea, but had to return because of the ice. However, in 1625 the Cossack Vassily Pustoozerets saw two warships sailing in Baydaratskaya Guba, towards the mouth of the Mulnaya Reka, although he could not tell their nationality (Arkheograficheskaya Komissiya 1875: (8), 363; Belov 1956b:122). The next year, two Dutch merchants attempted to go hunting sea mammals there, but they too had to return at Yugorsky Shar. These two expeditions, which took place after 1619, were undertaken with the approval of the Dutch States General (Muller 1874:186). It therefore seems incorrect to assume that Tsar Michael’s prohibition of sailing in the Kara Sea was silently recognized, or indeed that the Russians were unaware of this trespassing. It is perhaps useful to consider the nature of these prohibitions. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Muscovian state did handsomely out of selling Siberian furs to West European merchants in Arkhangel’sk. If these merchants should manage to buy their furs directly in Siberia, this would be a serious economic loss (Dalgård 1955:56). On 6 February 1616 the voevoda (governor) of Tobolsk, under whose jurisdiction the Siberian coast fell, notified the Tsar of the rumour that a Dutch ship had reached Mangazeya, an important fur trade centre in Siberia (Arkheograficheskaya Komissiya 1875:(2), 1051). In his response of 19 October 1617, the Tsar decided that, to protect the sea route, Russian merchants travelling to Siberia henceforth had to use the overland route (ibid: 1058). At the same time it was strictly forbidden to trade with foreigners except at certain designated places. These restrictions were then sent to the voevody responsible for their enforcement. But even this did not prove suffieient When in 1619 foreigners of another nation, the Danish Petsoriske Kompagni which wanted to take part in the prosperous fur trade, found that one of its ships ran into difficulties near Kola, the Danish king, Christian IV, asked Tsar Michael for help. This request made the Tsar decide to tighten the earlier prohibition of 1617. Capital punishment was instituted as a penalty for guiding foreigners to Mangazeya. At the same time a checkpoint was installed along the sea route to that Siberian city (ibid: 1075). Evidently, these prohibitions applied only to Russian subjects, not to foreign expeditions like Bosman’s. Muller had done excellent work in searching the archives of the Noordsche Compagnie, which had produced proof of a number of expeditions to the Kara Sea. A few years later an American of Dutch descent, S.van Campen, spoke of ‘that mine of wealth which lies undeveloped in the annals of the Netherlands’ (Campen 1878). In his book he pointed to seventeenth-century authors like Nicolaas Witsen and N.van Wassenaer who mentioned other expeditions, such as Cornelis Snobbeger (1675), the Englishman John Wood (1676) and finally Willem de Vlamingh (1688). All these expeditions reached the Kara Sea without any Russian objection or interference. But in 1871 little of this was known, so it is

12 RUSSIAN POLICY IN THE FAR NORTH 1897–1917

understandable that Sidorov used the argument that the West had tacitly accepted Russian sovereignty over the Kara Sea. To Sidorov and his mostly Siberian partisans this area had for centuries been undisputed Russian territory, but now suddenly Norwegians and other foreigners appeared there. The Norwegian consul in Arkhangel’sk noted that in 1871 some eighty or ninety Norwegians went to Novaya Zemlya to hunt, against four of Russian nationality. The Norwegian government did not see any harm in this, since it was not at all certain whether Novaya Zemlya was indeed Russian. Western governments tended to see this question in the light of international law, without taking into account the ancient rights of which Sidorov spoke. Nevertheless, in 1877 the Norwegian government considered warning its fishermen not to land on Novaya Zemlya, because the Russians were building a rescue station at Malye Karmakuly, on the southern half of Novaya Zemlya (Engelhardt 1897: 161). This station was little more than a hut with food and fuel, where stranded voyagers could take refuge, but the fact that the Russians had opened such a station showed that they considered Novaya Zemlya to be their territory. The best claim to any territory, legally speaking, is effective occupation. In 1894 the governor of Arkhangel’sk took the initiative in sending a number of Nentsy (members of a Siberian tribe) to Novaya Zemlya (ibid.: 140). The state shipping company visited them once or twice a year. Another step the government took to clarify its position on the status of these Arctic islands was an increased supervision of fishing in its territorial waters. A warship, the Naezdnik, was instructed accordingly in 1892. In particular, it was to ensure that no Norwegians hunted on the coast of Novaya Zemlya or in the Kara Sea (Meyer 1937:249). A few years later, in 1897, the hydrographical department of the Russian navy began charting the Kara Sea Route, including some parts of the coast of Novaya Zemlya. In 1906 an official Norwegian expedition asked permission to sail to the Kara Sea, for which it wanted to pass the straits of Novaya Zemlya, which were obviously within territorial waters. Clearance was given, but the Russians warned that later expeditions might not receive permission so easily. Russian control was clearly increasing; a navy commission, which studied the question of territorial waters, even proposed closing the White Sea and the Kara Sea to foreign vessels, but the proposal was never effectuated (ibid: 238). Nevertheless, these precautions did not suffice. In 1910 Russian rights to Novaya Zemlya were challenged. On the northern part of the island, permanent Norwegian settlements had been detected, posing a threat to Russian sovereignty since they could be regarded as effective occupation by Norway. In the Russian view these settlements were illegal and a note of protest was sent to the Norwegian government. The Union of Ship Owners in northern Norway, which had close relations with the settlements, reacted to this note with a memorandum which argued that the Norwegian presence had never before been objected to, since 1860. In addition it said that Russian government officials had declared that Russian sovereignty ended at Matochkin Shar. The northern part of Novaya Zemlya should be considered no man’s land and the question of sovereignty should be referred to the International Court in The Hague. The Norwegian government, however, took a more lenient position and accepted the Russian protest The setdements were subsequently abandoned (Vaultrin 1911:362).

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POLAR EXPLORATION Another way to defend Russian rights in the Arctic was to take part more actively in polar exploration. This was done in Spitsbergen; but elsewhere too the Russian government began to involve itself in exploration and expeditions. In doing so, it resumed its activity where it had left off half a century before. At the end of the last century, polar exploration had almost exclusively become a Scandinavian scene. This had not always been so. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there had been Russian expeditions of considerable importance, like those of F. Litke (1821– 4), G.Ber (1837) and finally P.P.Kruzenshtern (1862). Great results had been achieved by Russians during the Great Northern Expedition, but that was as far back as 1733–43. Also, many interesting voyages had been made by the Russians who lived in the Arkhangel’sk area, but few or no records of these exploits existed. When A.E.Nordenskiölld prepared his voyage along the Northeast Passage, he could not rely on information of these so-called Pomory, except perhaps for the journey of Semen Dezhnev in 1648 (Nordenskiöld 1882: vol. I, 16, 20). Russian exploration in the Kara Sea came to a standstill, certainly after Kruzenshtern’s ship, the Yermak, was lost. Curiously, these were exactly the same years in which the Scandinavian supremacy in polar exploration began to come to the fore. One of the reasons that made the Novaya Zemlya area so attractive to Norwegians was the fact that diminishing numbers of seals and other animals on Spitsbergen forced them to look for other hunting grounds (ibid.: vol. I, 263). Within a few years the Norwegians had penetrated the Kara Sea far deeper than most Russian expeditions. In 1869 Eduard Johannesen received a silver medal from the Swedish Academy of Sciences for his voyage to Cape Nassau on Novaya Zemlya. Jokingly, he was promised a gold medal if he managed to sail around the island. This caused some embarrassment in the Academy since Johannesen succeeded in doing just that during the next year (ibid.: vol. I, 265–8). The learned world was surprised by these results, which caused a wave of interest in polar travel. The exploration of the Kara Route received an important impulse and voyages were undertaken by Wiggins (1875) and Nordenskiölld (1876). Curiosity was awakened in Russia as well. A commission to organize polar voyages was duly instituted in the Geographic Society, led by A.Voeykov (Petermann 1871). But nothing much happened. The only result was the sending of two warships and the scientist K.Middendorf to Novaya Zemlya in 1870. This absence of Russian polar exploration became uncomfortably clear when in 1878– 9 the Swede A.E.Nordenskiöld managed to sail through the Northeast Passage. As the German geographer A.Petermann put it in a letter to Voeykov, this area should have been explored by Russians. This was not only of political importance, according to the German scientist, but also of scientific importance. Voeykov agreed and described the area between the Novosibirskie Ostrova and Novaya Zemlya as the proper field for a Russian expedition. Nevertheless, the second important expedition in this area again was not Russian but Scandinavian, being the famous Fram (1893–6) with Fridtjof Nansen which sailed part of the Northeast Passage, to the Novosibirskie Ostrova. (De Long clearly preceded Nansen, but did not pass most of what is now called the Northern Sea Route; see De Long 1888 and Nansen 1897). Other European countries joined the race. Even the Danubian

14 RUSSIAN POLICY IN THE FAR NORTH 1897–1917

monarchy took part, by sending the Payer-Weyprecht expedition in 1873 which discovered Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, an archipelago north of Novaya Zemlya. It was hardly surprising that the president of the Russian Geographic Society in 1901 complained to the Minister of Finance, S.Witte, that Russia had lost her prominence in Arctic exploration. At the turn of the century this changed. Russia began to show that her intentions in the North were serious. A number of large expeditions were launched, like the Russian Polar Expedition by Eduard Toll or the SwedishRussian undertaking on Spitsbergen. At the same time the icebreaker Yermak was built, called after the ship Kruzenshtem had lost in 1862 in the Kara Sea, and made its maiden voyage to Spitsbergen, supporting the Swedish-Russian expedition (Makarov 1943:245). Oddly enough, most of the Russian activity took place near Spitsbergen. Only Toll did not go to Spitsbergen. Baron Eduard Toll was a Russian geologist, of Baltic descent, who had gained much experience in exploring Siberia, mostly concerning himself with the study of the glacial period. He was also responsible for the excavation of a mammoth, which was found in Siberia, perfectly preserved by the frost. This excavation took place under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences, which sent several expeditions to Siberia in the nineteenth century. Toll had made a sJedging journey to the Novosibirskie Ostrova, where he believed he had seen the mountains of the mysterious Sannikov Land, a mythical land to the north. Such a land would be of tremendous interest to a student of the glacial period. For this reason, and also because Toll believed that shipping along the Siberian coast ought to be developed, the geologist decided to undertake an expedition to that mysterious land. His expedition became in the first place a scientific geological expedition sponsored by the Academy of Sciences. Its president, grand-duke Konstantin, financed most of it Toll’s ship, the Zarya, managed to reach the Novosibirskie Ostrova when wintering on the Taymyr peninsula, but the expedition turned into a disaster after Toll and some of his companions came to grief during a journey over the pack ice. The crew left the ship and returned by the Lena. Nevertheless the Zarya was the first Russian ship to pass Mys Chelyuskina, an exploit comparable with the successes achieved by Nordenskiöld and Nansen (Toll 1909). The most important Russian contribution to polar exploration without doubt was the icebreaker, although its importance was only realized much later. The initiative to build the first sea-going icebreaker came from Stepan Ossipovich Makarov. This Russian admiral wanted to reach the North Pole with such a ship, a dream realized in 1977 by the Arktika. The idea to build an icebreaker was in itself not new, but Makarov was the first to realize that pack ice in the Northern Ice Sea could have only a limited thickness, so that breaking it would be possible. At first the plan was rejected by the Minister of Naval Affairs, but it was taken up by the Minister of Finance, Sergey Witte. In view of the fact that such a ship would be very expensive, Makarov added some ideas about how the ship could be used commercially, enough to convince Witte. One of these ideas was to use such a ship on the Kara Route. Even more attractive was the suggestion that shipping to St Petersburg could be continued in winter (Makarov 1943:57). The icebreaker was built in Britain in 1898 and named Yermak. The vessel proved very effective in the Baltic, even to such an extent that she was considered too valuable to risk in polar exploration. In spite of this the Yermak

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made two voyages to the Arctic. The first was a trial run in 1899, but the second was a real expedition, during which the Yermak not only escorted the ships of the Russian-Swedish expedition to Spitsbergen, but afterwards continued to Novaya Zemlya. Ice conditions were such that the Yermak failed to reach the North Cape, got trapped in the ice and drifted for a month (Belov 1956b:275). After managing to free herself, she even reached Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa before returning safely to Russia (ibid.: 277). The voyage proved that an icebreaker could operate in areas where normal ships could not venture, even if results were not as expected. Much resistance remained against risking such an expensive ship in the far North. After this expedition, the Yermak remained in the Baltic until 1905, when during the Russo-Japanese war a number of ships were sent along the Kara Route to ease the burden of the trans-Siberian railway. Even if the results of the icebreaker expedition were not spectacular, its undertaking was a clear sign of Russian interest in this area. Nevertheless, the attention of the Russian government initially centred on those areas where foreign expeditions operated as well, namely Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Interest in what should have been the actual Russian area of exploration, between Novaya Zemlya and the Novosibirskie Ostrova, appeared only after the war with Japan, when the strategic advantages of the Northeast Passage had become clear. During the Russo-Japanese war the Russian fleet in the Far East was virtually annihilated by a surprise attack on Port Arthur. In reply, the Baltic squadron was sent around Eurasia and Africa to Japan, but also suffered defeat after an exhausting voyage around half the world (Mitchell 1974). This showed at a stroke the enormous advantages of the much shorter Arctic Passage. Immediately after the war the government made available funds to explore this passage. A commission studied the project of a Northeast Passage and in 1906 recommended the construction of two small icebreakers to chart the route along the Siberian coast A special naval department was established to which the two new icebreakers were made available. These icebreakers were built in Russia and christened Taymyr and Vaygach after the area in which they were expected to operate to the east of the Kara Route (Sovetov 1915). For political reasons this plan was changed and it was decided to start from the east instead of the west and the icebreakers were sent to Vladivostok by way of the Suez Canal. After the Russo-Japanese war the situation in the Far East had changed fundamentally. The defeat by Japan had seriously damaged Russian prestige and had left little of the navy, thus seriously threatening Russian sovereignty over its Eastern possessions. American whalers appeared on the Chukchi coast and began a flourishing trade with the natives. The Americans had the distinct advantage of being able to reach the area by ship whereas the Russians had to carry their merchandise overland. Under these circumstances it was feared that the flag would follow the trade. Some showing of the Russian flag was urgently needed and it was decided to use the icebreakers to that end. It had been the Ministry of Trade that had proposed organizing a shipping line between Vladivostok and the river Kolyma (Kripton 1956). Such a shipping line would ameliorate the position of Russian traders, while allowing increased governmental control. The necessary hydrographical preparations for such a line could well be done by the icebreaker expedition, and such preparations were needed anyway for a transit route. The navy agreed, and the icebreakers began

16 RUSSIAN POLICY IN THE FAR NORTH 1897–1917

their explorations with Vladivostok as their home base. Again, exploration was given the secondary objective of safeguarding Russian territorial claims. Initial results of the icebreaker expedition were good, though not very impressive. In 1911 the Kolyma was reached for the first time, after which a regular shipping line to this river was established. Exploration was continued in the following years. The icebreakers used the summer season to map the Siberian coast and wintered in Vladivostok. But the original task of the expedition had been to decide whether the Northeast Passage could be used for strategic purposes and this implied the necessity of being able to reach Arkhangel’sk within the span of one season, without wintering. The only successful attempt at the passage had been made by Nordenskiöld, who had been forced to winter along the way. In this respect the icebreakers too failed, since in 1914 both ships remained stuck in the ice near Cape Chelyuskin and had to winter. On the other hand, the expedition discovered various islands, among them the huge Severnaya Zemlya. Now, for the first time, it became possible to specify the Russian territory in the North. In 1916a note diplomatique was sent to Russia’s allies and the neutral countries, in which Russia claimed not only the recently discovered islands but several others as well, such as Bennett, Herald, Jeannette and Wrangel Island. These had been discovered by other nations; hence it was not discovery that was invoked as a basis for this, but rather the principle of contiguity, which meant that most islands off the Siberian coast were Russian because of their location. In this note of 1916 the northern border of Russia was for the first time described with some exactitude (Lakhtin 1928:43). Apart from the discovery of several islands, the expedition had failed to reach Arkhangel’sk, its destination in the summer of 1914, which was a near-disaster because it forced the Russians to ask for Norwegian help to organize rescue operations. Of course, this defeated the purpose of sending out the expedition. In order to mask this dependence on its successful neighbour, some of the ships bought in Norway were partly manned by Russian crews or at least sailed under Russian flags, taking a representative of the Russian government. The Russians had no choice but to ask the Norwegians for help, because there were no suitable ships and, besides, help was needed for three other private expeditions which had disappeared. These three, led respectively by V.A.Rusanov, G.L.Brusilov and G.Ya.Sedov, had all been undertaken in 1912, a year with much ice. Rusanov had not returned after a geological expedition on Spitsbergen. Instead, he had sailed to the Kara Sea and disappeared. Brusilov’s hunting expedition had also vanished in the Kara Sea. Sedov had left for Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, from where he hoped to reach the North Pole by sledge. These private expeditions had been a reaction to the fact that the Russian state achieved so little in Arctic exploration. Brusilov and Sedov had both previously been involved in the icebreaker operations. Rusanov had gone to Spitsbergen to stake claims for the coal mining, so that Russia would not lose its rights by default. The rescue expeditions had little effect. Survivors of the Brusilov and Sedov expeditions managed to return to Arkhangel’sk on their own, while no trace of Rusanov was ever found. However, some support was given to the icebreakers when they managed to free themselves from the ice in 1915. The First World War and the Revolution of 1917 stopped further Russian exploration.

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EXPLOITATION OF THE NORTH Initially, strategic considerations had forced the Russian government to take a more active stand in the North, because in the event of war Spitsbergen could become as important as the Sound. The Northeast Passage could be decisive in a future war with Japan. This new interest for the Arctic showed itself in a more active participation in polar exploration, which resulted, as we have seen, in the construction of the Yermak and other undertakings. Another way of strengthening the Russian hold on the North, especially in the West, was its economic development. By sustaining fisheries and shipping, the Norwegian economic penetration could be stopped. This was not, of course, the only consideration. At the turn of the century, promotion of the economy had become general policy by ministers like Sergey Witte, who tried by activating the economy to increase Russia’s poor financial position. As regards economic development, fisheries in the White Sea had excellent prospects. Although there were very rich fishing grounds in the North, only 3 per cent of Russian fish came from this area. Of course, most fish (83 per cent) was caught in rivers and lakes. Less obvious was the fact that about half of all sea fish in Russia was imported. This was because sea fish was cheap food for which there was a huge demand in large industrial cities like Moscow and St Petersburg, a demand which the primitive Russian fisheries could not satisfy (Immanuel 1899). The remainder was supplied by Norwegian fishers. In the Murman area the number of fishermen remained stable at 3,000 to 4,000. In Norway, however, about 30, 000 people made a living out of fishing and they could easily satisfy the Russian demand for fish (Kiselev 1971:237). The reason for this relative underdevelopment was the poor organization of Russian fishing. Russians still used small sailing craft of the Shnyak type, with a crew of four to five. Besides nets, lines of 300 metres were used, which remained in the water for about six hours. This time-consuming method offered the advantage of needing little investment, capital being non-existent among fishermen. The fishing craft usually belonged to the owners of the local shops, who gave loans during winter that had to be paid off in summer. This system made it very difficult for fishermen to save money in order to improve on their equipment. Also the absence of railway links to the industrial centres made it difficult to sell the catch. The railway to Aleksandrovsk was constructed only during the First World War (Engelhardt 1897:100). Lack of organization made it impossible for Russian fishermen to implement new developments like steel ships, steam engines and trawling. The Norwegians especially profited from this: they could catch their fish off the Russian coast and sell it there as well. Of course the Russians tried to change the situation. In 1866 the governor of Arkhangel’sk prohibited the storing of goods by Norwegian fishermen on the Russian coast (Meyer 1937:241), but only from 1885 onwards did a small steamer, the Murman, begin to enforce this measure, while at the same time informing Russian fishing boats about the migration of fish and other relevant matters. In 1894 this surveillance was increased by a naval cruiser (Engelhardt 1897:108–9). This was a reaction to the fact that in the late eighties the Norwegians began to hunt seals with steamers, which meant an increase in the

18 RUSSIAN POLICY IN THE FAR NORTH 1897–1917

scale of operations (Meyer 1937:248). The use of cruisers like the Naezdnik meant that the Russian position about its coastal waters became clearer. In 1897, in view of this difficult economic situation, a special committee was installed to further the development of the North. This committee was mostly concerned with fisheries and arranged things like insurance, rescue services, beacons and better communications with the mainland. There were also plans to develop shipping to the Yenisey. The executive organ of the committee was the Scientific Murman Expedition, led by N.M.Knipovich. Knipovich was a marine biologist who already had some experience with the fisheries in this area. The expedition was based in Aleksandrovsk (on the Murman coast) and had various ships at its disposal, among them the new research vessel Andrey Pervozvanny. Apart from studying the fish in the Barents Sea, Knipovich and his colleagues organized various services in the Murman area. Russia thus became one of the first countries to have special research ships, although the Norwegian Norske Nordhav expedition and the Dutch Willem Barents had had similar tasks (Breitfuss 1930:10). One of the major results of the Russian expedition was the discovery that the Barents Sea was well suited for trawling. This idea was taken up in the West and soon German and British trawlers appeared in Russian waters (Kiselev 1971:237). The Murman expedition remained in operation for about ten years, 1897–1907, but in the final years serious difficulties arose. Besides the installation of the committee and the Murman expedition, the Russian government took various other measures to ameliorate the situation in the North. It was decided to open a naval port on the Murman coast, which could serve as the core of administrative organization in that area. Such a port would have the advantage of not becoming icebound in winter, owing to the Gulf Stream. Construction of this harbour, which was called Aleksandrovsk, began in 1897. A novelty was the fact that the settlement had a dynamo driven by water power, so that electric light was available during the polar night. In 1899 the local administration, which until then had been situated in Kola, was moved to Aleksandrovsk. The warship Svetlana and the icebreaker Yermak were to be based there. The correspondent of Petermanns Mitteilungen was suitably impressed by the creation of such a settlement in a previously uninhabited area and made comparisons with the founding of St Petersburg by Peter the Great (Immanuel 1899:145). Local shipping also received attention. The only shipping company in the area was heavily subsidized, so that in fact it had become state owned. Use of the Kara Route was also stimulated; this seaway through the Kara Sea to the Yenisey seemed to offer many advantages. As early as the fifteenth century Russian hunters and fishers had used it, until it was forbidden by Tsar Michael, as we have seen. After that, the route was forgotten until the nineteenth century, when some more voyages were made. The first of these, by Pakhtusov in 1832 and P.P. Kruzenshtern in 1862, were unsuccessful. Only in 1874 did the British captain Joseph Wiggins succeed in reaching the mouth of the Yenisey (Johnson 1907). This trip was repeated the next year by A.E.Nordenskiölld in a Norwegian fishing boat. In order to prove that it could be done with larger ships, Nordenskiöld repeated this voyage in a steamship in 1876. After that, commercial exploitation began on a very small scale by Russians, Germans and English. The Germans gave up around 1884.

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Wiggins, who had founded his own shipping company, continued for some time, but his enterprise was not very profitable. Sergey Witte, who had become Minister of Finance in 1892, decided that the Kara Route could in principle be used to help build the trans-Siberian railway. After its completion, the route could be used as a feeder line to the transcontinental railway. Witte chartered Wiggins’ company to take a number of river barges by sea to the Yenisey, a difficult enterprise which ended well. At the same time Wiggins brought rails to Krasnoyarsk. Thus it was possible to start building the railway from Krasnoyarsk as well, instead of having to work strictly from the West to the East. This speeded up construction considerably. In addition to giving orders to shipping companies in the North, Witte asked the Russian navy to chart the mouth of the Yenisey to facilitate navigation. The mapping had been recommended by Admiral Makarov, who had made a voyage of inspection to the area in 1897. Makarov had suggested expansion of the Kara Route to Witte in order to allow the financing of the Yermak. In reply, Witte had sent Makarov on a fact-finding mission. Notwithstanding the fact that Wiggins’ company was in bad shape, the journey strengthened Makarov in his conviction about the feasibility of commercial shipping over the Kara Sea Route. Wiggins’ enterprise had two failings. First, it suffered from heavy insurance costs. Second, it only imported and returned in ballast. The first problem could be remedied by better exploration of the Kara Sea and the Yenisey, thus making navigation safer. That was the reason for Witte’s request to the navy to chart the Kara Route. Within the framework of the Hydrographical Service Makarov organized an expedition which obtained a special vessel, the Pakhtusov, to do the charting (Makarov 1943: 69). However, the problem of the exports was not solved, since the committee for the development of the Russian North failed to organize a regular shipping line between Arkhangel’sk and the Yenisey. The war with Japan stimulated further development of the Kara Route. As the trans-Siberian railway was overburdened with military transports, ships were sent over the Yenisey to relieve it. The biggest Kara expedition so far was mounted, consisting of seven ships and ten lighters as well as the Yermak (Armstrong 1952: 137, 173–81). Although successful, it remained no more than a one-off event. Not until 1910 was a new attempt made, this time by a Norwegian-British shipping company. Its economic prospects seemed better, since it solved the export problem by shipping Siberian timber. This company received some support from the government, which hoped thus to encourage the participation of Russian ships. The support consisted of the installation of radio stations along the route, which could inform ships about the ice conditions in the Kara Sea and near Novaya Zemlya. Such stations dovetailed with the plan to have the whole of the passage available for strategic purposes. However, the stations did not stimulate sufficient trade via the Kara Sea and the Norwegian company ceased functioning in 1916 (Lied 1960). To sum up, the influence of foreign exploration in the nineteenth century, and the advancing of Norwegian fishermen in the West and American whalers in the East, forced Russia to follow a more active Arctic policy, which made her claims in the Arctic more explicit The most important reason for this delineation of Russian sovereignty was concern about Russia’s strategic position.

20 RUSSIAN POLICY IN THE FAR NORTH 1897–1917

The Norwegian eastward advance in particular wom’ed the Russian government and led it to stimulate the economy in Northem Russia, for which new and better communications were made, a port, Aleksandrovsk, was founded, and supporting measures were taken for the fisheries. Still, most Russian activity was aimed at keeping out the Norwegians. Warships like the Naezdnik or the Bakan were sent to control the area. This proved a successful policy, since, for example, Novaya Zemlya was kept for the Russians. In other respects too the Russian policy proved successful. In the case of Spitsbergen it was made clear that Russia had to take part in the negotiations. As to the other islands in the Northern Ice Sea, the note diplomatique of 1916 made clear exactly what was considered Russian territory. It is therefore not surprising that a French lawyer in 1908 spoke of the expansion of Russian sovereignty in the Ice Sea (Vaultrin 1908:404). It should be pointed out, however, that this expansion was only marginal. Something had been done to protect ancient rights, but great impressive successes in the field of exploration had not been made. The Russian North remained a large, empty area. But at least it was indisputably Russian.

2 Soviet sovereignty in the Arctic and the advent of flying 1917–32

ARCTIC FLYING AND ITS LEGAL CONSEQUENCES By the beginning of the twentieth century a great deal more was known about the Arctic, and interest had increased accordingly. A beginning was even made with the political division of the area. The initial terra nullius concept was replaced by other ideas, now that fisheries, mining and radio stations began to mark national borders. Flying reinforced this development by opening areas which had been out of reach so far to exploration and exploitation. To soar over the craggy pack ice like a sea gull, instead of plodding every mile on foot, had been a dream of many polar travellers. Incredibly, this dream was realized within the span of a few decades. In 1897 Salomon Andrée had tried to reach the North Pole by balloon. His expedition vanished into thin air, until in 1930 the remains were found on the easternmost island of Spitsbergen, White Island (Andrée 1930). The advent of the airship offered a new chance. In 1909 Walter Wellman reached a point 60 miles north of Spitsbergen. The rapid development of aviation in the First World War made it possible even to fly over the Pole. In 1919 the German Walter Bruns proposed the development of a trans-Arctic air route. In 1922 Amundsen began his attempts to reach the North Pole by air, and he succeeded in 1926 with the Norge, an Italian-built airship. That same year the American Richard Byrd achieved something similar with a Fokker air plane. These flights attracted political attention to the North Pole. In the first place it now became possible to discover land in the Arctic Ocean in places which could hardly be reached by dogsled and not at all by ship. Second, there was the possibility of the trans-Arctic air route that Bruns had proposed. Such a route would have great strategic and economic consequences. Third, flying made it possible, at least in legal theory, to administer an area in which nobody actually lived. Colonization has already been mentioned as the best possible claim to an area, since this amounts to effective occupation. Now, aceording to some authors, effective occupation could be replaced by domination from the air. This would allow governments to control large uninhabitable areas without excessive cost. Consequently, the polar regions received new attention. This revaluation anticipated factual developments. Once a trans-Arctic route had been realized, there would be a need for meteorological stations, airfields and bases from which rescue expeditions could be undertaken. Nevertheless, various small Arctic islands were suddenly regarded as

22 THE SOVIET ARCTIC

being strategically important. This caused an increase in Arctic exploration, a clear example of which were the Macmillan expeditions, during which Richard Byrd made his first polar flights (Dinwoodie 1972). Byrd was later to be the first to reach the South Pole by air. At the same time, existing political conflicts over polar lands worsened. As we saw, the Bear Island affair in 1898 had blown over. But when Ostrov Vrangelya was occupied in 1921, this caused an international incident, as will be seen. A political solution for this sharpening of international discord was sought by international lawyers such as R.Dollot. Equally, attention was paid to the idea of the Canadian senator, P.Poirier, to divide the Pole into sectors according to meridians. Another difficulty was the status of pack ice. Was the ice-covered part of the Arctic Ocean under state control, or did it belong to the high seas? To the Russian government this increase in political tension in the Arctic signified another foreign threat to its polar territories. Again Russian sovereignty in this area had to be defended. CANADA’S CHOICE BETWEEN SECTOR THEORY AND EFFECTIVE OCCUPATION: STEFANSSON OCCUPIES OSTROV VRANGELYA One of the first questions in which the influence of flying on polar exploration made itself visible concerned Ostrov Vrangelya. In 1921 some Canadian explorers claimed it for the British Crown because of its strategic value to air traffic. Ostrov Vrangelya has an extremely complicated history of discovery. The first to notice the island was H.Kellett, commander of HMS Herald in 1849. The existence of the island, however, had already been suspected by F.von Wrangel, a Russian explorer, who had searched for it in vain. Thomas Long, the leader of an American expedition which saw the island in 1867, named it after Wrangel. The first to land on it was a whaling captain, G.L.Hooper, in 1881, who claimed it for the United States (Hooper 1956). The first Russians to set foot on the island belonged to the crews of the Taymyr and Vaygach who put up a beacon there in 1911. This makes the island a typical example to demonstrate the legal flaws of the term discovery. Who was the real discoverer, the man who saw it first, the man who landed first or maybe the man who first built a beacon on it? To complicate matters even more, in 1914 survivors of the Canadian Karluk expedition had landed on the island and remained there for six months. Did this mean that Canada could claim the island because of that? Vilhjalmur Stefansson thought that Canada could. This Canadian of Icelandic descent, who was to be one of the main actors in the Ostrov Vrangelya incident, had become one of Canada’s most distinguished polar travellers thanks to two long expeditions, 1908–12 and 1913–18. During the first expedition an Inuit tribe was found that had never seen white men before. The second expedition dis covered a number of large islands in the Canadian archipelago. Since his return in 1918 the explorer had worked on the question of how Canada could strengthen its claims to the islands he had discovered, while at the same time considering the possible influence of flying on Arctic exploration and exploitation.

SOVIET SOVEREIGNTY IN THE ARCTIC AND FLYING 23

Poirier’s arguments for sectorial division did not convince Stefansson. According to Stefansson the sector principle boiled down to that of contiguity. This principle had been invoked by the Russian government in their memorandum of 1916, in which it claimed various Arctic islands because of their position close to the Russian mainland. Such reasoning could be used only at a time when there were no other conflicting claims (Stefansson 1925:70). Now that flying had increased the value of these areas, the only reliable means of annexing Arctic lands was effective occupation. Stefansson had reached the original conclusion that the idea of contiguity stemmed from the use of the Mercator projection for world maps, because on a Mercator map Ostrov Vrangelya was to be found between Siberia and the margin of the map, while Canada was to the other side of the map. This gave the impression that Ostrov Vrangelya was close to Russia, though the fact that the world is round makes Ostrov Vrangelya midway between Siberia and Alaska (ibid.: 10). The implications of Stefansson’s reasoning for Canada were tremendous, because if contiguity or the sector theory were not acceptable ways of claiming islands on the Canadian coast, then this meant that effective occupation of these islands was unavoidable. This would be an extremely difficult and costly undertaking. Stefansson, who was convinced that the Arctic held great opportunities, did not consider this a disadvantage. In one of his books, The Friendly Arctic, he asserted that in the future the Arctic regions would turn out to be far more inhabitable than was considered possible at the time. The idea that the polar areas were dreary deserts would change fundamentally. The American prairie had once been considered impossible to inhabit. Another reason why increased population of the Arctic was not such a bad idea was its growing strategic importance. The North Pole would become a bridge, so to speak, between continents. Ceding Spitsbergen to Norway had been a serious mistake. Ostrov Vrangelya was another example of a contended area of which Canada must not let go. Stefansson made his famous comparison between the Falklands and Ostrov Vrangelya, saying that what the Falklands were to schooners, Ostrov Vrangelya would become to airships (Stefansson 1921). Stefansson approached the Canadian premier, Arthur Meighen, with the suggestion of occupying Ostrov Vrangelya. Initially, Meighen was interested in the project, but he renounced it later because his civil servants saw little strategic advantage in possessing that island. Meighen himself preferred a new expedition to the islands that Stefansson had recently discovered, to confirm Canadian claims. Clearly, Meighen acknowledged the importance of this question to Canada. In 1905 an official report had concluded that Canada’s claim to its Arctic archipelago was extremely thin (King 1905). Although many discoveries in the area had been made by British explorers, these had never obtained legal recognition. What would happen if foreign expeditions were to discover land in that area? For instance, Otto Sverdmp’s Fram expedition (1899–1902) had discovered the Axel Heiberg and Ringness Islands. Theoretically, Norway was more entitled to them than Canada. These considerations had been in the back of Poirier’s mind when he explained his sector theory to the Senate in 1907. Like Russia, Canada feared foreign exploration of its huge Arctic lands, the political consequences of which were as yet unclear. Poirier’s theory seemed the simplest solution to this problem, although oddly enough Canada did not accept it immediately. Poirier’s motion to stake a sector claim was postponed sine die and in 1921 Canada showed its interest

24 THE SOVIET ARCTIC

in Ostrov Vrangelya, which was an island not even in the proposed Alaskan sector but still further away. Nevertheless, Stefansson was convinced that Canada had rights to Ostrov Vrangelya because of the Karluk incident. In 1913 Stefansson had led an expedition on the schooner Karluk to search for land in the Beaufort Sea. During a hunting trip Stefansson and some of his men became separated from the ship, which was then beset by the ice, carried away and finally crushed near Ostrov Vrangelya, where the survivors sought refuge and were forced to winter. In August 1914 an attempt by Russian icebreakers to evacuate them failed, but in September a schooner was more fortunate (Starokadomskiy 1976:186–90; Hunt 1979:3–11; McKinlay 1977; Bartlett 1916). When Meighen failed to accept his proposals, Stefansson himself organized an expedition to annex the island. To what extent it is true that Stefansson was inspired by considerations of profit, as has been suggested, is irrelevant. Exclusive rights to exploitation of the island were said to have played a role. By all accounts, it is clear that the Canadian government did not take a patently negative stance towards Stefansson’s plans, although Stefansson’s expedition clearly conflicted with the sector theory. Indeed, on 12 May 1922 the Mackenzie King government (Meighen had been defeated at the elections) declared Ostrov Vrangelya to be part of Canada (Diubaldo 1967:210). This declaration was immediately followed by Russian and American protests, which caused the Canadian government to turn the problem over to London, because of its importance to the whole Empire. The British Admiralty and the Air Ministry immediately accepted Stefansson’s logic (ibid.: 218– 19). However, since the Baldwin government was in the process of recognizing Soviet Russia and negotiating a trade agreement, the problem appeared at the wrong moment. On 25 May 1923 the Russians again protested against the Canadian presence on Ostrov Vrangelya. To avoid political problems, the British government stated that Stefansson had acted on a private basis, without government support (ibid.: 220). Transferring the problem to the British government had delivered Canada from a tricky affair, as the Canadian historian Diubaldo pointed out The affair did not jeopardize the sector theory, even if Stefansson has since been regarded as an adventurer who might have changed Canada’s Arctic policy in a fundamental way (ibid.: 203). Nevertheless, Stefansson would have had no chance whalsoever if the sector theory had been adhered to consistently from the beginning. The fact that Stefansson obtained political support for his undertaking showed that even the Canadian government was doubtful of its validity. At no time has the Canadian government entrusted the safety of its possessions in the Arctic solely to the sector theory. The creation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which set up police stations in the far North, shows that within the limits of its sector Canada pursued a certain amount of effective occupation. The Canadian occupation of Ostrov Vrangelya was an unhappy event not only from the political point of view. Out of five people whom Stefansson had put onto the island, only one, an Inuit seamstress, remained alive in 1923. One had died of scurvy, while three disappeared in an attempt to reach the Siberian mainland over the pack ice. This tragic turn of events incited a wave of criticism, directed at Stefansson and the Canadian government.

SOVIET SOVEREIGNTY IN THE ARCTIC AND FLYING 25

From a Russian point of view the Canadian occupation of Ostrov Vrangelya signified a new threat in the Arctic. The Soviet government which had taken over power in 1917 reacted in the same spirit as its predecessor. The Siberian coast was still regarded as being penetrated by foreigners, who mercilessly exploited the Chukchis and ignored Russian sovereignty (Shvede 1923; Berg 1923). Ostrov Vrangelya was considered Russian property and its occupation was protested against The Soviet Union pointed to the conference of 1867 and the declaration of 1916 in which the Russian state’s borders towards the North had been described. Like its predecessor, the Soviet Union saw East Siberia as a part of its territory that was threatened by numerous foreigners, since every year Canadian and American schooners visited the shores of Kamchatka and Chukotka, where they exploited the local population or hunted down rare animals. The danger of foreign annexation of these lands loomed large. After a governmental protest failed to produce the desired result, the Soviets decided to take action, which was no simple matter (VVS 1925). The Stavropol, the ship that since the expedition of the Taymyr and the Vaygach regularly went to the Kolyma, returned home in 1923 after a forced wintering and was in no state for a new trip to the East Siberian Sea (Belov 1956b: 231). An attempt to force an American ship to take a few Soviet soldiers as it went to relieve and provision the Stefansson expedition was ignored by her captain (Stefansson 1925:160). Finally in the spring of 1924 the former port icebreaker Nadezhny was turned into a gunboat and sent to Ostrov Vrangelya as Krasny Oktyabr’. The ship was commanded by B.V.Davydov, who had been commander of the Taymyr from 1910 to 1912. The icebreaker reached the island on 19 August The last survivor of the Stefansson expedition had meanwhile been replaced by a number of Canadian Inuit and an American. The Soviets hoisted their flag on the island, arrested the people and took them to Vladivostok. On the return voyage the ship almost remained stuck in the ice, but finally managed to reach her home port safely. The American died of pneumonia and the Inuit were repatriated by the Red Cross. Even if no shot was fired during the whole undertaking, it was the first time that an Arctic conflict about sovereignty had been solved manu militari. On a diplomatic level the affair had been solved on 6 August, when the British government during the negotiations with the Soviet Union had declared not to lay any claim to Ostrov Vrangelya (Fischer 1960:362). The Ostrov Vrangelya affair was typically a case in which prospects of aviation played an important role. Stefansson expected that an increase in Arctic flying would replace any existing political division by one based on effective occupation. That would have meant that increased control of the Arctic lands was needed as soon as possible. Stefansson was not alone in thinking this. In Canada the state budget for the administration of these areas increased rapidly (Lakhtin 1928:20). In the Soviet Union as well it was realized that sovereignty in the Arctic needed more attention, which had prompted the Krasny Oktyabr’ expedition. SHENANDOAH: THE UNITED STATES REJECT A SECTORIAL DIVISION A similar revival of interest in the Arctic lands appeared in the United States, once the value of a trans-Arctic roule had become apparent. Stefansson’s ideas on the

26 THE SOVIET ARCTIC

Arctic Ocean as a new Mediterranean held great fascination for people like Rear Admiral W.A.Moffet, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics. Moffet was greatly impressed by Stefansson’s plans and in May 1923 asked him to appear before a board of experts to explain his ideas (Diubaldo 1967:216). Soon afterwards the American Rear Admiral said in a speech on radio that plans existed to send the airship Shenandoah to the North Pole in 1924 (Robinson 1973:196). On 19 January the US Secretary of the Navy, Edwin Denby, declared that the Shenandoah was to explore the area north of Alaska. If the United States did not do so in 1924, another nation might discover land there, which would be unacceptable. Within forty-eight hours of this declaration a British proposal was launched to organize a conference about the division of the Arctic. The British ambassador in Washington, acting for Canada, requested from the American government more details about the voyage. The affair was very important to Canada because the Canadian title to various Arctic islands was still very ambiguous. Airship exploration might include parts of the Canadian North; this forced Canada to put its cards on the table. It was explained in Washington that because of its geographical position and the exploration done by Canadian expeditions, Canada possessed inalienable rights in the far North. To emphasize this, in 1924 a Canadian expedition was sent north in the Franklin to build some stations on Arctic islands. Canada had adopted the sector theory (Fauchille 1925:661–2). The advent of the airship meant that all sorts of lands had to be taken possession of in a hurry. This offered great advantages to a country like America, which, except for Alaska, lay far from the polar circle, but thanks to its aviation now had better chances of discovering unknown polar lands than did Canada or the Soviet Union, which did not have any airships. To counter this risk, several countries adopted the sector theory. By 30 July 1923 Great Britain had claimed two sectors in the Antarctic, based on its possession of the Falklands and New Zealand, by extending its Falkland sector to the South Pole and instituting the Ross dependency on Antarctica to the south of New Zealand. What stand did the United States take? There seems to be some uncertainty about this. Denby’s declaration of 19 January 1924 was considered by some as an American confirmation of the sectorial system, but others understood it differently. They believed Denby had meant that such claims would be valid under international law—that this would mean that the United States would lose their rights to Arctic islands discovered north of America by a foreign power and that this would be an unnecessary loss to the United States (Smedal 1930:117). Actually, a statement in support of the sector system would not fit in with the declaration of Secretary of State C.Hughes of 2 April 1924. In response to a question from Norway as to whether the United States intended to annex Wilkes Island, which had been discovered by an American in 1840, Hughes replied that discovery, together with formal occupation, was insufficient ground for annexation, unless it was followed by actual settlement (Foreign Relations of the United States 1924:519– 20). This clarified the American point of view, in which the sectorial system could not be accepted unless there had been a sufficient degree of colonization. This implied that America was unwilling to abide by the sectorial system, to the dismay of the Soviet Union. In the same year that the Krasny Oktyabr hoisted a Soviet flag on Ostrov Vrangelya, the crew of an American ship, Stars and Stripes, did the same on Ostrov Geral’d. It became necessary to delineate the borders of

SOVIET SOVEREIGNTY IN THE ARCTIC AND FLYING 27

the Soviet Union again. On 30 June 1924 a law was passed in the Soviet Union ‘about the administration of the islands of the Arctic Ocean’. (Sobranie Uzakoneniya 1924 no. 59, st. 582; Zinger 1935:78). On November 4 of that year the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs sent a memorandum to Secretary of State Hughes (Lakhtin 1928: app. II). The memorandum, which was sent to other countries as well, condemned the violations of Soviet territory and pointed to the declaration of 1916, which had been confirmed by the Soviets. The islands mentioned in this declaration still belonged to the Soviet Union, because of their situation and because they were ‘le continuation septentrionale du plateau continental Sibérien’. The Soviet Union literally continued the policy of its predecessors, even to the extent of referring to the 1867 Convention of Washington, which had arranged the sale of Alaska. At this convention the border was redefined so as to follow the 168th meridian ‘which continued uninterruptedly into the Ice Sea’ (Miller 1928). In this convention the Soviet Union possessed the means to stem American expansion to the North. Canada followed the Russian example, although it declared its sector in a different way. In 1925 the American Macmillan expedition left for the Canadian archipelago, to look for the ‘Crocker Land’ Peary thought he had seen (Joerg 1930; Byrd 1925). During this expedition its chief pilot R.E.Byrd made several flights to look for undiscovered lands. This undertaking forced the Canadian government to take precautions. Immediately after the American press had announced Macmillan’s and Byrd’s intentions early in 1925, a special commission was formed in Ottawa which studied their plans and the implications for Canada. The commission also tried to find out what attitude Canada should adopt towards it It turned out that no unanimity about the sector existed. While the Department of the Interior wanted an extensive interpretation of the sector theory, the Justice Department and the Foreign Office insisted on effective occupation because that would be more acceptable to the international community. Finally, a compromise was decided upon, which contained elements of both. While to the outside world the sector theory would be maintained, Canada would attempt to achieve the highest possible degree of effective occupation. In this way it would be obvious to all concerned that Canada was really trying to comply with the standard of international law. The sector theory would not become a law but could be enacted in another way. In May 1924 the Canadian parliament accepted an amendment to its law on the Northwest Territories, which made exploring in the Canadian North subject to a licence. The minister responsible explained this amendment by saying that Canada claimed a sector up to the North Pole. This legal construction allowed Canada to claim a sector, without incorporating its principle in law. At the same time, effective occupation of Ellesmere Island, where Byrd’s expedition operated, was emphasized by the sending of a Coast Guard vessel, the Arctic, to build a Royal Canadian Mounted Police post on the island. This assured effective occupation by Canada (Dinwoodie 1972:55–8).

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NO THEORETICAL ALTERNATIVES TO THE SECTOR THEORY Thus the advent of flying in the Arctic did not cause what Stefansson had expected, namely the disappearance of the sector theory. On the contrary, it showed the need for a theory that allowed a division of the Arctic without the need for large-scale investment. Legal specialists worked hard to develop such a theory. The exploitation of Spitsbergen had been an important incentive to develop theoretical thinking, as had been Peary’s expedition to the North Pole in 1908–9. Now this development was continued. Paul Fauchille discussed it in his handbook on international law which appeared in 1925. This French lawyer distinguished between régions arctiques and régions polaires. The former bordered on the polar circle and could be occupied effectively, like, for example, Spitsbergen. The régions polaires were in the middle of the Arctic and consisted of ice. This ice might be used for exploitation, but not for settlement. Therefore there could be no annexation, so that these regions had to remain in communal possession of those nations that were interested. The Frenchman proposed a division of the régions polaires by continent, after the example of the Monroe Doctrine. On the basis of this doctrine, America could prohibit any European power from acquiring lands in the American part of the Pole. A similar arrangement should be made for the other continents, where the countries within each continent should jointly exploit their part of the Arctic. The reason for this elaborate system was Fauchille’s objection to Poirier’s sector system, which implied that only countries on the polar circle could have sectors in the Arctic (Fauchille 1925:651–63). Others tried to incorporate the sector theory in international law. A British intemational lawyer, M.F.Lindley, tried to link the sector theory to hinterland theories. This type of theory had appeared when countries began to claim the hinterlands of coastal areas which they had discovered in Africa. The polar sector should be seen as a similar type of hinterland. Since, according to Lindley, the hinterland principle could be used only in bilateral agreements, a sectorial division too could only be accepted by an international conference (Lindley 1926: ch. 2, 235). A solution of this kind was chosen by D.Hunter Miller. To him, the division in sectors appeared highly convenient for dividing the undiscovered area between the three Arctic superpowers of Canada, the United States and the Soviet Union. The rest of the world could do little but accept this division. Among the three Arctic superpowers, such a division could be based on the treaties about the sale of Alaska in 1867 and about the Bering Sea in 1825, in which Russia, Great Britain and America were all three involved. In these treaties borders were designated by meridians that ‘disappeared in the icy seas’ or ‘ended in the icy seas’. As to effective occupation Miller believed aircraft patrols and radio stations to be sufficient, which he could argue by pointing to another American lawyer who in 1896 had stated that the amount of occupation should be ‘reasonable’ (Miller 1925).

SOVIET SOVEREIGNTY IN THE ARCTIC AND FLYING 29

NORGE: THE SOVIET UNION ADOPTS THE SECTOR THEORY The development of air expeditions overtook legal theory. After the failure of his early attempts to reach the North Pole by air, Amundsen, during test flights in Italy, had met the Italian airship designer Umberto Nobile. Their collaboration led to the polar flight of 1926, when Ellsworth, Amundsen and Nobile flew the airship Norge from Spitsbergen over the Pole to Nome in Alaska. This first trans-Arctic flight was a complete success except for one thing, namely that no land was discovered. The North Pole turned out to be in a wide, ice-covered sea. To Roald Amundsen, officially empowered to claim land for Norway, this must have been a disappointment. Others, such as the Canadian government expert who explained that it was to Canada’s advantage that there should be no land between the Pole and Canada (Dinwoodie 1972:64), were relieved. No new and expensive Canadian expeditions were needed. The Detroit Arctic Air Expedition of 1926 and 1927 equally failed to yield any results in this respect. This expedition flew northward from Point Barrow on the Alaskan coast, hoping to sight land. Its leader, Hubert Wilkins, had originally planned to use a base on Russian soil but had to abandon his plan in view of the Russian distrust. Neither did Richard Byrd’s flight from Spitsbergen to the North Pole in 1926 produce any newly discovered land (Wilkins 1928). This lack of discoveries had not been expected. After studying the tides in the Arctic seas, an American scientist, Harris, had concluded that there could still be land in the Arctic. The possession of such a land near the North Pole would be of enormous strategic importance. Therefore, until 1926, the increased frequency of air expeditions in the Arctic was accompanied by a sharper delineation of spheres of influence in the Arctic. The difficulty was that the countries with the bestdeveloped aviation, such as the United States, Germany and Italy, had better chances of discovering such a land near the Pole than Canada or the Soviet Union, to whom it would be vital that such an island should not fall into foreign hands. Soviet aviation at the time was no match for that of the West In 1925 two Russians flew a German-built hydroplane near Novaya Zemlya; this amounted to little more than a repetition of the flights of Yan Nagursky in 1914. Neither did the Soviet Union possess airships suitable for Arctic operations. Therefore the Soviet Union had little or no capacity to explore its sector. Early in 1926 no less than four foreign air expeditions planned to fly in the Arctic. Apart from Amundsen and Wilkins, Byrd was also preparing such an expedition. Finally, Ogden and Weed were going to look for land north of Alaska. Not all of these expeditions materialized, but they made a strong enough impression for a Soviet aviation monthly to speak of a ‘Polar Air Expedition Fever’ (Bobrov 1926). This fever was probably the reason why the Soviet Union in 1926 accepted the sector theory. Contrary to what happened in Canada, the sectorial principle became part of the Soviet Union’s written law, by a decree of the Central Executive Committee. By this decree of 15 April a sector belonged to the Soviet Union. It was also stated explicitly that it made no difference whether the islands had already been discovered. The sector was described as the area between 32°4'5" East and 168° 49'30" West. The border between Siberia and Alaska remained the same as in 1867, being a line between the Ratmanov and Kruzenshtern Islands. In an interview in

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Izvestiya N.P.Gorbunov, chargé d’affaires of the Soviet of People’s Commissars, explained that the law was an extension of the 1924 memorandum, clarifying the borders of the European side of the Soviet Union and transferring its northern border to the North Pole. Clearly, the decree was meant to exclude annexation of Arctic lands by other states. A very dubious element was the claim to undiscovered land, clearly a blank cheque that was never cashed. The year 1926 ended without the discovery of new land near the Pole. The Soviet claim to a sector was certainly not unique. Maxim Litvinov, at the time Commissar of Foreign Affairs, notified the new law in a memorandum, in which he explained the need for it by referring to ‘the universal tendency’ since the turn of the century to arrange the legal status of polar areas. This had been done now by the Soviet Union for the area ‘adjacente aux côtes septentrionales de l’ Union’. Thus, the Soviet Union saw itself conforming to a tendency to claim sectors, just as England (1908,1917) and France (1924) had done in the Antarctic. A Russian exile with close ties to the Soviet Union, L.Breitfuss, concluded that the Soviet Union had followed the British example in the Antarctic (Breitfuss 1927:1). TRANS-ARCTIC AIR ROUTES: THE SECTOR BECOMES A ‘HISTORICAL REALITY’ Thus the sector theory was first adopted in the Arctic between 1924 and 1926, as a consequence of the rapid development of flying and the possibility of finding undiscovered land near the Pole. After 1926, it was obvious that no large or important lands were to be found in the Arctic, probably to the relief of Canada and the USSR. However, the absence of new lands did not mean a loss of interest in the area, because the possibility of a trans-Arctic air route remained, appearing even more promising after the flights by Amundsen and others. This route would be not only shorter, but also climatologically more favourable than a route across the stormy Atlantic. The absence of mountains in the Arctic Ocean meant that airships could fly at their ideal altitude of a few hundred metres, without being forced to gain height because of mountain ranges (Breitfuss 1928:25). Much remained to be done before a regular airline could begin. The most advanced airships were built in Germany, where Count von Zeppelin’s pioneering work had been feverishly developed during the First World War. The Zeppelin had turned out to be a formidable means of war and the Versailles peace treaty forbade the construction of these early strategic bombers. This would have excluded Germany from taking part in the development of a polar route after 1918, but it was possible to avoid this by founding an international organization for flying in the Arctic. By making F.Nansen, an internationally highly respected explorer, president of Aeroarctic (as this organization was called), Germany’s participation became acceptable to other nations. The involvement of the experienced German airshipbuilding industry made the realization of a trans-Arctic air route much more likely. Aeroarctic’s international character made the organization interesting also to the Soviet Union, which itself did not possess any large airships. The Soviet Union was determined to take part in the future airline over the Pole, and in the autumn of 1926 it officially joined the organization (Lakhtin 1928:11).

SOVIET SOVEREIGNTY IN THE ARCTIC AND FLYING 31

The prospect of a trans-Arctic airline brought new legal problems, which were discussed in January 1927 in an article about these problems published by Breitfuss (Breitfuss 1927:1). An airline over the Pole would need directionfinding to make reliable navigation possible, since the compass cannot be relied upon in the Arctic. Direction-finding stations would have to be coordinated. To settle this kind of problem, Breitfuss suggested extending the sectorial division over sea as well as over land. The Russian agreed that the sector system was an excellent way to extend sovereignty over diseovered as well as undiscovered areas, as the law of 1926 had done; but in view of the development of air routes, he suggested that the sectorowning state should be given sovereignty over the sea and the ice as well, and thus control the airspace above it. Breitfuss, who in 1907 had taken part in a commission that determined the precise extent of Russia’s territorial waters, connected the status of territorial waters with the rights a country should possess in its sector. He saw no problem in extending the status of territorial waters to large areas. For example, Hudson Bay was also a large area and nevertheless completely within Canadian territorial waters. The responsibilities of a sector-owning state were the supervision of hunting, fishing and mining as well as the organization of air and radio traffic. Breitfuss suggested an international conference on this subject. Articles like these show us that the idea of a trans- Arctic route brought about a further extension of state sovereignty in the Arctic. However, an extension of state sovereignty over sea areas was not covered by the Soviet decree of 1926, since this confined itself to land within the sector. Among the Soviet lawyers who tried to reinterpret the law in such a fashion as to make it cover sea as well as land were E.A.Korovin and S.V.Sigrist. Sigrist especially was concerned about problems stemming from undefined sovereignty in the Arctic. For instance, what would be the status of a plane that landed on the ice? To avoid such difficulties, Sigrist suggested that the decree of 1926 should be explained in the spirit of the law (Sigrist 1928). A completely different approach was followed by V.L.Lakhtin in 1928. Lakhtin put the sector question into a Marxist-Leninist framework, which neither Sigrist nor Korovin had done. According to Lakhtin an imperialist battle had begun over the possession of a trans-Arctic route, after the technical feasibility of such a route had been shown by Amundsen and Byrd. The trans-Arctic route was imagined to be something like a Suez Canal for planes. Imperialist nations would want to have exclusive control of the route, so rivalry over the possession of the known polar lands would increase. Imperialism of any kind was foreign to the Soviet Union, but because of its extremely long border in the polar area, the country still had obvious interests there, such as the defence against possible transArctic attack and the need for economic development of its northern coasts. Neither could the Soviet Union accept that imperialist states should deny it the use of a trans-Arctic airline. For these reasons the Soviet Union had to defend its rights in the Arctic. Lakhtin used a completely different way of thinking from Sigrist and Korovin. To him, the main issue was not to stop foreign penetration of the Soviet North, but to defend the Soviet Union against imperialist attacks. This different point of view was caused by internal political changes in the Soviet Union. By 1928 Stalin had won the struggle for the leadership and begun to act as the sole ruler, fundamentally changing policy. The New Economic Policy (NEP) was abandoned,

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many officials were sacked, and a new mentality seized the country. From now on, the Russians would take the initiative, and the Arctic was a clear example of that. The previous attitude of observing the rules of international law in the Arctic was exchanged for a doctrine of encirclement, of class struggle and war. There would be no international conferences where the Soviet Union would have the disadvantage of being the only communist nation. From a legal point of view, Lakhtin offered two new ideas, the first of which was that the sector theory was actually already being applied. Owing to the harshness of the climate effective occupation in the Arctic had so far been unsuccessful everywhere. Nevertheless sovereignty in these areas had been claimed by the adjoining states. It was not effective occupation that decided control in the Arctic, but relative geographical situation. The latter was described by Lakhtin as ‘rayon tyagoteniya’ translated in the English version of his article as ‘region of attraction’ (Lakhtin 1930). Lakhtin meant that the closer a country was to the Pole, the more rights it had in the Arctic. This was, of course, little more than the oldfashioned notion of contiguity. The only new aspect was the idea that this principle was already being applied in practice. In the Arctic there were clearly spheres of influence which were areas that had not been effectively occupied but were none the less under the control of a certain country. Thus, Spitsbergen was in the Norwegian sphere of influence, Canada could claim its Arctic archipelago, from which it had ousted Norwegian and Danish trespassers; the Americans paid everincreasing attention to Alaska. Denby’s statement about the planned flight of the Shenandoah could be fitted into this framework. Now, the same principle applied to the Soviet Union, since the Soviets occupied their polar regions no less intensively than the Canadians theirs. Also, Russians had discovered most of the islands in their sector, exceptions being Ostrov Vrangelya and Zemlya FrantsaIosifa. Neither Canada nor the Soviet Union had succeeded in effectively occupying the polar areas because of the climate. This did not impair their control over these areas. The same principle had been used by the British in 1908 in claiming a sector in the Antarctic because the Falklands were British. Sovereignty in the polar areas clearly stemmed from lands bordering on the Pole (Lakhtin 1928: 23). This approach meant that the history of exploration became of consequence again. In Lakhtin’s interpretation, it was important that sovereignty over the adjoining Arctic lands had been held since time immemorial. Therefore Lakhtin pointed to the fact that Russians had made more discoveries in this area than foreigners had done. Equally it can be seen what grudges could be held against the Antarctic sectorial division even if Lakhtin did not say so explicitly. For example, it had been many years since the Falklands were used as a departing point for Antarctic expeditions, which made the link between state territory and the sector very weak, if history was considered the determining factor. The second new idea Lakhtin offered was a neat division of the Arctic into various legal categories. If the sector did factually exist, then all land, discovered or not, was territory belonging to a state. Ice, to the extent that it can be owned, also belongs to state territory. For example, if it is permanently frozen to land, it is subject to ownership. But the status of sea can be differentiated, by looking at its political geography. Much of the water that becomes ice-free in summer belongs to the Soviet Union’s internal waters and thus is also included in state territory.

SOVIET SOVEREIGNTY IN THE ARCTIC AND FLYING 33

Examples of these are the mouth of the Ob’, the White Sea and the Kara Sea. Next to these internal waters there were the territorial waters, over which the Soviet Union still had full control. Finally, one category remained, the high seas, the status of which was contested, according to Lakhtin. The main thing was that such waters too occurred within the sector, which gave them a position comparable with that of a mild form of territorial waters. Hunting and fishing would be controlled by the sector-owning state. The airspace also should be subject to state control, but the right of innocent passage remained. By enumerating all rights the Soviet Union could exert over the Arctic seas, Lakhtin achieved the same result as Breitfuss had wanted to reach by means of a conference, namely the actual extension of state control over the seas in the sector. Clearly the most remarkable of Lakhtin’s ideas was not his reaching the same conclusions as Sigrist, Korovin and Breitfuss, but his contention that the sector theory already functioned in practice. A conference would have no other task left than to settle details such as ascertaining the borders of sectors and to discuss the status of the high seas within ths sector. Thus the question of whether the sector had any basis in international law was avoided, because Lakhtin turned the sector into a historical reality. A question of a different order is what value should be attributed to Lakhtin’s article. One indication is that V.L.Lakhtin was not a government official, but a board member of OSOAVIAKHIM, an organization pledged to the furtherance of national defence, aviation and chemistry. Although closely involved with flying in the Arctic, he did not represent the views of the government and his article did not herald a change in the law. Nevertheless, his article was considered important enough for a special edition by the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and in 1930 an abridged English version appeared in the American Journal of International Law, which was no common occurrence. Perhaps Lakhtin’s article should be seen as an explanation of the 1926 sector decree. The Soviet Union was convinced of the justifiability of the sector, which it considered as the best guarantee for its interests, promising a safe northern border and a part in the transpolar route, if it should become a reality. A second important aspect of Lakhtin’s article was its great influence on later Soviet notions about the sector theory. Since Lakhtin the sector theory has no longer been considered as simply a convenient way of dividing the area round the Pole, but as the result of a historical process, the accumulation of all exploration and exploitation that the Russians ever undertook in the North. This causes the Russian sector to be much more closely connected to the Soviet Union than the Canadian sector to Canada, which interprets its sector as a pledge that this land will be developed in the near future. The reason for Lakhtin’s influence was its political character. In the Stalin period, it needed considerable courage to devise a new interpretation of political circumstances, so that most authors clung to the existing framework, expanding and confirming it. Once Arctic politics had been received within the framework of official political theory, deviating Marxist interpretations were out of the question.

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3 The Stalinization of Arctic exploration

THE KRASIN AFFAIR Lakhtin’s concern over imperialist attempts to annex Russian territory were justified to some extent by foreign polar expeditions in 1927 and 1928. In 1927 Hubert Wilkins had flown from Point Barrow in Alaska to a point in the Russian sector. The objective of this flight was to ascertain whether there might be land in the area between the course of the Fram (1893–6) and that of the Jeannette (1879), two ships which had been drifting with the pack ice. The drifting of these ships and the flight of the Norge in 1926 (see p. 29) drastically reduced the area in which land could be expected. Wilkins wanted to search some of the remaining area. On 29 March 1927 he flew with his pilot Eielson to a point (77°45’N, 175°E) in the East Siberian Sea where they landed on an icefloe. By means of an echo sounder (at the time a very sophisticated tool) Wilkins measured a depth of 5,440 metres, which meant there could be no land near. Nevertheless, it was beyond doubt that Wilkins had been consciously looking for land within the limits of the Soviet sector (Wilkins 1928: ch. 4,527). The Soviet Union had but a few expeditions to counterbalance this, such as G.D.Krasinsky’s flight from Chukotka to Ostrov Vrangelya in 1927 and the attempt in 1928 to fly along the northern coasts of the Soviet Union, a flight comparable with that made by Wilkins in 1928 from Point Barrow to Spitsbergen. The Soviet attempt of 1928 used a Dornier hydroplane which was given the ominous name of Sovetsky Sever (the Soviet North). It was an OSOAVIAKHIM initiative and was led by the same G.D.Krasinsky who had been responsible for the Krasny Oktyabr’. Sovetsky Sever was not a success, since the plane was destroyed in a gale near Kolyuchinskaya Guba at the beginning of the trip (Belov 1959:300). While Soviet air expeditions were ineffective, Italy came to the fore. After his successful flight with Amundsen, Umberto Nobile began the preparations for a second airship expedition, with the Italia. Where the task of the Norge had been limited to an overflight, the Italia was meant to search for land as well as to do scientific research connected with the development of an Arctic route (Nobile 1959:128; Nobile-Stolp 1984). These flights were going to take place both in the American part of the Arctic and in the Eurasiatic. It was still hoped in 1928 that somewhere near the Pole there would be an undiscovered island. Nobile intended to land people on such an island. Special equipment was assembled for this

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possibility, consisting of tents, radio and victuals (Nobile 1959:107). Thus Italy might not only discover land, but have people wintering on it as well. An obvious place to discover more land was Severnaya Zemlya, an archipelago which had only recently been discovered. How far it extended to the north still remained unknown, because these islands were extremely difficult to reach except by air. Clearly, the danger that Italy might be able to claim land within the Soviet sector had become real. The first flight of the Italia took place between 14 and 17 May 1928 and went from Spitsbergen to Severnaya Zemlya, while looking for Gillis Land, which was supposed to lie near Spitsbergen but did not exist. Severnaya Zemlya was not reached, and the Italia returned to Spitsbergen by way of Novaya Zemlya. A second flight led to the North Pole and scanned the area north of Canada, but no land was found there either. This flight began on 23 May and ended on 25 May when the airship vanished near Spitsbergen. The disappearance of the Italia caused great alarm. Radio stations over the world listened carefully for any life signs of the crew. Finally, on 4 June an amateur in a Russian village caught a message of distress. A rescue operation began and more regular radio contact was established. It turned out that on 25 May the airship for obscure reasons had begun losing height, until it hit the ice at full speed, which destroyed it. Nobile and several crew members remained wounded on the ice, while the airship’s envelope, still filled with gas and containing some of the crew, was carried away by the wind. Among the wreckage the survival outfit was found, meant for the group who were to land on a newly discovered island. This contained badly needed equipment, such as arms, food and a radio. Nobile was badly hurt in the crash. Three other survivors, the so-called Malmgren group, left the site of the accident in an attempt to walk back over the ice. The alarm over Nobile’s fate prompted a large-scale rescue operation, in which several countries took part The Norwegians and Swedes sent planes; so did the Italians. Amundsen rushed to help in a French hydroplane, but was killed in an accident. A Dutchman on Spitsbergen, Sjef van Dongen, who worked for a Dutch coal-mining company, attempted to reach Nobile by dogsled, but failed. Abandoning the attempt, he returned in a Finnish plane (Dongen 1928:188). But much to everyone’s amazement, it was the Soviet icebreaker Krasin that first reached Nobile, and the Malmgren group as well. Afterwards, the icebreaker remained for several weeks at Spitsbergen to look for missing crew members. Nobile’s rescue was surprising because it showed that the icebreaker could achieve much more than expected. This caused a revaluation of the importance of the icebreaker to polar exploration. Apart from this, it had become known from airship flights that the ice thickness near the Pole was far less than had been thought before. Open water had even been seen there. The Krasin expedition leader R.L.Samoylovich began once more to believe in the possibility of reaching the Pole by icebreaker (Samoylovich 1930b:348). This would offer an excellent opportunity for systematic research. The Krasin voyage proved to be a turning point for Soviet Arctic research. Before the Revolution, Arctic research was done mainly by the Hydrographic Department of the Navy, which sent out several cartographic expeditions. Then there had been the Murmansk biological station, which had been founded by a committee to support the economy of the European North. (Breitfuss 1925; Shokal’sky 1907).

THE STALINIZATION OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION 37

This organization had been mainly interested in fisheries but also, to a lesser extent, in shipping in the Kara and Barents Seas. Finally, there had been some private expeditions. Before 1917 some attention had been paid to questions of general exploration, because of the advantages a Northeast Passage might offer, but after 1917 all interest in long-range expeditions ceased. Instead, all energy was devoted to the exploration of the mainland and the fisheries, because natural resources were urgently needed to feed the Russian population. To help this, in 1920 the Northern Scientific Industrial Expedition was initiated by a decree of the presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy, at the time acting as a Ministry of Economic Affairs. SEVEKSPEDITSIYA, as the expedition was called, was assigned 100 million roubles, half of which arrived in banknotes, which to the amazement of expedition leader R.L.Samoylovich, were delivered in three horse-drawn carriages (Kiselev 1972:263). The activities of the expedition were to be limited to the European North. This meant that SEVEKSPEDITSIYA was in essence a continuation of the Murmansk biological station, which at the time occupied itself mostly with the study of fish and fishing techniques. In 1921 the Murmansk station was enlarged and reorganized into PLAVMORNIN, an abbreviation that stood for Floating Sea Research Institute. PLAVMORNIN was intended to study all Arctic seas, rivers and coasts of the RSFSR. It was given its own research vessel, the Persey (Treshnikov 1971:29; Kanevsky 1982c). Nevertheless, PLAVMORNIN still formed part of SEVEKSPEDITSIYA, which was technically a geological and biological organization interested in using the natural resources of the Soviet Union (Treshnikov 1971:34; Obruchev 1929). Only in 1925 was the expedition enlarged to include oceanographic and meteorological studies, while its name was changed to Institute for the Study of the North. But its activities were still centred on natural resources, such as minerals in the European North, fishing in the Barents Sea. An important expert—V.Yu.Vize, about whom much more will be said later was at the time employed in the Hydrographic Department of the Navy (Buynitsky 1954). In fact, this development of Arctic research was remarkable compared with general trends. Before 1917, some attention had been paid to questions of Arctic exploration in general, because of the need for a usable Northeast Passage, but after 1917 all energy was concentrated on the exploration of natural resources. Abroad, this was a period of rapid progress. Amundsen and Byrd made their first flights in the Arctic and Walther Bruns announced his plans for a transpolar route by Zeppelins. Airborne expeditions did more exploration in hours than conventional ones had done in years. In 1926 the first flights to the North Pole were made. In consequence, a political need arose to explore the Soviet Arctic, to ensure that other nations would not make important discoveries of lands in this area. This was no easy task for the Soviet Union which had no major aircraft industry. In fact, the Soviets could do little more than support foreign expeditions and buy foreign aircraft. Until 1928 the Soviet Union was virtually absent from the field of polar exploration and, although there was an urgent need for it to engage in long-distance expeditions, the country lacked the physical and financial means to undertake them. In this respect the wreck of Nobile’s semi-rigid airship near Spitsbergen in 1928 meant a turning point in Arctic research. Suddenly the experts from the Arctic Institute found themselves in command of several heavy icebreakers, supported by planes and backed by government and people. In the course of the rescue

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operations, Dr Vize went to Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa on the icebreaker Malygin. The icebreaker Krasin, guided by a group of scientists of the Institute for Study of the North, was the only ship to reach the site of the disaster, and saved the remainder of the crew. This expedition brought the Institute world fame, but was also the beginning of a new period in Arctic research in which, relying on the use of icebreakers, the Soviet Union quickly sent a number of impressive expeditions to high latitudes and established new polar stations on Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa and Severnaya Zemlya. It was a definite change of policy from the search for natural resources to long-distance travel, necessitated by political circumstances and made possible by the sudden reappraisal of the qualities of the icebreaker. This reappraisal by itself would never have sufficed if there had not been the political need for such expeditions. The Krasin expedition offered the occasion, not the cause, as is sometimes believed by Russian authors. The icebreakers used at the time were not very powerful and had a limited range. Ice-navigation technique favoured avoiding the ice wherever possible, so that it was a great advantage to know when the navigation season would open and where the ice would be. Great efforts were therefore directed at ice forecasting. One of the first forecasts was made for the Barents Sea in 1929 by Dr V.Yu. Vize, who was to become an authority on ice predicting (Samoylovich 1930c; Vize 1946b). Of course, the first forecasts were largely of a qualitative character and to some extent depended on intuition. Ice forecasting and the use of icebreakers nevertheless, soon proved to be the keys to the Northeast Passage. For one thing, they allowed expansion of the slight commercial use that was already being made of the Passage. The western part of the Northern Sea Route, leading through the Kara Sea to the Siberian rivers Yenisey and Ob’, had been used commercially until 1916. After the Civil War it was decided to use this navigation route again, in what came to be called Tovaro-Obmen expeditions, in which goods were bartered without the need for elaborate financing in costly foreign exchange. Such an arrangement was necessary because the Soviet Union had difficulties in being accepted abroad as a trading partner and therefore had little credit abroad. In fact, the first Kara expedition in 1920 was restricted to an internal exchange of Siberian grain and industrial goods from the European part of Russia. After a trade agreement with Britain was concluded in March 1921, the first of these barter operations came about, opening to Russia a new channel for international trade (Nove 1969). As could be expected from a pioneer sea route, the volume of transported goods remained small. Between 1920 and 1924, 59,800 tonnes were shipped, while in the same period the weight of Soviet overseas trade totalled 13.3 million tonnes in export and 4.3 million tonnes in import. For the 1924–8 period these figures were 86,200 tonnes to 31.8 million tonnes and 35.2 million tonnes respectively (Sibirtsev and Itin 1936; Belov 1959:209). However small the volume, it helped to develop the local economy. A river fleet was built up on the West Siberian rivers in order to take over goods from the sea-going ships. Initially, exports consisted mainly of grain, but after 1924 timber began to take its place and soon proved to be the most promising export product for the route. It could be obtained from vast resources of forest in West Siberia, while its export by ship proved to be less than a third of the price of export by rail (ibid.: 206). Before long, timber exporting would become the backbone of Soviet

THE STALINIZATION OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION 39

Arctic shipping. Another promising venture was the development of mines at Noril’sk (Urvantsev 1981). These mines were at some distance from the Yenisey, however, and the development of an inland railway between Dudinka and Noril’sk seemed too expensive. But its coal deposits were used for supplying local shipping. Coal was transported by reindeer sledge to the Yenisey (Belov 1959:149). This already indicates that there were some difficulties in obtaining coal for ships in the Arctic. In 1925 the Soviet Union began to buy Spitsbergen coal from the AngloGrumant company to overcome this. In 1928 the Dutch mines on Spitsbergen were visited by Soviet geologists and, impressed by their reports, the Soviet government decided to acquire these. It was not until April 1932, however, that an agreement was concluded, by which time the Soviets had already taken over Anglo-Grumant. Both collieries were then combined in one trust, Arktikugol (Stavnitser 1948:82–93; Armstrong 1952:81; Samoylovich 1982:165). Between 1920 and 1928,62 voyages were made: 43 to the Ob’ and 19 to the Yenisey. Only two ships were lost, both in 1921. The icebreaker Lenin which accompanied the 1921 convoy was unable to avert this disaster. This led to a reappraisal of the need for icebreakers and, until 1928, only light icebreaker types were used, like the Malygin and the Sedov (Belov 1959:180). These ships had limited ice-breaking capacities, but were well suited for ice reconnaissance and for assisting with lesser ice obstacles. The main strategy now became to avoid ice or to wait until it had drifted away. As one of the consequences of the rescue of Nobile in 1928, the icebreaker was restored to its previous importance (ibid.: 370). By using heavy icebreakers of the Krasin type, it became possible to increase the turnover by the Kara Route sharply, which was necessary because the government wanted to develop its exports, in the context of the first Five-Year Plan. This led to the building of sawmills at Igarka. Its location, 725 km up the Yenisey, was such that it could be reached by riverand sea-going ships alike. By installing timber mills in that place, the need for transportation of uncut timber could be eliminated. Trees could be floated to Igarka, cut to export specifications and shipped. In that way, vast forest resources could be tapped. Igarka boomed, growing from 43 inhabitants in 1928 to 15,000 by 1936, including 2,000 schoolchildren (ibid.: 329). It had its own infirmary and a dairy farm. In 1930 a peak of 128,300 tonnes of timber was reached, but after that the international depression reduced exports in general. In 1931,49,000 tonnes of timber were shipped along the Kara Sea Route, and in 1932,80,100 tonnes were exported (ibid.: 381). While major changes took place in Kara Sea shipping, things remained more or less the same in the Far East. From 1911 annual voyages were made to the Kolyma, carrying products like tea, sugar, flour and candles to the area, thus deliberately spoiling the market for potential American traders. These yearly voyages were made mainly to allay the anxiety in Russia that sovereignty over these distant lands was threatened by the Americans, by showing the Russian flag. The amount of cargo carried was less important It depended on the ship used, but amounted to around 20,000 pud (264 tonnes). In 1911 the Kolyma had been bought for this purpose by Dobrovol’ny Flot, a semi-official shipping company. In 1912 she was joined by the Kotik, later renamed Stavropol. These voyages were continued successfully until 1917, although occasionally the ships were forced to winter. In 1921 the Soviet Union decided to resume the voyages, but it was not until 1923 that a ship reached

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the Kolyma again (Belov 1959:574). (According to Dvornyak (1962:124–36), the 1923 voyage brought fifty soldiers to the region to pacify it.) Only after 1931 did the number of voyages in the East begin to increase, as a result of the development of the Kolyma-Indigirka region (Arikaynen 1984:76). Politically the Krasin voyage was interpreted as proving Russia’s close ties with the Arctic, which in itself were the basis for claiming a sector. The Nobiie affair was an important incentive for the articles by Sigrist and Lakhtin, because Nobile’s plans had been a danger to Russian sovereignty, while his rescue demonstrated Russian superiority in the Arctic (Lakhtin 1930:703, 707; Sigrist 1928:982). In his description of the rescue expedition, Samoylovich duly emphasized this superiority, saying that because of the Russian climate Soviet polar explorers were much better qualified for Arctic voyages than those who just considered the Pole a ‘White Hell’; those countries connected to the Arctic by their geographic position had been able to help most effectively. It was no accident that Norway had been the first to aid, since Norway was closest to Spitsbergen (Samoylovich 1930c:342). This shows that Samoylovich supported Lakhtin in saying that a country’s interests in the Arctic were defined by its situation towards it. In this respect Samoylovich could point to the natural ties (estestvennaya svyaz’) between Zemlya Frantsa-losifa and the Soviet Union. There had been many Russian expeditions, and two foreign expeditions had even been saved by Russians. Also, some foreign expeditions had used Arkhangel’sk as a starting point (ibid.: 326). The description of Nobile’s rescue thus became a subtle plea for Russian sovereignty over the Arctic. Besides paying much attention to the natural ties between Russia and Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, Samoylovich also considered the relics of Russian presence on Spitsbergen, the traces of Russian winterings and expeditions (ibid.: 267–70). SOVIET EXPEDITIONS AFTER THE KRASIN The Krasin success was a welcome encouragement for the Soviet Union, because in spite of the failure of the Italia expedition, preparations for a trans-Arctic airline were continuing. The existing polar islands became crucial, because they were needed as support stations for such an airline. Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa especially became very important in this respect. Sovereignty over this archipelago became the stake in a Norwegian-Russian controversy, in which the icebreaker played an important role. But this time, the Soviet Union was to take the initiative. While the Nobile disaster took place near Spitsbergen, Aeroarctic was convening in Leningrad for the second time. Despite a promising start in 1925 the organization had achieved very little. Even with German government support it had not been possible to gather sufficient financial means, and the wreck of the Italia was a serious setback, which did not make it easier to raise funds, in itself a difficult task because of the economic recession. The German government had promised to make an airship available if the Russians and Americans would build the necessary mooring posts in Alaska and Siberia. In July 1928 the Soviet Union set up a commission to do this. Of course, the problem of sovereignty immediately cropped up again, which showed during Aeroarctic’s session in Leningrad, when the Russian section introduced a motion that the Russian government should be asked permission to build meteorological stations on Zemlya Frantsalosifa and Severnaya Zemlya

THE STALINIZATION OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION 41

(Aeroarctic 1928:14). The Norwegian section agreed, but apparently without government instructions. Soviet historians assume that this event aroused the Norwegian government. At any rate, in December 1928 the Norwegian government suddenly reacted to the sector decree of 15 April 1926, stating that the government had never been aware of any interests in Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa other than Norwegian ones (Belov 1959:302; Skagestad 1975). Apparently Oslo belatedly realized that Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa was within the Russian sector and would thus be claimed by the Russians. On the other side, the Soviet attitude to this archipelago was not too clear either. As an American author noted, Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa did not appear in the 1916 memorandum. Equally, Chicherin’s memorandum of 1924 ignored the islands. Another American, Hunter Miller, pointed out that official Soviet maps of 1923 and 1926 did not use the same colour to indicate Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa and the Soviet Union. Even a map dated 15 September 1926, therefore issued after the decree of 15 April 1926, did not include the archipelago in Soviet territory. Only the edition of 1 March 1928 did so (Miller 1928:242; Joerg 1930: 64). Maps are no laws, but in some cases official maps can be used to support an argument. It has been argued that the Canadian sector existed because it appeared on maps. Hunter Miller had taken recourse to maps because he was uncertain over the status of Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa. He thought that nobody had ever claimed these islands at all, but considered them Russian because of their geographical position. If the Soviet Union claimed this archipelago, then this was not made very obvious. Nevertheless, his opinion might well have been a common one within the Soviet Union. However, it seems more likely that it was not until the summer of 1928, in the wake of the Aeroarctic conference, that the Russians realized how important these islands could become, and consequently decided to claim them. The Norwegian claim was based on the activities of Norwegian hunters and fishermen. The Soviet Union opposed it with the sector theory. This caused a conflict which has been called ‘the most serious in the Arctic’ (Appert 1937). Nevertheless this question, in contrast with others, was never submitted to an international court. Both sides tried to support their claims with historical material, in which two points were the most important, namely discovery and the question of who had developed most activities in the archipelago. Discovery, of course, was most important, but since this had been done recently, in 1873, by an AustroHungarian expedition, neither side could use it undisputedly. Samoylovich pointed to Peter Kropotkin’s prediction of its discovery in 1870. The fact that Kropotkin had said that there should be more land north of Spitsbergen allowed Russia to claim its theoretical discovery. The Norwegians claimed that in 1865 the Norwegian Nils RØnnbeck from Hammerfest had discovered the islands (Samoylovich 1930c:3234; Smedal 1930:120). As to exploration and exploitation of the area, the Russians could point to a number of expeditions, such as Makarov in 1901, Brusilov 1912, Sedov 1913–14, Islyamov 1914. Also, there were expeditions organized by PLAVMORNIN, the Institute for Marine Studies(1923and 1926) and the visit by the Zarnitsain 1927, a ship sent by the Arctic Institute. Lakhtin even claimed that since 1901 there had only been Russian expeditions (Lakhtin 1928:23). This was vehemently contended by the Norwegian Ice Sea Institute, Norges Svalbard of Ishavs Ondersøkelse, which claimed that there had been 138 expeditions between 1865 and 1928, of which

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110 were Norwegian and only 12 Russian (Smedal 1930: 121). The others had been of various nationalities, including Dutch. Clearly, under these circumstances it became very difflcult to reach a fair judgement. Both countries had assumed that they owned the islands, without this causing difficulties. Now, when they wanted to exercise their property rights, the true state of affairs became apparent. Of course, the Soviet Union might have invoked the sector theory and proposed arbitration. That this did not happen seems an indication that the Soviets were not too confident about the international acceptance of their sector law of 1926. At any rate, they preferred to occupy the area more intensively, a reaction comparable with Canada’s in the case of the Macmillan expedition. In July 1928, shortly after the Aeroarctic conference in Leningrad, the Soviet of People’s Commissars instituted the governmental commission for the Arctic (PAK). This commission was to prepare a five-year plan for polar research and projects such as building bases for airships and meteorological stations on Novaya Zemlya, Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa and Severnaya Zemlya. The timing as well as the content of this dccision clearly indicate that the Soviet Union was convinced that a trans-Arctic airline would become a reality (Lakhtin 1928:709). This would increase ‘imperialist interest’ in the Arctic, which must be avoided by strengthening Russian claims there. The easiest way to do this was to follow the Canadian example and gradually expand the number of polar stations. The Soviet Union still found itself in a defensive position, to which even the wreck of the Italia made little change. In 1929 an announcement in the Norwegian press that a number of ships were leaving for Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa to build a polar station there made the issue an urgent one. The Soviet of People’s Commissars quickly adopted a plan to build a Russian station there. An icebreaker, the Sedov, was made available to a specially equipped expedition (Belov 1959:349). It was named after G.Ya.Sedov, who had wintered on Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa in 1912 and had died there during an attempt to reach the North Pole. The icebreaker’s captain was V.I.Voronin, a descendant of a Russian fisherman who had come to the aid of the PayerWeyprecht expedition which in 1872 first discovered Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa. Choice of ship and captain nicely expressed the idea of historical lies between Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa and the Soviet Union. Using an icebreaker proved a great advantage, because three days after her departure the Sedov met heavy pack ice, through which she had to fight her way with great difficulty. Cape Flora, where most earlier expeditions had landed, remained inaccessible to ships, but dogsleds managed to reach it and the Soviet flag was hoisted there. The meteorological station was built in Bukhta Tikhaya, which was ice-free. Meanwhile, the Sedov explored the archipelago and looked for the grave of G.Ya.Sedov, without finding it. On 1 August 1929, when the station had been completed, the archipelago was claimed for the Soviet Union by Professor O.Yu.Shmidt, the leader of the expedition (ibid.: 350). After transferring the crew to the new station, the icebreaker returned to Arkhangel’sk. During the return voyage she met the Norwegian ships which had been sent to build the Norwegian station, but had been prevented from doing so by the ice. Here again the icebreaker had proved its value. The establishment of a polar station on Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa had decided the question in favour of the Russians. Although Norwegian ships still appeared near the islands, there was no longer any official interest. But that same year Norway

THE STALINIZATION OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION 43

officially took possession of the island of Jan Mayen, lying towards Greenland (Skagestad 1975:31). Norway did not surrender its Arctic ambitions. This meant to the Soviet Union that the sector theory could only be maintained if, like Canada, it continued its exploration and expanded it. But the icebreaker clearly gave the Soviet Union an advantage in this respect. Norway still did not accept the sector theory. This was clear not only from the annexation of Jan Mayen, but also from its interest in Greenland’s east coast: both areas were clearly not within the area Norway might claim as a sector. Because of its interest in Greenland, Norway came into conflict with Denmark. This conflict, which was judged by the International Court in The Hague, yielded much literature. For example, in 1930 the legal expert Gustav Smedal published his book on the acquisition of sovereignty in the Arctic, which considered problems of annexation in general. Smedal saw effective occupation as the only sound basis in international law for the acquisition of polar territory. He rejected the sector theory because this led to the claiming of inequitable shares of the Arctic. If a land could not be occupied effectively, it should remain open to other countries. Moreover, countries that did not border on the Arctic should also be allowed to annex polar lands. The length of a country’s border on the Arctic was no reasonable basis for deciding what share it should have of the Arctic (Smedal 1930:117). No matter how convincingly argued, Smedal’s book did not change anything in the existing situation. The Soviet initiative of sending an icebreaker to Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa had firmly asserted Soviet sovereignty there. Similar initiatives were taken elsewhere in the Soviet Arctic, where its islands in the Arctic Ocean were most important, because of their importance to aviation but also because of the risk of their being occupied by air expeditions. Ostrov Vrangelya had already become a sort of Soviet colony. In March 1926, two years after the evacuation of Stefansson’s expedition, the Stavropol had landed five Russians, led by G.A.Ushakov, together with some Soviet Inuit families (Belov 1959:241–4); also a Soviet flag had been hoisted on Ostrov Geral’d. Both measures had been prompted by the declaration of the sector in April 1926. This policy was now resumed. To demonstrate Soviet interest in Zemlya Frantsalosifa, the sector’s westernmost archipelago, several icebreaker expeditions were sent there, for example the Sedov (1930), the Malygin (1931) and the Taymyr (1933 and 1935). These expeditions were scientific undertakings, specializing in hydrological and meteorological research. In order to attract public attention, books and articles were written about them. Umberto Nobile was invited to come along to Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa in order to look for missing members of his expedition. Another moot point was Soviet sovereignty over Severnaya Zemlya, which could hardly be reached by sea. Even in 1928 little was known except for what had been discovered by the Vil’kitsky expedition on the eve of the First World War. Nobile’s Italia flight had demonstrated that this region could be reached by airships. Therefore it was important to explore this archipelago as soon as possible and establish polar stations on it. A Soviet historian, Mikhail Belov, who had access to Soviet archives for researching his four-volume standard work on the Northern Sea Route, mentions no less than five planned expeditions to Severnaya Zemlya between 1919 and 1925, which were never carried out In 1927 the Sovetsky Sever expedition was expected to go to Severnaya Zemlya, but an accident prevented it Two years later, in 1929,

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the Soviet section of Aeroarctic sent a plane to the islands, but its pilot was forced to turn back because of fog. In 1930 the government decided that an expedition should definitely visit the archipelago. Again the icebreaker Sedov was used, once more led by O.Yu.Shmidt. It landed an expedition of three men, headed by G.A.Ushakov, the former leader of the Soviet colony on Ostrov Vrangelya. Ushakov had come up with a simple and economical plan, inspired by his having lived for several years on Ostrov Vrangelya; he proposed a Stefansson-style expedition: living off the land while relying on personal hunting skills. On 3 October 1930 Ushakov and his companions took possession of Severnaya Zemlya for the Soviet Union. During the next two years they explored and mapped the islands by dogsled, living off the land. In 1932 they were relieved by another group, brought by the icebreaker Rusanov (ibid.: 353–6). The 1930 expedition was considered so urgent because Aeroarctic was finally beginning to act. The German government had made the airship Graf Zeppelin available for an expedition in 1931. The Soviet Union must have deemed it wise to have established rights to these lands before this Aeroarctic expedition reached them, even if it was an international undertaking, because some Soviet scientists took part in the flight. Among them was R.L.Samoylovich, the former leader of the Krasin expedition that saved Nobile. The Zeppelin expedition was a great success, for it managed to take many photos, do several experiments during the five or six days of flying over Novaya Zemlya, Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa and Severnaya Zemlya and even land near Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, where the icebreaker Malygin awaited the airship. No major discovery was made, but the fact that the flight took place without incident confirmed that airships were suitable for long flights in the Arctic (Samoilowitsch 1933). Meanwhile, Soviet icebreakers made discoveries. For example, the Sedov, before reaching Severnaya Zemlya in 1931, found an island, the discovery of which had been predicted by V.Yu.Vize from studying the drift of the Anna. This schooner had been caught in the ice in 1912 and had drifted to Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa (Belov 1959:337). The Sedov discovery was a welcome demonstration of Soviet exploration. After the successful flight of 1931, Aeroarctic was dissolved. There had been no discoveries of any significance and a trans-Arctic airline did not get under way. That did not mean a diminution of interest in the polar regions, which instead shifted to scientific matters, mostly because of the great influence that the Arctic has on weather in the temperate zone. This had of course been known for quite some time and had been the subject of intensive studies during the first International Polar Year in 1882, but since technical progress now allowed meteorological observations further north, it was decided to repeat this international event in 1932– 3, and not in 1982–3 as was originally planned (Taylor 1981; Baker 1982; Simpson 1931). This international cooperation was greatly facilitated by contacts established during Aeroarctic conferences and the absence of political obstacles to this programme, since most important issues had now been settled and a certain equilibrium reached. As long as the Soviet Union and Canada continued their activities in the far North, nobody could oppose the sector theory, even if it was not generally accepted. Political difficulties subsided for a while, since the airship line did not materialize, and planes were as yet incapable of intercontinental flights.

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THE KRASIN: INCREASING PUBLIC ATTENTION FOR THE ARCTIC An important aspect of the Krasin expedition was its impact on the general public. The rescue showed the Soviet Union suddenly to be one of the foremost pioneering nations of the Arctic, not only abroad, but also to the Russians themselves. Consequently, there was an enormous demand for literature on the subject, in response to which several books and articles appeared (Samoylovich 1930b; Rozanov 1929; Sukhanov 1929; Tom 1929; Yuzhin 1929; Vorontsova 1929; Loris-Meiikov 1928; Shpanov 1929; Yakovlev 1929). The most important of these was, of course, the book by R.L.Samoylovich, who led this famous expedition. As will be remembered, Samoylovich strictly adhered to the official theory of ‘regions of attraction’ by explaining that the Russians did not consider the Arctic to be a ‘White Hell’ in the way West Europeans did (Samoylovich 1930c). But apart from that, Samoylovich’s book mentioned the Russian visits to Spitsbergen and other ancient Russian Arctic adventures, mixed with the exciting story of the rescue. His ideas thus reached a very wide audience and were taken up in other works that appeared at the time, not only through his book but also through his lectures to the crew of the Krasin and the journalists on board. Some journalists also spoke about the representative role of the Krasin. The admiration of Norwegians and Italians for the icebreaker was another particular boost to the self-esteem of the Russians. In consequence, general interest in polar expeditions increased and more books began to be published (Aleksandrovsky 1928; Ebbel 1929; Lebedev 1929; Pimenova 1930). For example, four or five books appeared about the 1929 expedition to Ostrov Vrangelya, sent to relieve G.A.Ushakov (Rikhter 1931b; Trublaini 1931; Ratmanov 1930). Most of them were written by journalists who had little previous experience of the Arctic, but who had taken part in some icebreaker expeditions. Some of them had already published books about this subject, such as Mrs E.Pimenova who had written Heroes of the South Pole (Pimenova 1919) and books about Arctic explorers like Cook, Ross, Scott and Shackleton (Pimenova 1908,1919). But Mrs Pimenova also published booklets on geographical and historical topics, such as England or George Washington. Pimenova’s book Zavoevanie Polyusov, which appeared in 1930, covered both the Arctic and the Antarctic and paid much attention to the Northwest Passage and to polar fever. But it also featured a short chapter on the Northeast Passage, which confined itself mostly to Nordenskiald’s exploits in 1879. Zinaida Rikhter, who as a journalist took part in the 1929 expedition to Ostrov Vrangelya, was in a similar position, writing two books about that expedition. Mrs Rikhter wrote several books about Lapland, Abkhasia and Altay, in addition to her book about a longdistance flight to China (Rikhter 1926, 1929, 1931a). In a similar vein was A.I.Lebedev’s To the Heart of the Arctic (Lebedev 1929) which tried specifically to cater for those who had become interested in the Arctic after the Krasin affair, furnishing them with a survey of Arctic history. Lebedev was very laudatory about the results of Dutch and English Arctic travellers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but he also included a brief chapter on Russian travellers. The voyages to Mangazeya in the seventeenth century were mentioned, as were Semen Dezhnev and Bering and the Great Northern Expedition of 1743. In general, wrote Lebedev, little was known about the sixteenth-century Russian

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travellers. Neither were their results in the nineteenth century very impressive, since it was a Swede, Friherre A.E.Nordenskiöld (1832–1901), who had been the first to navigate the Northeast Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, wintering along the way. Lebedev’s opinion of Sedov was more positive than those of other authors had been. This was due to the biography of Sedov by N.V.Pinegin, which appeared in Leningrad in 1924 under the title In the Icy Deserts. Pinegin had taken part in Sedov’s expedition and gave a sympathetic view of its leader. Still, in Lebedev’s book the Russian contribution to Arctic exploration was limited to one or two chapters and considered as part of general Arctic exploration. Like most other books, it was splendidly indifferent to the reasons for which expeditions were undertaken, but agreed that such voyages were among the more noble and courageous undertakings of mankind. THE FIRST COMMUNIST BOOKS ABOUT THE ARCTIC Thus the Krasin voyage gave rise to a number of Arctic books which centred on Western exploration. This state of Arctic literature displeased many Soviet Arctic specialists, who considered themselves, since the success of the Krasin, to belong to one of the more important Arctic countries. They felt it necessary to raise the general standard of Arctic literature in the Soviet Union and to put it on an ideologically sounder basis. This was the preoccupation of the editors of Vokrug Sveta, a Soviet geographic journal, and it resulted in the translation of a Danish book written by A.Ahlmann (Al’man 1930; Ahlmann 1928). The book was chosen for translation because it took a more serious view of Arctic exploration, stating that its raison d’être, above all, was economic: the ultimate aim was to have the polar regions participate in the world economy. In order to make this apparent, Ahlmann dropped the by now traditional chronological approach and used a geographic structure, grouping his chapters around themes such as Greenland, the Northwest Passage, the Northeast Passage, the North and South Pole. In his scheme going to the Pole merely for sporting reasons was disapproved of. In the introduction to the Russian translation a Soviet view of Arctic exploration was emphasized, which fundamentally agreed with Ahlmann by stating that the ultimate aim of all Arctic undertakings was economic exploitation. In this respect the Kara Sea expeditions could be considered to be more important than the various attempts to reach the Pole, because they sent merchant ships to the Yenisey and thus made an expansion of foreign trade possible. According to the editors of Vokrug Sveta, Soviet Arctic operations actually constituted a new epoch in Arctic history, the distinctive feature of which was a planned approach to science and the exploitation of natural resources, something which, of course, had not been elaborated upon by Ahlmann, so it would have to be developed by some Soviet author. An indication of the importance attributed to Ahlmann’s book was the fact that it appeared in an edition of 50,000 copies, while the previous books considered were mostly printed in 1, 000 or 5,000 copies. Only one year after the publication of the Ahlmann translation, a new book about Arctic exploration appeared, written by Ahlmann’s translator, M.S.D’yakonov, in an edition of 10,000 copies (D’yakonov 1931). In addition to paying far more attention to Russian expeditions and thus developing the idea of

THE STALINIZATION OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION 47

a new epoch, D’yakonov took a more political view of the Arctic. Since economy was at the basis of all that happened in the Arctic, disagreement between nations about spheres of influence could not be avoided. This was clearly illustrated by the events of the twenties, as there were British attempts to seize Wrangel Island, conflicts about Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa and strife about the situation on Spitsbergen. Apart from using a more political view, D’yakonov took a most scholarly stand about the evidence of the early voyages of the Russians. Most sources about early Russian voyages were foreign. Precisely at what stage the Russians began to sail into the Arc ic was unclear, but it must have been in the distant past. D’yakonov pointed to various crosses and other artefacts on Novaya Zemlya which proved this. There were also remains on Spitsbergen, but this was no basis for deciding when exactly the Russians took to sea. D’yakonov also looked for Russian sources that might have drawn West European expeditions to the North, analogous to the visit of Dmitri Gerasimov, a Russian envoy to Pope Clement VII, to the West. This Gerasimov had suggested that China might be reached by way of the North. His statement had been recorded in a book by Paulus lovius in 1525. To D’yakonov, however, this offered no more than a vague possibility. Neither did D’yakonov confine himself to Russian expeditions. Foreign voyages were mentioned, although the author clearly tried to give the Russians their fair share of attention. On the whole, D’yakonov merely copied Ahlmann’s book, adding theoretical comments. For example, the chapter on whaling was an exact copy of Ahlmann, but D’yakonov added a few words about whaling as a good example of the economic basis of polar exploration. Capitalists would not send out expeditions merely for the love of science. The Soviet Union, however, made a systematic study of natural resources which were then included in the FiveYear Plan. VIZE: THE ‘FOUNDING FATHER’ OF ARCTIC HISTORY IN THE SOVIET UNION An important change occurred in 1933 when a new edition of D’yakonov’s book appeared, revised by V.Yu.Vize (D’yakonov 1933). Until now, most of the authors of books about polar voyages had been journalists, historians or writers, frequently without any connection with Arctic studies at all. But Vladimir Yulevich Vize was altogether different from these people. Originally a chemistry student, he came across Nansen’s account of the Fram voyage during his studies in Göttingen. Arctic exploration fascinated him and he began to read everything on the subject, even taking the trouble to learn Dutch in order to read Gerrit de Veer in the original language. Initially the subject enthralled him to the extent that he neglected his studies, to the dismay of his German professors, but after his return to St Petersburg Vize took up physics and became an expert. Nevertheless, Arctic voyages remained his favourite subject. Apparently, this enthusiasm, together with his scientific training, won him a place in the expedition of G.Ya. Sedov in 1912 (Laktionov 1946). After this apprenticeship, all the cold and scurvy notwithstanding, Vize became the successful leader of several icebreaker expeditions, and virtually invented the science of ice forecasting. Vize would also perfect the communist slant in Soviet Arctic history by taking over the theoretical explanation D’yakonov had given about involving the polar lands in world economy, and adding the idea

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of economic, political and other relations between the Arctic and the Soviet lands. Proving himself an astute politician, Vize adopted the same outlook used by Lakhtin and others in their foreign policy observations, thus managing to fulfil the needs of the political leadership. This combination of political theory with his personal view of Arctic history fitted well into the totalitarian outlook of the day. He provided the theoretical background needed to claim for communism the great results achieved at the time, such as in 1932 the Sibiryakov’s navigating through the Northeast Passage within one shipping season for the first time in history. This success Vize ascribed to the new political system, which saw polar exploration as a necessary part of economic development Soon a new governmental department would be instituted to develop the passage into what was proudly called the Northern Sea Route. Part of Vize’s political approach was his interest in the early history of the Northern Sea Route. Vize continued the search for Russians who might have initiated the idea of a passage to the East and found one in the account of the German Herberstein who in 1526 reported a Russian story according to which one of the Siberian rivers rose in a lake in China. Possibly Cabot’s plan for the Chancellor expedition in 1553 had been influenced by Herberstein, but Vize was not absolutely convinced of this. To Vize, as to D’yakonov, stories like this were theoretical possibilities, not facts. Dezhnev’s voyage was mentioned as being doubted by some. It should be realized that Vize’s integrity was in no way impaired by his fitting the historical facts into official political theory. Vize had enough political sensibility to write just the kind of history the political leadership needed. This faculty, together with his exceptionally wide knowledge of Arctic exploration and history, made his work invaluable to his government. But Vize never became the party hack writing history. Occasionally he would come up with original ideas like the suggestion that a Dutch captain, Cornelis Roule, had reached Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa as early as the seventeenth century! (Laktionov 1939c:50). Less exotic was his interest in Willem Barents which appeared from his support for a Russian translation of Gerrit de Veer’s account and a commemorative article which he wrote to point out that Barents had been the first to make scientific observations in the far North (Vize 1936, 1948). Contrary to earlier histories, D’yakonov and Vize succeeded in collecting an amazing number of reports about Russian Arctic expeditions. One of them was the attempt of Chichagov in 1765 to sail to the Bering Straits via Spitsbergen. The development of a strictly Soviet Arctic history had begun in earnest. A number of expeditions that had been forgotten were brought to light again. The importance of others in general Arctic history was brought out for the first time. A revealing passage was published in Vize’s 1933 version. As we saw, Bear Island had been discovered in 1596 by Rijp (one of Barents’ companions) and Spitsbergen by the Dutch. But the Norwegians ascribe its discovery to their nation, although they have no convincing evidence. The same Norwegians point to the vestiges of Russians, which forces us to consider the question of the early voyages by Russian seafarers from the shores of the White Sea to the harsh coast of Grumant, as Spitsbergen was

THE STALINIZATION OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION 49

called of old in the Far North. (D’yakonov 1933:50) If the Norwegians could claim the discovery of Spitsbergen, so could the Russians. This was simply a matter of doing more research into the early history of Russian Arctic seafaring. It was about time that Russian Arctic history became independent of the West. It was exactly this combination of non-party enthusiasm for their scientific field, together with their expertise and the ability to adjust themselves to government political demands, that made the work of D’yakonov and Vize successful at the time. Meanwhile, Vize’s political approach to Arctic history still dovetailed neatly with the political developments. On page 32, it has been explained how V.I. Lakhtin, who claimed ‘regions of attraction’ in the Arctic, had imbedded his theory in a political framework that assumed an imperialistic battle being waged over the Arctic, in which the capitalist nations were trying to avail themselves of the economic advantages of the Arctic. Undoubtedly, much of this theory had been developed in reaction to the Stefansson adventure on Wrangel Island. Besides, Lakhtin’s theory claimed that the ‘regions of attraction’ had been under Russian influence from time immemorial. Lakhtin himself had even tried to furnish historical proof of this and asserted that in this area more discoveries had been made by Russians than by foreigners. Arctic history had now been assigned the task of supporting Soviet claims to a polar sector. VIZE’S FIRST BOOK As was the case with D’yakonov, annotating and translating proved inspiring enough for Vize to write his own version of Soviet Arctic history. While D’yakonov’s work was reprinted only once, in 1938, Vize started to write and rewrite. After his first version had appeared in Arkhangel’sk in 1932, there were reprints in 1934,1935 and 1936, the last one appearing in Moscow. This book was called A History of the Exploration of the SovietArctic. It was a fully-fledged Soviet Arctic history, leaving no doubt that such a history indeed existed, and it was printed in 10,000 copies. The 1935 version was given an additional chapter on Spitsbergen and another on the latest events along the Northem Sea Route. This book set out to explain why the Russians in the sixteenth century regularly achieved what the Dutch and English failed to achieve, namely to reach the Ob’ by way of the Kara Sea. The reason for this, Vize believed, was the ignorance of these foreigners of Arctic conditions. The Russians were used to the Arctic environment, while the West Europeans were not. This fitted in nicely with Lakhtin’s ‘region of attraction’ theory (Vize 1934a:34). Another interesting trait in Vize’s book was the use of theories of climatic change to explain varying results in exploration. Vize had been one of the first to notice minor temperature changes in groups of years. These he used to explain Norwegian successes in the years 1860–70, and the Russian failures in 1820–30. Unfortunately, this promising approach was abandoned in later editions for political reasons, as will be seen (ibid.: 52). The chapter on Spitsbergen pointed to close and ancient relations between that island and the Russian lands. Now, as opposed to his ideas in 1933, Vize was certain

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that Russians had been there before the Dutch. This followed from a letter by Ludwig Munk in 1576, in which a Russian, Pavel Nichets, was said to travel every year to Grumant, the Russian name for Spitsbergen (Vize 1934a:69). The letter is published in Gronlands historiske mindesmaerker III (1976). The story about the Starostin family, members of which allegedly had travelled to Spitsbergen even before the foundation of the Solovetsky monastery in 1435, was rejected by Vize, however. Although the story was based on an oral tradition within the Starostin family, which for generations had been sailing to Spitsbergen, Vize knew that the story had been told by an old member of the Starostin family to Tsarist government officials, who had only publicized it in order to strengthen Russian claims to Spitsbergen: a very candid statement of the kind Vize was apt to make (Vize 1934a: 75). Thus, Vize defended Soviet claims, furthered the study of Russian activities in the Arctic, but did not neglect foreign expeditions. For example, he considered Joseph Wiggins to have taken the first step in practical exploration of the Northern Sea Route. After Wiggins’ voyages much literature about the route appeared that only repeated what he had said (ibid.: 103). SAMOYLOVICH AS A HlSTORIAN While Vize unconditionally accepted the economy as the main driving force in Arctic exploration, and tried to prove the ‘Russianness’ of the Soviet Arctic, there was as yet no trace of the idea of the Northern Sea Route. Although well aware of the great possibilities of the icebreaker-radio-plane combination, he still considered the Zeppelin the most valuable means of Arctic exploration and pleaded for a Soviet Zeppelin. The conviction that the future in the Arctic belonged to the Zeppelin also permeated the work of the man who had been the leader of the Krasin expedition in 1928, R.L.Samoylovich, one of the few in a position to write a book that could match the work of Vize and D’yakonov. His Route to the Pole, which appeared in 1933 in Leningrad, centred on his confidence in the Zeppelin. The book was a Russian edition of Der Weg nach dem Pol (Samoylovich 1931), which was published after Samoylovich took part in the flight of a German Zeppelin, the LZ-127, to Sevemaya Zemlya. This experience clearly fired his enthusiasm for air exploration. The main theme of Samoylovich’s book was the history of means to reach the Pole, which naturally culminated in the use of airships. The difficulty with Route to the Pole was its return to science as the foremost argument for exploring the Arctic. Whereas Ahlmann had considered the influence an expedition had on economic exploitation of the Arctic as paramount, Samoylovich judged expeditions by their scientific merit. The difference was small, since both Vize and Samoylovich agreed that the quick dash for the Pole that Peary made in 1908 compared unfavourably with the longer expedition of G.Ya.Sedov. The Russian expedition returned with much material on meteorological conditions and tidal observations, while Peary could recount only weather conditions during his trip, though he had measured the depth of the sea at the Pole. According to Samoylovich, reaching the Pole was no longer the main objective, for only expeditions able to stay in the Arctic for a longer period could achieve worthwhile results. Therefore, he advocated a highlatitude icebreaker expedition, which should

THE STALINIZATION OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION 51

attempt to reach the North Pole in 1932. Here the difference came to light, for it was not science but economy that was paramount to the Soviets and the plan was never realized; instead, in 1932 the Sibiryakov made her famous first voyage along the Northeast Passage. Samoylovich must have been too much of a scientist and not enough of a politician. Although he did publish some works after this, he never became a writer of widely distributed books like Vize. He fell victim to a purge in 1937, in which his Jewish descent may have played a role.

52

4 In Stalin’s time 1932–53

THE NORTHERN SEA ROUTE AS A LEGITIMATION FOR THE SOVIET SECTOR? Even in Lakhtin’s conception, Russian sovereignty in the Arctic depended to no small extent on the economic and scientific activity that the Soviet Union developed there. Complete and effective occupation was impossible, but this meant that as much as possible should be done. Much had been done already, since there were polar stations on Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya and Ostrov Vrangelya. Each year freighters went to the Yenisey and the Kolyma. Nevertheless, the Soviet North remained a huge region without any significant population. How could such an area be occupied effectively? The solution was simple as well as brilliant: by increased shipping. This provided a comprehensive framework for all Arctic exploration. Polar stations served to protect and coordinate the shipping route. The focus of Soviet exploration shifted from aviation, for which the Soviets still depended heavily on the West, to shipping, a field in which the Soviets clearly had a head start, thanks to their icebreakers. The rescue of Nobile and his crew had clearly demonstrated this. At the same time, the development of a new East-West line of communication was needed for strategic reasons, since the relationship with Japan was rapidly deteriorating. In 1931 Japan had occupied Manchuria, and sharply changed its attitude towards the Soviet Union. In view of the Japanese presence near the Soviet border, a military organization was built up in the Far East, which in the spring of 1932 obtained a navy, the Pacific Fleet. Consisting of only a few vessels and submarines, every single vessel was sorely needed. Even if only one or two could be slipped through the Arctic, this might well prove helpful (Erickson 1962:338). According to Mikhail Belov strategy was one of the most important arguments for organizing the shipping route (Belov 1959:410). Finally, shipping put polar exploration at the service of the national economy, which made investments more acceptable and fitted in with political theory. In view of these considerations, it had been decided in 1932 to establish a central government organization that was to be responsible for shipping and polar slations in this area, as well as for the economic aspects of the development of the North. This institution was given the name of Glavnoe Upravlenie Sevemogo Morskogo Puti, or Chief Administration of the Northern Sea Route, generally abridged as

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GUSMP or Glavsevmorputi. An Administration is a government body, not as large or important as a ministry, but basically possessing the same rights. Glavsevmorputi was established by a decree of the Soviet of People’s Commissars of 17 December 1932. Its task was described as organizing and maintaining the Northern Sea Route, as well as being responsible for the safety of ships on the Route. For this reason all polar stations were transferred to this organization (Sobranie zakonov i rasporyazhenii 1931–3, 522). The immediate reason for the establishment of this body had been the voyage of the Sibiryakov in 1932. This was the first ship to pass through the Northeast Passage without wintering. Several, mostly foreign, expeditions had navigated through the Northeast Passage, but they had always wintered at least once. In this respect, the Taymyr and Vaygach fared no better in 1914. But in 1932 the Sibiryakov, an old icebreaker built in 1909, succeeded, albeit with considerable difficulty. The ship was severely damaged and had to be towed on the last leg of the voyage to Vladivostok. Nevertheless, it had been proved beyond all doubt that a passage without wintering was a possibility. During the first Five-Year Plan (1928–32) a profound change took place in the Soviet Union. Communism became a totalitarian regime under the leadership of losif Stalin. Rapid industrialization, to many the hallmark of progress, took place, while an attempt was made to reduce dependence on foreign (capitalist) knowledge and resources. This entailed the development of Siberia’s natural wealth. Until 1928, Arctic research in the Soviet Union had centred on the development of its Arctic resources and fisheries, but the successes of the Krasin in 1928 and subsequent high-latitude expeditions paved the way for a different direction in research. The successful voyage of the Sibiryakov in 1932 made it clear that, with modern icebreakers, the Northeast Passage could be used for the development of Siberian resources. Consequently, the development of a Sea Route along Siberia became the task of the new Glavk, or government service, GUSMP. Development of the Northern Sea Route for commercial shipping meant, in effect, the building of harbours and coaling stations along the Arctic coast, while at the same time the coastal area should be explored. The coaling stations were to be supplied by local collieries, since there seemed to be enough coal in outcrops to make this possible. A number of useful ores could be mined as well. Very little machinery was thus needed, since icebreakers were already available and the opencast mines did not need much equipment. The only problem was manpower, since going out into the wilderness and living in pioneer camps demanded idealism or other strong incentives. This could be solved by using forced labour. Collectivization produced large numbers of prisoners, mostly peasants who were well used to physical labour and a harsh climate. At the same time slavery of this kind solved the problem of crime and overcrowded prisons. In the early thirties penal camps still did not have the odium they were to incur in later years. Their function was economic, not political, since systematic destruction of humans was not yet an aim in itself, as it was to become later. This was the official rationale, sufficiently so to admit foreign journalists to these camps. A British journalist, H.P.Smolka, visited the camp in Dudinka where a narrow-gauge railway to Noril’sk was being built (Smolka 1937: 146–60). After flying down the Yenisey, he arrived at Dudinka, where he was taken to the local camp. ‘On the way we got to a barbed-wire fence and had to walk through a

IN STALIN’S TIME 1932–53 55

turnstile. A man in a long uniform coat with a thick cloth helmet and a tall rifle with bayonet demanded a propusk’ (ibid.: 152). The camp itself was a mixture of tents and barracks, with prisoners queuing for food and discussing the fulfilment of the norms. Although Smolka noticed this preoccupation of prisoners with the fulfilling of the plan, the journalist ascribed this to the success of ‘socialist emulation’. Prisoners worked for food and by working could increase their rations. This would encourage them to become hard-working, law-abiding citizens. But apparently Smolka did not realize that once the cold and diseases got hold of a man, he would be unable to get enough food to keep going and this would lead to a vicious circle from which the prisoner could not escape. The hardships of the camps were insufficient food, poor housing and lack of medical care, in addition to the distress of being exiled from one’s relatives in a distant and harsh place. Also, these places relied on icebreakers and aircraft for supplies. If communications were disrupted, which could easily happen, then living conditions became extremely difficult. Smolka ignored this and implied that the camp system indeed had a wholesome effect on people, although he noted things like the everpresent mud and vermin, and the fact that prisoners lived in tents in the Arctic. In compliance with official theory, he described camp inmates as loafers, who refused to work because ‘we are not as foolish as those babes out there who let themselves be exploited by the bloody GPU. Building a railway in this bog! My eye! We are staying right here. As long as they are not beating us up, they will not get us to take a shovel and dig mud for them, not me, anyway’ (ibid.). According to Smolka the system worked. He claimed to have heard a foreman say: ‘I am a free man. I am here voluntarily, as an engineer. I served my sentence on the Baltic-White Sea Canal three years ago. But I was so skilful that the rest of my sentence was quashed and I was even decorated for my good work’ (ibid.). Smolka thus accepted the official idea. He agreed that camps would improve people as well as develop the far North. He quoted one of the camp administrators: ‘ln about ten years’ time Noril’sk will be a town of free men and women. We shall have reclaimed most of these scoundrels for society, and they will be proud colonizers.’ The idea was that people once sent to the Arctic would remain there and become colonists. Released prisoners were told to marry and settle in the area. This was the case not only with criminals and political prisoners, but after the Second World War it also happened to prisoners of war and people deported from Eastern Europe. In some cases these people were city dwellers without any knowledge of rural life. The results were, of course, disastrous (Shilde 1958:99). So in the early thirties camps arose in the Arctic, intended to build an infrastructure for the Sea Route. For example, at Igarka, on the Yenisey, lumbering and port construction were done by prisoners (Dallin and Nicolaevsky 1948:58). On Novaya Zemlya a camp was built for hunting, farming(!) and fishing. Here, as well as on near-by Vaygach, attempts were made to mine lead, zinc, fluorspar and coal (ibid.: 212). T.E.Armstrong has doubted the presence of camps on Arctic islands like Vaygach or Novaya Zemlya, because no economic activity is known in these places (Armstrong 1965a:150). This does not mean that there could not have been attempts at developing the small mines of the type needed to support Arctic shipping, such as at Amderma on the mainland where, according to reports from a German submarine in 1942, coal was mined on the surface and brought to the shore by means of a short railway (German Naval Archives RM 35 I/153.105.

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18–8–1942). The naval report added that Amderma was not worth shelling, since there were only a few houses and a pier to be destroyed, However, in a book about a polar expedition, a more enthusiastic description by a Russian can be found, saying that Amderma had about a thousand ‘inhabitants’, mounted militiamen (it was not explained why such a small community should need more than one constable), a public dining hall, a club, a hospital, public baths, a powerful wireless installation and several schools (Brontman 1938d:217). To those to some degree familiar with camp literature, this will be recognizabie as the classic camp configuration. The largest of these projects was clearly the operating of the gold mines on the Kolyma by Dal’stroy, a department of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police (Conquest 1978). It began its work in the winter of 1931–2. The main difficulty for this coal-mining syndicate was not to find the gold, but the building of a transportation link. It had been decided to build a road from Magadan to the Kolyma, which was to open by 1934. Building did not progress as planned, and many people, guards as well as prisoners, lost their lives in the area due to insufficient food and shelter. This was no exception, for the installation of camps in the Arctic frequently seems to have taken a heavy toll of human lives, allhough we know little about this. In order to advance the project, it was decided to bring in supplies by sea. To this end a special Northeast Expedition was organized, consisting of the icebreaker Litke and several ships which had been built for Kara Sea operations like the Sever, the Anadyr and the Suchan (Dvornyak 1962:129). The expedition was organized by NARKOMVODA, the shipping ministry. It proved no great success. Because of a storm, only 1,200 tonnes could be landed at Ambarchik, and the convoy was forced to winter in Chaunskaya Guba. But then, difficulties were huge, since at the mouth of the Kolyma the East Siberian Sea is particularly shallow and heavy storms make unloading impossible on many days. Although the Kolyma gold fields became a large undertaking, Arctic shipping did not play a prominent part in it. A terrible affair was the presence of prisoners on ships that were forced to winter. Several horror stories are repoited, but are difflcult to confirm. It is said that in 1933 the Dzhurma made a voyage from Vladivostok to Ambarchik. After becoming icebound near Ostrov Vrangelya, the Dzhurma was forced to winter at sea. Her cargo consisted of 12,000 prisoners, for whom no provisions were available. The next year the ship arrived safely at Ambarchik, but not a single prisoner had remained alive. After her return to Vladivostok half the crew had to be treated for mental disorders (Dallin and Nicolaevsky 1948:128). The truth in this case will probably never be known. Another story has it that the Rabochy in 1933 took prisoners directly from Archangel’sk to Ambarchik, but the year seems incorrect; it is more likely to have been 1935, since in that year such voyages were made for the first time. It is indeed known that the Rabochy went to Ambarchik in 1935 via the Northeast Passage (Slavin 1961:66; Slavin 1972: 117). Although the voyage of the Rabochy was successful, the whole project of using local mines for bunkering ships turned out to be too difficult and costly. By 1936 the geologists of GUSMP stopped looking for minerals, since even if they found something it was still impossible to exploit it (Dvornyak 1962:129). Transports of prisoners by ship continued, but mainly on the Vanino-Magadan line, which is not really an Arctic route. Solzhenitsyn relates how early in 1938 the icebreaker Krasin led four

IN STALIN’S TIME 1932–53 57

Dal’stroy ships to Magadan. As it was too early in the season, the convoy remained trapped in the ice. However, this time the prisoners survived, by walking over the ice to Magadan. This again shows the hazardous nature of these transports of prisoners in Arctic ice (Solzhenitsyn 1973:575). Too little is known about the history of the penal camps in the Arctic to link them with the development of the Sea Route. It is nevertheless clear that the links must have been close. In nautical respect the development of the Northern Sea Route did not go very smoothly either. Soon after the Sibiryakov’s success in 1932, the first attempts were made to use the Northern Sea Route commercially. In 1933, the Chelyuskin tried to repeat the voyage of the Sibiryakov. This ship was meant to be the prototype of an Arctic freighter, able to make the passage with little or no assistance. It was a failure, because her hull did not stand the test. The Chelyuskin became entrapped in the ice and, after drifting for several months, sank on 13 February 1934. Her castaways were rescued from icefloes by aircraft. The loss of the Chelyuskin made it necessary to make some policy decisions about the future of the Sea Route. In 1934 a number of conferences were held in the Kremlin about the development of GUSMP and the far North. As it turned out, the foundering of the Chelyuskin proved no setback at all, as will be seen below. THE CHELYUSKIN: STALIN DISCOVERS THE PROPAGANDA VALUE OF THE ARCTIC The rescue operation for the survivors of the Chelyuskin was highly successful. Although the ship had foundered in the ice of the East Siberian Sea, leaving crew and passengers, including women and children, on the ice, all were saved and evacuated by Soviet airmen. This successful rescue operation heightened Soviet prestige abroad. Lloyd George reportedly called it ‘a big diplomatic victory’, since it caused Russia’s image in Britain to change radically (Sal’nikov 1984: 86). Thus, although strictly speaking a failure, the voyage of the Chelyuskin greatly helped the cause of Arctic shipping in the Soviet Union. Apart from the strategic concerns about sovereignty in the far North and the need for a reliable sea route to Vladivostok, the tremendous propagandist value of the whole operation had become apparent. To honour the pilots a new order was instituted, that of Hero of the Soviet Union; and in the winter of 1933–4 several large conferences about the Sea Route were held in the Kremlin. Party leaders and Arctic specialists agreed about several points. First, more attention had to be paid to ships and shipbuilding. Second, more scientific exploration of the North was needed. Blank spaces must disappear from maps, the Arctic Seas must be studied (Papanin 1978:205). It was also said that the political training of polar crews had to be increased. More political literature should be carried in ship’s libraries. At this point Stalin was said to have delivered a long speech in which he said that ship’s libraries should contain not only books on politics but also works of literature and polar travel. Books about the Arctic would deepen and widen personal experience. Most books on polar travel had greater artistic value than novels, while extolling man’s heroic battle against Nature. Stalin considered Arctic literature to have the right sort of pedagogic influence on people. He exhorted icebreaker captains and pilots to write about

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their experiences, saying that, even if an expedition was a failure, the experience of its crew should be made available to others. V.I. Voronin, former captain of the Sedov, the Sibiryakov and the Chelyuskin, objected that writing should be left to scientists. Captains wrote with ships on the sea, which left few traces, no matter how much they wrote. But Stalin corrected him. The Sibiryakov had written a story on the water that would never be forgotten, and scientists would write in any case; but it was important that pilots and captains especially should write. If necessary they could be given assistance (Novikov 1956:133–4). Thus, in Stalin’s view, not only could Arctic literature be used to spread the experience gathered during Soviet expeditions, but it was the right kind of literature for the whole of Soviet society. Its main focus, man conquering harsh Nature, well fitted the need for a popular literature worthy of the Five-Year Plans. In Russia literature has always been kept under close scrutiny by the government. Under Stalin, writers held a position akin to those of high party officials. Although elevated to the ranks of the leaders, they were under constant threat of disgrace, exile or death. On the one hand, writers had to conform strictly to official government values; on the other hand, their books still had to have an emotional appeal and had to present true-to-life characters living under such values. A book had to sell. To Stalin ‘artistic value’ must have meant that a book succeeded in this respect. If a book sold, it could become a means of conveying political values that reached beyond ‘political exhortation’, beyond the dreary bureaucratic language of press reports (Dunham 1976:28–31). A good book could have an emotional appeal that would be far more effective than any other means of communication, that is, if it had, at the same time, the right set of political ideas. In order to ensure this, a whole array of measures, ranging from censorship to organizations like the Writers’ Union and Stalin’s telephone calls to prominent writers late at night, were devised and used. But polar literature apparently had these two necessary characteristics. Its emotional appeal sometimes exceeded that of fiction. At the same time it offered an excellent opportunity to convey all sorts of political propaganda, because polar literature was not fiction, but the truth. It was less dependent on the erratic creativity of authors. For this reason, polar literature quickly became, and still is, a popular genre of propaganda in the Soviet Union. As a result of Stalin’s speech, polar literature quickly expanded. In the first place several books about the Chelyuskin voyage appeared as well as various translations of Antarctic diaries (Shmidt 1934a; D’yakonov 1935; Mironov 1935; Khmyznikov and Shirshov 1936; Gromov 1936). Scott, Byrd and Amundsen were newly edited by the new GUSMP press, which had its own office in Moscow (Amundsen 1937; Berd 1935,1937; Mawson 1935; Shaklton 1935). In this series also belongs the 1935 translation of Gerrit de Veer by A.I.Maleyn, a classical scholar whose great interest in rare books and New Latin is apparent from his having translated other books by travellers to Russia such as Herberstein (Maleyn 1906,1908,1935). Another very important translation that appeared at the time was that of Stefansson’s book The Friendly Arctic, which appeared in 1935 (Stefanson 1935). In addition, R.L.Samoylovich’s book about the Krasin expedition was updated and reprinted under the title the Ice of the Arctic, while Vize wrote Vladivostok-Murmansk on the Litke which made easy reading (Samoylovich 1934c; Vize 1936). In a similar way the Arctic was used in the propaganda which was sent to the West. For example, books on the Chelyuskin appeared in several languages. At the

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same time, Western journalists such as H.P.Smolka and Ruth Gruber tried to create a friendly disposition in the West towards the Soviet Union (Smolka 1937). Harry Peter Smolka was an Austrian by birth, who had graduated at the London School of Economics after which he remained as a journalist in London. In 1938 he became a British subject, changing his name to Smollet His book takes its title from Xenophon—forty thousand to fight against the Arctic. It was written after the author made a trip through the Kara Sea and visited Khatanga, allegedly on invitation by Otto Shmidt, who met him during a visit to London after the Chelyuskin affair in 1934. The idea was to give the opinion of ‘an unbiased observer without party tickets’. Smolka assures us: ‘I have the not uncommon habit of drawing back like a snail and hiding in a house of stiff disbelief as soon as I suspect that anyone is trying to feed me with propaganda’ (ibid.: 21). His first impression of Leningrad in 1936 is that ‘the picture of new life oulshines the evidence of past shambles’ (ibid.: 29). His book is essentially a journalist’s piece of work, full of pictures and interviews, describing how the Arctic is developed. The book features two maps, one showing an Arctic as ‘barren and desert regions incapable of commercial development’, the other showing an Arctic full of fur-trading stations, state reindeer farms, radio stations, culture bases, airfields etc. According to Smolka, this clearly shows that the main Soviet activity was the economic development of the North. Ruth Gruber was acquainted with V.Stefansson, who introduced her to Otto Shmidt (Gruber 1944). Nevertheless, her book crosses the thin line between propaganda and journalism when she states, for example, ‘you might disagree with their politics in Moscow, but you couldn’t help agreeing with their policy of opening up the North’. The book was reprinted during the Second World War. As a correspondent for the Herald Tribune Ruth Gruber went out by plane to Igarka and from there by boat westward to Murmansk. Her ship happened to be the Anadyr, making the first commercial voyage in history from the Pacific to the Atlantic. In this sense, Gruber’s book is more interesting than Smolka’s. Although the book is set up around the artificial theme of women in the Arctic, it tells of meetings with Shmidt, Samoylovich, Papanin, Levanevsky and other important explorers. It is full of curious little details; for example, GUSMP is spelt Goose M.P. to facilitate its pronunciation. Gruber, like Smolka, expressed an abhorrence of propaganda. She did not want to be propagandized, and those who tried simply alienated her. Nevertheless I might still distrust Union Square Communism, but I could not help realizing that only a government, unstinting and farsighted, would build a settlement like Dickson Island, complete with bathhouse and school and pigsty. No private firm would have the funds or resources or desire to invest billions in a scheme that to private enterprise would seem apocryphal. (ibid.: 204) Socialism was the only system that could develop the Arctic. Moreover The leaders of this government might make blunders in European Russia and the old cities where they had centuries of tradition to overthrow. But

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in the Arctic they could work out man’s dream of a better life in a brighter world. (ibid.) In fact, if socialism was the only system for developing the Arctic, what marvels could it work in the rest of the world, once initial mistakes had been overcome! CONSEQUENCES FOR ARCTIC HISTORIOGRAPHY AND SHIPPING This wave of popular Arctic literature only stimulated the public interest for Vize’s studies of Arctic history. New revised editions kept coming. The next edition of Vize’s history book was given a new title, Morya Sovetskoy Arktiki (The Seas of the Soviet Arctic) (Vize 1939c). This reflected Ahlmann’s geographical approach, while at the same time indicating a certain possessiveness about the Arctic seas. It appeared in 1936 in Leningrad and was reprinted in 1939 and 1948. The change of title meant no dramatic change to its contents. Only a few chapters on the East Siberian and Laptev Sea were added, while the first part remained identical to the Istoriya. Among other things this signified that the history of Semen Dezhnev, a Cossack who apparently made the first voyage through the Bering Straits, was elaborated upon and that in general more attention was paid to early sixteenth- to seventeenthcentury voyages in the East. The 1939 edition showed a change from that of 1936 and Stalin himself was mentioned as actually leading the polar explorers in the conquest of the Arctic. Moreover, Vize was now certain that no capitalist state could ever manage to organize the study and conquest of the Arctic on the required scale, with the necessary planning. Neither Britain nor the Netherlands, the countries that had tackled the problem of the Passage, had succeeded. Nor had the United States, who had until then sent out the most expensive and well-equipped expeditions. Only a socialist state could achieve lasting success in the Arctic. Thus, although the political framework remained the same, the emphasis was now put on the theory that socialist states were better suited to explore Arctic regions. Their superior results were not so much due to their being nearer to the Arctic, but to their more appropriate political system. At the same time this could be turned around, because if the Soviet Union managed to attain results that no other country achieved, then this proved the advantages of its system and the Northern Sea Route became a legitimation of the communist state. On a more practical level the Kremlin conferences had indicated the need for more hydrography and shipbuilding. This resulted first in the Litke expeditions of 1935, in which this icebreaker crossed the passage from the West to the East, carrying several scientists and doing oceanographical research (Belov 1959: 158). A hydrographical department had been added to GUSMP as early as June 1933, possessing various smaller vessels for coastal mapping (Arikaynen 1984: 125). From 1936 on hydrographical surveys were made from the ice during winter, to which end the ships wintered at various places along the coasts (Peresypkin 1986). As to shipbuilding, the situation was more complicated. The loss of the Chelyuskin, apart from its failure to prove the passage passable to freighters, was also deplorable because a prototype was lost. Little was known about how to build

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ice-strengthened ships. The Kara Route was navigated by normal but strong freighters. A special series was built in the years 1928–30, on the Baltisky Zavod in Leningrad: a timber carrier of 2,513 brt. After the loss of the Chelyuskin, it was these Kara Sea ships that initiated freighting on the Northern Sea Route. In 1935 the Vanzetti and the Iskra made the first transit passages from Murmansk to Vladivostok, while the Anadyr and the Stalingrad went from Vladivostok to Murmansk. All these ships belonged to the same class of Arctic timber carriers which also included the Rabochy, whose voyage to Ambarchik has already been mentioned. In 1936 as many as fourteen such voyages had been made (Arikaynen 1984:91–2). 1937: THE FIRST SOVIET AIR EXPEDITION Another expedition that had a propaganda value comparable with the Chelyuskin rescue was the 1937 North Pole expedition. Although this expedition was needed to support ice forecasting on the Northern Sea Route, it had other advantages as well, such as supporting trans-Arctic record flights. Ever since the perception of flying as ‘aeronautism ’, a new variety of ‘militarism’, the Soviets had been careful to keep up with and surpass other nations in this field. Also, it was another occasion to show how the Soviet Union could defeat the forces of Nature. Consequently, the Soviets did their utmost to keep up in record flying and plane development. In the twenties, the Strana Sovetov planes flew to air shows in various countries. In the thirties the first record flights were made, first with foreign planes soon replaced with Soviet-built ones. In 1934 a flight of more than 7,000 miles along a closed circuit was made by an Antonov-25. By this time the Soviet Union had become a match for other flying nations. The next year, a first trans-Arctic flight was attempted, from Moscow to San Francisco, also in an ANT-25, by V.A.Levanevsky, though without success. An Arctic route was chosen for several reasons, one being that it was shorter and easier to fly. Also, it would not only mean a new record, but it would strengthen the Soviet Union’s position in the Arctic. Ever since the Ostrov Vrangelya episode, the threat of a foreign airship expedition had loomed large. Now, at last, this danger could be averted by Soviet air expeditions. As Otto Shmidt, head of the GUSMP, put it: ‘The English say that the sea belongs to the nation which has the strongest navy. We can say that the North Pole belongs to the nation which has the strongest air fleet’ (Brontman 1938: 150). Levanevsky’s attempt of 1935 proved a useful failure, since the need for more extensive meteorological support along the way now became clear to all involved. It was decided to put a weather station on an icefloe near the Pole. Experience in landing on ice had been gathered during the Chelyuskin expedition and on other occasions. On 21 May 1937, four ANT-6 planes landed at the North Pole, and until 19 February 19381. D. Papanin, E.T.Krenkel’, P.P.Shirshov and E.K.Fedorov made scientific observations, while their floe drifted from the Pole to the Greenland Sea. At that point they were picked up by the icebreaker Taymyr. Using meteorological data from the icefloe station, three trans-Arctic record flights were made, of which two were successful. In June, Chkalov, Baydukov and Belyakov flew from Moscow to Vancouver, Washington. In July, Gromov, Yumashev and

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Danilin reached San Jacinto in California. Finally, Levanevsky’s attempt in August 1937 ended in disaster. His specially adapted ANT-6 completely disappeared. A rescue operation was started, in which the Krasin was brought to the Canadian Arctic to launch hydroplanes, but fruitlessly. No trace was ever found. After Levanevsky’s accident, trans-Arctic flights were discontinued. Nevertheless, the Soviets had accomplished some extremely difficult air expeditions, which surpassed everything done so far in the Arctic. Such achievements could be used to advertise communism, proving its value to everybody. In consequence, a broad literature sprang up, intended not so much for the specialist as for the general public. The establishment of a drifting station at the North Pole must have been one of the best-publicized expeditions in history. Papanin quotes D.S.Tikhomirov, who counted no less than two thousand articles published (Papanin 1978:197). There were, in fact, several technical factors which helped people to write about it. In the first place, nearly all involved wrote about their experiences (Krenkel’ 1938a, 1939, 1940; Shirshov 1938; Mineev 1938; Laktionov 1939a; Vodop’yanov, Papanin and Vilensky 1938; Spirin 1939a; Shmidt 1937b). A great help to journalists and others was the publication of the biographies of the four at the Pole (Krenkel’ and Papanin 1938). Another book useful in this respect gave the biographies and some pages of their diaries (Papanin 1938a). Papanin added A Story about Myself (Papanin 1938c). Then, of course, radio paid much attention to it. There were even special radio concerts and interviews for the benefit of the North Pole drifting station. This was not always an advantage, as appeared when Papanin was asked what would become of their dog after their return to the mainland. Papanin, who heartily disliked the cowardly, pilfering animal, said it would be put in a cage in the zoo. This caused a wave of protest, especially among children, and finally Papanin had to declare that the dog would be given as a present to Stalin (Papanin 1978: 144). A professional account of the expedition was written by Pravda correspondent L.K.Brontman, who accompanied the expedition to Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, whence it left for the Pole (Brontman 1938a). A special edition for children appeared (Brontman 1938b). Nor was this an exception, since several books on polar voyages appeared in children’s editions (e.g. Krenkel’ 1938a; Papanin 1939b). In fact, there were so many special versions for children that a year later a special bibliography on the subject appeared, discussing which books were more suitable for home reading and which for discussions in class (Avramenko 1938). A special category were the foreign translations, many of which were translated into several languages (Papanin 1938b, 1939d, 1940a, 1947b; Krenkerl 1939; Brontman 1938a, d). SOVIET CRITICISM OF THE SECTOR THEORY Since the beginning of the thirties the situation in the Arctic had changed markedly in favour of the Soviet Union. Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa had become Soviet; successful icebreaker expeditions had provided much international prestige and the danger of foreign air expeditions had abated. Under these circumstances, the Russians acquired a new sense of self-confidence. The sector theory had been replaced by

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a version that depended less on international cooperation, developed by Lakhtin. The development of the Arctic was to be exclusively a Soviet affair and it might even be asked if the capitalist countries would ever be able to exploit the Arctic successfully. At the same time the Norwegians began to worry over the Soviet presence on Spitsbergen. In 1931 the Soviet Union had acquired the Grumantbye mine on Spitsbergen, followed the next year by the Barentsburg mine. The Soviet Union took Arctic mining very serious and a growing number of Russians went to live on the archipelago. Equally an attempt was made to lengthen the season in which coal could be fetched from Spitsbergen, which was first done in the winter of 1932 by the icebreakers Malygin and Sedov. After initial problems, because the Sedov was severely damaged and had to be rescued by the more powerful Lenin, transport as well as production began to increase and the Russian colony began to grow accordingly. The Norwegian consul in Arkhangel’sk in 1932 mentioned his concern over local press reports describing the Russian population on Spitsbergen. Did the Soviets intend to base political demands on this increasing population? There are also indications that in 1932 the Soviet Union tried to expand its territorial influence in the far North. This appears from a report by the Norwegian ambassador in Poland. A Polish expedition to Bear Island had declined an offer of help by the Soviet Union, when it transpired that this was a Soviet attempt to gain influence on Bear Island. The Polish government officially warned Norway of this danger (Østreng 1978:45). Did these examples of Spitsbergen and Bear Island indicate expansion of interest beyond the Soviet sector? One of the few contemporary Soviet comments on the situation in the Arctic can be found in an article by ‘Aktivist O.A.Kh.’, who has been identified by a Soviet émigré as A.V.Sabanin (Aktivist 1932). This official of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs had already written an article in 1921 pleading for economic exploitation of Spitsbergen, which appeared in the journal of the Commissariat (Sabanin 1926). In 1936 he was described as the director to the legal department of the Foreign Affairs Commissariat (Conquest 1968:454). Basically the article was a continuation of Lakhtin’s approach and it used the same political background as Lakhtin had done (and indeed as even general and historical polar literature began to do), opposing Soviet planned, systematical exploitation of a clearly defined area in the Arctic with predatory capitalist exploitation. According to Lenin, capitalism was entering its final stage, imperialism, in which a frantic struggle for resources would take place, leading to a division of the last undiscovered lands. The bourgeois sector theory was nothing less than a ‘weapon for expansion’ (orudie ekspansii), a means of dividing the polar areas. The Soviet Union, being a socialist country, would never agree to such an imperialist division and the area delineated by the 1926 decree should not be seen as a sector in the Westem sense. It merely described the area in which Soviet territorial rights existed, and would never be used as a means of expanding Soviet influence in the Arctic. The article then described the differences between the Soviet sector and a capitalist one. Soviet rights were said to accrue from a number of geographical, economic and political relations with its Arctic territory (Aktivist 1932:40). The polar sea is not a conventional sea, since, for example, its islands can be reached only with proper precautions, which makes it difficult for countries that are distant from the Arctic circle. Besides, the Soviet Union could point to a

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considerable activity in its polar areas, which ranged from exploration to the building of ‘cultural focuses’ and radio stations (ibid.). This somewhat confused article did not deny the Soviet claim to a sector, but stated that in the Soviet view this did not signify an endorsement of other sector claims. Soviet rights followed from its activity in the Arctic, not from the sector claim in itself. This implied that some of the other sector claims, like those in Antarctica or those by Denmark or Finland, were extremely doubtful. O.A.Kh. preferred to describe the area between the Soviet Union and Canada as ‘unassigned’, a term that probably raised some eyebrows in Norway (ibid.: 19). The O.A.Kh. article can be seen as typical of the Stalin era, closely following the paradigm offered by an earlier writer (Lakhtin), avoiding any topic that might lead to international cooperation or at least dependence on foreign good will, and looking for capitalist intrigues. In an amazing display of unmasking techniques, O.A.Kh. explained Norwegian Arctic policy (polyarny imperializm) as a mask for British interests, since Norway tried to annex the Arctic islands that were on the British air route to Canada. The cession of the Axel Heiberg Islands to Canada, followed by the Norwegian annexation of Jan Maayen and the Norwegian interest in Greenland, pointed in this direction (ibid.: 36). In short, from 1932 onwards there was a tendency for the Soviets to overstep their borders and intrude into other sectors, without officially relinquishing the sector theory. Shmidt’s statement of 1937, about the North Pole belonging to the nation with the strongest air fleet, should be seen in this context (Brontman 1938d). THE NORTHERN SEA ROUTE IN 1937 The absence of ice-reconnaissance planes because of the trans-Arctic flights had disastrous results. Twenty-six ships had to winterand the Rabochy was lost to ice pressure. A major reorganization of GUSMP followed. The blame was put on ‘bad organization of GUSMP’ and ‘insufficient well chosen personnel’. A number of measures were taken by the government to ameliorate the situation. One of the first was the inslallation of a new vice-chairman of GUSMP. This was I.D. Papanin, who had just returned from his drifting station expedition on the North Pole. Because of his experience in organizing Arctic expeditions, Papanin seemed the right man for this task, but none the less he was kept under close scrutiny. Being in charge of building, finance and cadres, Papanin had to report every week to the central committee of the CPSU. Although a former chekist, Papanin had indeed organized several polar expeditions quite successfully and his performance was judged well, to the extent that shortly after, in 1939, he was chosen to replace Otto Shmidt as chairman of GUSMP (Papanin 1978:201). In the years after 1938 the whole organization of GUSMP was revised, specialists being commandeered from other People’s Commissariats and the organization of shipping receiving a different structure. Until 1939 ships in the Arctic had received orders from the GUSMP building in Moscow, which heavily overburdened the radio network. Orders arrived too late or could not be countermanded in time. Before 1939 the Northern Sea Route had been divided in two parts, the division being the 140° line west of the Novosibirskie Ostrova. Each part had its own commander who did nothing but pass on Moscow’s orders. His chief support for navigational matters was the

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captain of the flagship-icebreaker. This was now altered radically and in 1939 Papanin, the head of GUSMP himself, assumed command in the west, while A.P.Melekhov, an experienced icebreaker captain, headed the eastern section. In addition, the flagship-icebreakers were given a scientific staff consisting of hydrologers, like M.M.Somov, meteorologists, airmen and radio specialists. In addition a weather forecasting service was set up in Dikson for the west and Mys Shmidta for the east. Very important was the fact that ice reconnaissance was now organized on a regular basis. Planes carrying expert hydrologers were on duty during the season, while information was gathered for long-term prognoses by strategic reconnaissance two months before the season opened. Not only planes, but also boats were used. People like A.F.Treshnikov and A.O.Spaykher began their careers on small boats looking for the ice (ibid.: 210). Not only was the navigation reorganized, but Arctic shipping was made more commercial, so that henceforth passengers had to buy tickets and goods were transported according to contracts (ibid.: 207–10).

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5 Arctic policy during the Cold War

THE NORTHERN SEA ROUTE AS A THEME From 1938 onwards, the concept of a Northern Sea Route was one of the dominating themes of Arctic literature. In 1940 Vize published a booklet that described the history of the Northern Sea Route (Vize 1940). Its history was not supposed to have started five or eight or twelve years previously, but no less than 400 years back! This feat was achieved by incorporating the history of the exploration of the northern coasts of Russia and Siberia, and having it culminate in the opening of the Northern Sea Route. So, Vize could begin with the Vikings in the ninth century and include all early exploration by Russians. In this way, most of the exploration had been done by Russians before Nordenskiöld navigated the passage for the first time in 1879. Although scarcely fair to Nordenskiöld, it brought the Russians priority of discovery, which was politically very important. In fact, it married ancient history to modern political ideas. Its weak point was the lack of knowledge about early Russian exploration. Vize brought up the old remark by Litke that the Russian seafarers of the sixteenth century lacked a Hakluyt to make them famous, thereby alluding to the English editor of travel narratives about the North. Nevertheless, Vize was convinced that by the mid-eighteenth century Russians had sailed all parts of the Passage except perhaps the stretch between 75° 15’E and Ostrov Komsomolskoy Pravdy (this designates a small area east of Mys Chelyuskina). But for that area, all of the Northeast Passage had been first explored by Russians (ibid.: 16). Vize thus mixed the search for a passage with exploration of the coastal area, which strengthened Soviet claims to the area. As to Western ideas about a passage, Vize felt that they could well have been stimulated by Giovio’s book about the Russian envoy who allegedly mentioned the Passage in 1525, but in any case the explorations had been abandoned after a few unsuccessful attempts. In Russia, however, the idea of a sea route had taken root with Peter I and had never died out, although Vize had to admit that the Russian government virtually gave up the attempt after Rumyantsev’s expedition of 1819 to the Bering Strait. Vize did not return to his previous climatological explanation for this loss of interest, but instead blamed the tsarist government and people like Litke for resisting progress, while he regarded M.K.Sidorov as the initiator and inspirer of the first Kara Sea expeditions. Progressive people in Russia had always been convinced of the value of Arctic shipping. Since nobody in Russia

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would listen, Sidorov had been forced to turn to the West, which led to the Nordenskiöld and Wiggins expeditions (ibid.: 36). Vize paid much attention to the unwillingness of the tsarist government to organize Arctic expeditions. But he also pointed to the pessimistic opinions of experts like Nansen, Amundsen or Vil’kitsky. Even Breitfuss’s statement that the Passage would be of no practical use in this geological era was brought up again (ibid.: 48). In short, Vize took a more political view of the events, although he did not blame the tsarist government for failing to see what contemporary experts did not see either. In contrast, he pointed out that the voyage of the Sibiryakov had proved the Soviets able to achieve what had been deemed impossible, and that the Soviet government had followed up this success with further development of the route. According to Vize, this had been the first occasion on which Stalin spoke the famous words ‘there are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm’. Thus Vize became one of the first to present the Northern Sea Route as the focal point of Soviet Arctic history. This had the advantage of strengthening Soviet claims in the Arctic. At the same time it diverted attention from the fact that Soviet Arctic exploration, compared with the various air expeditions, had not amounted to very much. THE PASSAGE AS A REGULAR SEA ROUTE In 1939 the activities of GUSMP were discussed at the eighteenth Party Congress, which proceeded to curtail some of its secondary undertakings. It was decided that GUSMP should attempt to make the Northeast Passage a regular sea route for planned communications with the Far East (Slavin 1964:75). If the route was to be of any use, then clearly one should be able to rely on its functioning. Voyages along the route had to become less like expeditions and more like normal practice. Therefore GUSMP’s activities were carefully studied by the Economic Section of the Arctic Institute, which was based in Moscow. The Economic Section, led by S.V.Slavin, found numerous shortcomings. For instance, ice reconnaissance was sometimes simply dispensed with, and at times its results were ignored by individual captains. But among the more important results of the inquiry was the fact that planned use of the route was only possible if forecasts became more reliable. This led to a reorganization of the ice-forecasting service, as a result of which more ice-reconnaissance expeditions were sent out, not only by plane, but also by ship. Nor was this development stopped by the Second World War. At the same time, the economists pointed to the need for icebreakers with a longer range (ibid.: 67). This meant oil-fuelled ships. Two American icebreakers, which the Soviet Union had obtained under the Second World War lend-lease programme, had been diesel fuelled. They had left a positive impression in the Soviet Union. In 1939 the Northern Sea Route was still not much beyond the pioneering stage. According to Armstrong, total turnover varied from 230,000 tonnes in 1935 to 271,000 in 1936. Most of this turnover consisted of timber exported via the Kara Route. For example, in 1936 139,700 tonnes were exported from the Yenisey, making up more than 50 per cent of total turnover (Armstrong 1952: app. I and II). Transit cargo was 23,800 tonnes or about 10 per cent. The volume remained

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small in spite of the fact that the Soviet Union was building up its Arctic fleet. Four new icebreakers were built, the losif Stalin class of 10,000 hp. These became available between 1938 and 1941, but their importance was reduced by the fact that they were coal fuelled. Nevertheless, this class constituted the first series of Soviet-built icebreakers, although others had been built before the Revolution, the Yermak as early as 1898. Beside icebreakers new icestrengthened freighters were acquired, such as the Igarka class of British-built timber carriers of 2,900 brt which were bought in 1936. In 1938 ships like the Levanevsky and the Dezhnev followed, which had ice-strengthened prows, like the Chelyuskin (Arikaynen 1984:114). The Second World War did not hamper the functioning of the Sea Route; indeed, turnover must have increased. During the war the route was used to bring lend-lease goods to the Soviet Union, while the supplying of the Yakutskaya ASSR was done by ship to lessen the burden on the trans-Siberian railway. Warships went westwards by it (Treshnikov 1985:13). At the same time the urgent need for nickel and coal led to increased use of Arctic resources. These activities more than offset the dwindling timber trade. It was even attempted to lengthen the season when in 1943 the icebreaker Mikoyan left early in the season (18–21 July) for Ambarchik. Enemy action was restricted to the western part of the route. The German navy was well acquainted with the conditions on the Northern Sea Route. In 1940, when the Soviet-German pact was still unimpaired, the German auxiliary cruiser Komet had passed through it with Soviet aid. This armed merchantman was commissioned to sink Allied shipping in the Pacific. The trip of the Komet had been most instructive to the Germans. The greatest loss was certainly the sinking of the famous Sibiryakov on 25 August 1942 by the Admiral Scheer. This German warship had been drawn to the Sea Route by reports from Japan of a big convoy moving west, about nineteen ships and three icebreakers, totalling 74,000 brt (German naval archives Rm 351/143). Since the lend-lease ships navigated under the Russian flag, they could not be attacked by the Japanese, as Japan was not at war with the Soviet Union. However, the Russian convoy sighted a German reconnaissance plane and hid among the numerous islands of the Siberian coast. Only the unsuspecting Sibiryakov stumbled into the German battleship and was sunk (German naval archives Rm 351/135). The Scheer, afraid that Allied warships might attack her at the bottleneck between the pack ice and Novaya Zemlya, returned at full speed after emptying her guns on Dikson. This was the only port worth shooting at in the Kara Sea, according to the Germans (German naval archives Rm 351/143, anlage 37, 38). The Scheer might have been more effective if she had been able to operate on the eastern part of the Sea Route. The need to supply the Yakutskaya ASSR by sea brought a relatively large number of ships to those seas. It seems that a special version of the Liberty ship, with an icebreaker-bow, was used. Shipments to the Yakutskaya ASSR increased sevenfold to tenfold, while turnover along the route as a whole doubled (Papanin 1985:21). Another consequence of the war was a growing need for coal, nickel and other strategic ores. The main coal-mining centre of the Soviet Union, the Don Basin area, was under enemy occupation, while extra nickel was needed to manufacture the high-quality alloys needed for arms. This caused the development of mines that would otherwise have remained unprofitable, such as the coal mines of Vorkuta and the nickel mines at Noril’sk. In 1941 collieries were opened near Bukhta

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Ugol’naya, and in 1943 additional ones near Tiksi on the Lena and in Nordvik between the Taymyr peninsula and the Lena (ibid.). The Noril’sk area had been known as a coalfield before, but in 1921 N.N.Urvantsev had discovered nickel there (Urvantsev 1981). In 1941 part of the installations of an ore-mining enterprise at Monchegorsk were moved to Noril’sk by way of the Kara Sea. Ships involved were the Dvinoles’ ,Pinega, Klara Zetkin, Usbekistan, Shchors and Kuznetsov (Chesnokov 1979:27; Papanin 1985:21). The machinery was then re-installed by numerous prisoners, while the whole operation was supervised by the NKVD. At first, the prisoners had to sleep in tents, in spite of the cold. Very few of the people who arrived in the early years survived the building of the mining complex (Shilde 1958:90–2). At the same time a railroad was built to connect Noril’sk to Dudinka, a port on the Yenisey which could be reached by sea-going ships (Shilde 1958:95; Dallin and Nicoiaevsky 1948:59). Mining began in 1942 (Slavin 1961:115). The metal was needed so badly that at first it was flown out by plane! After the war, prisoners were employed to build the town of Noril’sk, the famous Gorstroy project where, after Stalin’s demise, the uprising broke out that made Noril’sk notorious (Hrycyak 1984:17). Little is known about the Northern Sea Route immediately after the war, as information about its activity became scarcer. Some things are obvious, like the timber exports from Igarka beginning again, while the supplying of goods to the Yakutskaya ASSR returned to the railways. It is difficult to ascertain, but it would seem that the Northern Sea Route became somewhat less important. No new targets were set, no new ships became available. The three lend-lease icebreakers had been returned to the United States by 1951. Henceforth, shipping proved difficult and ships sometimes had to wait for ice barriers to clear because these could not be broken. There were some cases of forced winterings (Afanas’ev 1985: 23– 4). There clearly was a need for more powerful icebreakers, but these took a long time to arrive. Only in 1954 did some new diesel-fuelled icebreakers become operative, the Kapitan Belousov and her sisters. These ships were built in Finland at the Wärtsilä shipyard, which has produced half of the world’s existing icebreakers. Remarkably, they were not built for Arctic operations since they were equipped with twin screws at the bow. This sort of bow propeller draws the water from under the ice where the bow is going to hit and is a type of construction that gets easily damaged in Arctic ice, being mainly used in the Baltic. Nevertheless the Kapitan Belousov was used in the Arctic on some occasions. Currenlly this ship, now almost forty years old, serves in the Azovskoe More (Popov 1985). The same lack of interest was evident in Soviet merchantmen. For example, there was no great influx of new Arctic freighters. The situation here was somewhat better since ice-strengthened ships are needed anyway in the Soviet Union, where most coastal waters are ice-bound in winter. Thus, a number of ships of the Sevan class, which were built in Finland from 1945 onwards, had ice-strengthening (Soviet Merchant Ships 1969:95). But these were small ships (3,145 brt) with steam engines, and were built according to an outdated design: not the ideal type for Arctic voyages. This lack of concern for the Arctic fleet of the Soviet Union did not mean a major change of policy. Interest in the Arctic was certainly not abandoned; it simply followed the changing strategic situation, although to some extent economic arguments must have played a role. The rapid deterioration of SovietAmerican

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relations had changed the importance of the North, since a strategic bomber attack would most probably take the shortest route, via the North Pole. In consequence, much attention was paid to Arctic flying after the war. Airfields were built that could be used year round. A special department of GUSMP, called SPETSSTROY, was instituted for this purpose. Its director was N.V.Kuznetsov, who also headed the aviation department of GUSMP. From 1948 to 1953 General Kuznetsov even headed the whole of GUSMP (Afanas’ev 1985:27). The immediate post-war years witnessed a great deal of flying. In 1948 the Sever programme started, which included a great number of landings on icefloes. Soon, other stations followed, and since 1954 two or even three stations have been in operation simultaneously. These stations constituted small floating airfields and radio beacons on the ice cap, and were quite threatening to the United States. (About the history of drifting stations see Armstrong 1958 and Gordienko 1967.) Apart from the construction of airfields, the same policy as in pre-war years was continued and large numbers of forced labourers were used to bring about the development of Siberian resources. More attention was given to the building of railway links that could replace Arctic shipping or render it more effective. This was the case with the Tayshet-Ust’kut line, which connected river shipping on the Lena with the trans-Siberian railway. There had been a road link between the river and the railway, but it was not very reliable (Dibb 1972:35). In 1951 construction of this railway connection began, and by 1958 it functioned regularly. Its consequences were far-reaching. The cost of transporting goods to the Yakutskaya ASSR dropped to an eighth or tenth of the original cost, while the volume of supplies trebled. The railway also proved far more reliable than the Northern Sea Route, which was dependent on ice conditions, particularly those in the Proliv Vil’kitskogo. It was not very long before the next step was taken, namely that goods were carried by train and boat to Tiksi and shipped from there by the Northern Sea Route to the rivers Kolyma, Yana and Indigirka. This could be done even more efficiently by using sea-river ships, which could pass the stretch across the Laptev Sea. This alternative reduced the need for a Northern Sea Route (Slavin 1961:125, 288). Another example of this preference for railways was the project invoiving a railway connection between Salekhard in the Urals and Igarka on the Yenisey. Although construction began in 1950, the project was never realized. The aim of this railway was to support the Sea Route. By passing goods to Igarka before the season had begun, it was hoped to give ships a head start in passing the Proliv Vil’kitskogo. Another advantage would be that double and even treble passages would become possible, since there was no need to return to Murmansk or Archangel’sk as ships could reload at Igarka. After Stalin’s death, the plan was considered impractical and it was discontinued. A major reason for this was that Igarka, in order to cope with hundreds of tonnes passing through in two months at the most, would need large port facilities, which would be useless for the rest of the year. (Very little is known about this project which Slavin (1961:205) attacks. Parts of the railway have been found in later years (Shabad and Mote 1977:19). According to prisoners the project was called Kharpichstroy (Shilde 1958:94). A story by one of the collaborators on the project is retold by Pobozhy (1964).) It is clear that much of what happened in the years 1932–53 was influenced by Stalin, although it is difficult to say exactly what shape his personal influence took.

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In any case, basic policy in the Stalinist period aimed at maximum value for small investment Results were to be achieved by political mobilization, use of available stock and the appliance of scientific knowledge, not by drawing capital from a reluctant West Political mobilization was soon replaced by terror and forced labour, which was both cheaper and more reliable. One of the fields where this policy was found to be effective was Arctic exploitation. By coupling old icebreakers to a new system of ice forecasting, it proved possible to use the Northeast Passage for commercial shipping. Although it is not yet clear to what extent this was aided by an amelioration of the climate, it cannot be denied that the development of the Northern Sea Route was no small success. The results achieved exceeded by far the expectations of Western specialists (Stefansson 1943:694). Nevertheless, it would seem that this new seaway never stood up to the expectations the Soviet Union may have had, for it never became a viable alternative to the trans-Siberian railway. THE COLD WAR: THE SOVIET UNION FALLS BACK ON THE SECTOR THEORY Soviet attitude towards its Arctic sector was ambiguous. On the one hand the Soviets claimed a sector, as the 1926 decree clearly denoted, but on the other hand they refused to consider their sector as part of an international system. This attitude was possible because of the strength of Soviet Arctic exploration and the assertion of historical ties with the Arctic. At any rate, the Soviets were wedded to a system that in 1926 seemed to become general, or at least to have little or no competition. It soon turned out that the international community was not unanimously accepting this theory. For example, a French author described it in 1937 as a théorie pseudo-juridique (Appert 1937:433), while an American lawyer considered the sector principle to be generally accepted in the Antarctic (Reeves 1939). Oddly enough, during the Second World War the Soviet Union returned to a more conventional view of the sector theory. That is, it again began to see its sector as part of an internationally agreed system. As an émigré who had worked on the staff of GUSMP pointed out, the Malaya Entsiklopediya explicitly mentioned ‘sector’ again in 1943 (Kripton 1956:8; Briggs 1941; Dollot 1949; Mouton 1962: (III), 245). It seems that from about 1943 increasing value was again attached to the sector theory. The reason for this was the increase of American influence in the Arctic. Since 1939, when it had been seriously thinking of buying Greenland from Denmark, America had shown a keen interest in the Arctic. The proposal to buy that huge island was repeated the next year, in 1940, but finally the Second World War made it redundant (Smedal 1943:43). During the war, the United States obtained military facilities on Greenland, which made political expansion superfluous. After Denmark had been occupied by the Germans, the Danish ambassador in Washington concluded a treaty with the American government, in which the defence of Greenland was transferred to the Americans. This meant that the United States could open a number of bases on Greenland. America’s suddenly increasing interest in the Arctic clearly posed a threat to the Soviet Union, to whom this area still held a vital importance. One of the Soviet Union’s problems after the German invasion was the position of Spitsbergen, which

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commanded the access to Arkhangel’sk and the Russian North. In order to deny these islands to the Germans, the Soviet Union proposed to Great Britain a joint occupation of Spitsbergen. The proposal was made in 1941, shortly after the German attack on the Soviet Union. Norway was already under German occupation, while the Soviets had severed diplomatic ties with the Norwegian government in consequence of their pact with Hitler. Under these circumstances, it is understandable that the Soviet Union turned to the British government, but Great Britain preferred to have Spitsbergen occupied by the Norwegians. Subsequently, the civilian population, Norwegian as well as Russian, was evacuated and a Norwegian garrison was left behind (Liversidge 1960:39; Fjaerli 1979:44; Stavnitser 1948:135). In a conversation with Trygve Lie, who was at the time Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ivan Maysky, the Russian envoy in London, explained that the Soviet Union did not intend to annex Spitsbergen. Why then did Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Molotov in 1944 confront the Norwegian ambassador, H.Lange, with the demand to transfer sovereignty over Bear Island to the Soviet Union and to institute a joint rule over Spitsbergen? (Skagestad 1975:55; Erikson 1976; Østreng 1975:63–71; Mathisen 1954). In any event, the Norwegians succeeded in postponing the issue until after Norway’s liberation, but the Soviet minister had a good memory; at the Paris peace conference in 1946 Molotov again reverted to the issue, which was now brought before the Storting. The Norwegian parliament agreed that it was necessary to discuss the Svalbard Treaty, since its demilitarization article had clearly been overtaken by the events. But after that the Soviets suddenly seem to have lost their previous interest. Norwegian students have explained this by assuming a lack of information on the Soviet side. Apparently, the Soviet believed in 1946 that Spitsbergen was still occupied by British troops, which to them seemed a threatening perspective. However, in 1947 the Russian miners returned to their mines and found that Spitsbergen had been occupied by Norwegian troops, thus fulfilling Norway’s duties under the Treaty. Apparently this was considered satisfying and the Soviet government did not press any further, and what seemed very threatening demands by Molotov turned out to be little but political tactics. Nevertheless, Soviet lawyers still point to the fact that the Storting in 1947 acknowledged special rights of the Soviet Union to Spitsbergen, because of its value to Soviet national security (Efendiev 1972:135). Apart from the fact that the Americans obtained bases in Greenland during the Second World War, the Russian position in the Arctic was severely weakened by the ease with which the Germans intruded into the Soviet Arctic. Submarines and surface vessels operated quite unimpeded near the Siberian coast, without the Soviets being able to prevent this. Operation Wunderland showed how vulnerable the Soviet Union was in the North, since the German navy could operate there without any restriction. (Wunderland means ‘country of miracles’, but this is not necessarily a reference to the Arctic, since this codename was used for other operations as well.) For example, in 1943 a German hydroplane was fuelled in a bay on Novaya Zemlya (German naval archives Rm 7/51). Another example was the seizure of a Soviet polar station, whose crew was forced to continue radio traffic as usual for several days(Rohwer 1972).

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Nevertheless the Germans were disappointed about the results of Wunderland. No important port installations had been found and only Dikson had been worth shelling. The amount of shipping had been less than expected. (German naval archives Rm 7/51). This shows that the Northern Sea Route was still little more than an idea. A real infrastructure of ports did not exist; there were only a few radio stations, icebreakers and the knowledge of how to make a passage. On this fragile basis rested the Soviet claim on the area. In theory, however, the idea of a Northern Sea Route was an excellent basis for territorial claims in the Arctic, since the Soviets clearly did more exploration than anyone else in the area, which according to the Canadian sector theory was more than enough to consider it Soviet territory. The results of Arctic shipping were even important enough to allow a certain expansionism. But, practically, Soviet polar exploration had not made much progress, as the Wunderland attack had shown, for a hostile navy could operate quite freely there. The Soviets certainly had no reason to rest on their laurels. THE SECTOR, THE ANTARCTIC AND RUSSOAMERICAN RELATIONS As regards the Arctic, the most important change that the Second World War had brought about was the increase in American interests there. After 1945 the Americans possessed not only icebreakers of the Northwind class but also military bases on Greenland and Iceland. After V-day, five bases remained open, among them Thule Air Base. The situation in Iceland was somewhat more complicated. At the request of the Icelandic government the American bases were closed, although the American government remained entitled to use Keflavik Air Base. It was altogether a different situation to that before the war, when most American polar expeditions went to the Antarctic. The Americans too were worried about the Arctic, since that was where a future war could be fought. For the first time the expression ‘polar strategy’ was used. This meant an offensive across the Pole, with bombers and airborne troops attacking airfields near the Arctic. From such airfields strategic bombing of American and Canadian population centres could take place (Sutherland 1966). This fear seemed realistic in view of the tremendous reputation the Soviet Union held in Arctic flying and logistics (Conant 1962:30). To prevent this, military preparations were made: the bases on Greenland were held on to and troops and material were prepared for Arctic warfare. Exercises were held in the Antarctic and near Thule Air Base. Also, the wartime cooperation with Canada was continued and extended. These preparations appeared to the Russians to be of an aggressive nature rather than defensive. In 1947 I.I.Ermashev published a pamphlet with the ominous title Polyarnaya strategiya i polyarnaya ekspansiya (Ermashev 1947). He argued that behind this defence was hidden no less than the American aspiration to an Arctic hegemony. With some Stalinist pathos its author asked whom the Americans feared. Victorious armies of seals and polar bears? Threatening flights of sea gulls? To Ermashev, the real reason behind the American interest was the strategic value of the Arctic, from where the shortest routes ran to every point of the globe. Citing

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an American newspaper of 1943 as his source, Ermashev argued that the Americans saw the Arctic Ocean as a new mare nostrum. The only state that could challenge their command of it was the Soviet Union. American sovereignty over the Arctic would be the first step towards American sovereignty over the world. Hence, the initial step of the United States government would be to infringe upon Soviet Arctic sovereignty. Under these circumstances it seems obvious that the Soviet Union would attempt to strengthen its claims to the Arctic. This happened in the first place by reverting to the sector theory. Unfortunately, the theoretical value of this theory had suffered from the developments in the Antarctic. It will be recalled that the sector theory was first applied in the Antarctic by Great Britain (1908 and 1923), quickly followed by France in 1924 (Quigg 1983:110). Ten years later Australia claimed a sector. Even Norway, a fierce opponent of the sector in the Arctic, had used a similar construction in January 1939 to avoid losing its valuable whaling grounds in the Antarctic to the Germans, who also had meant to claim a sector. After this, the Antarctic pie had been divided completely, except for the virtually unattainable Marie Byrd Land. In 1940 a problem arose when Chile as well as Argentina began to claim sectors. These sectors fell within the area staked out by Great Britain. This caused confidence in the sector theory to falter, because it lost its earlier attraction of being the simple and effective solution that its advocates had always maintained it to be. Another important point to discredit the sector theory was the fact that the United States had never adopted it, although they had often been on the verge of doing so. An American sector on the Antarctic mainland would have included Marie Byrd Land, where United States expeditions led by R.Byrd had made symbolic claims. So a fairly distinct notion existed of what would be the American sector, but the final step was never taken. Claiming an American sector would have meant a departure from the position taken by C.E.Hughes, according to which actual settlement was considered a necessary precondition. In the American view, this also meant that sectors of other countries would have to be respected. The United States remained with their old opinion and, for example, refrained from joining the treaty of 25 October 1938 in which Australia, Great Britain, France and New Zealand mutually allowed each other to fly over their sectors. The United States reserved their rights to fly anywhere in the Antarctic (Gidel 1948:6). Thus, after the Second World War the sector theory suffered from the fact that it was not supported by the United States, while British, Chilean and Argentine sectors in the Antarctic overlapped. Sectors clearly were no solution in themselves. This muddle endangered the sectorial division of the Arctic. In 1946 Dean Acheson, Secretary of State, declared that the United States did not recognize any claim to a sector in the Antarctic (ibid.: 61). Another solution therefore had to be found. An American lawyer, Philip Jessup, proposed a conference to divide the Antarctic, in the way that the Berlin conference in 1884 had arranged the division of Africa. Such an arrangement would set a precedent for the Arctic. Also, the task of such a conference would be eased considerably if the International Court in The Hague would render a verdict on the legal aspects of this affair (Jessup 1947:119). It shows the spirit of the times that a group of American students who in class acted the role of an international court concluded that the sector theory could not be the legal basis for a division of the polar regions (Elder 1947). Jessup’s suggestion

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was endorsed by Gilbert Gidel, a judge of the Inteniational Court. Gidel himself had proved in his work to be no proponent of the sector theory. This Frenchman suggested that a solution be sought like the Spitsbergen treaty, a solution that would allow peaceful international exploitation of the Antarctic (Gidel 1948:64), These developments only raised suspicions in the Soviet Union, where it was even suggested that Chile and Argentina had acted on American initiative to discredit the sector theory (Molodtsov 1954:19). When on 9 August 1948 an American invitation was sent out to all states involved in the Antarctic to hold a conference, the storm broke. The Soviet Union had not been invited, although clearly the objective was to find a new way of dividing both polar regions. A decision on the situation in the Antarctic was likely to have important consequences for the situation in the Arctic. The Soviet Union had not been invited to the conference because it did not have any direct interests in the Antarctic, except perhaps on account of whaling. After the Second World War the Soviet Union had begun to send whalers to the Antarctic seas. In 1946 it had joined the International Whaling Convention. The Soviet Union had in fact only once interfered in the Antarctic, when Peter I Island had been annexed by Norway in 1939, by sending a diplomatic protest. This island had been discovered by Russian explorers, so the Soviet Union reserved its right to claim it in the future. But this had been a single occasion and generally was explained by the Stalin-Hitler pact, for when in 1939 Norway claimed Peter I Island, as well as a coastal sector in the Antarctic that the Germans had wanted to annex, Stalin tried to obstruct the Norwegian claim. Since then there had been no sign of Soviet interest in the Antarctic. Of course, this would change if the Soviet Union were to take part in the conference on the Antarctic (Quigg 1983: 135). Nevertheless, there are some indications of Soviet pre-war interest in the Antarctic, such as the 1938 version of D’yakonov’s book which unexpectedly contained a complete Part II on the Antarctic. This is very interesting because it is one of the very few pre-war Soviet accounts of Antarctic history. It also mentioned the point of Soviet involvement in the Antarctic, assuming that sooner or later this would come about, in order to solve problems that were the same in the North as in the South. Papanin, at the time head of GUSMP, admitted later that there had been plans for a Soviet Antarctic expedition, but these had been abandoned because of the lack of suitable ships (Papanin 1978:365). Apparently one of the first plans had been developed by R.Samoylovich back in the early thirties (Kanevsky 1977: 45). On 10 February 1949 the Soviet Union’s Geographic Society adopted a resolution in which it said that the status of the Antarctic could not be decided upon without the participation of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had historical rights in the Antarctic which stemmed from the expeditions by F.F. Bellinsgauzen and M.P.Lazarev in 1819–21. James Cook had denied the existence of a continent near the South Pole, while these Russian explorers had reached its shores first. The society’s president, L.S.Berg, discussed this question in a lecture, emphasizing that it did not follow from Cook’s writings that he should have seen Antarctica in 1773–4. The Briton had expressed himself carefully, but there could be no doubt whatsoever about the Russian discoveries. This meant that the Soviet Union had rights on grounds of discovery. The Soviet Union had succeeded Imperial Russia and neither had ever ceded any rights acquired by discovery.

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Therefore, the Soviet Union had the right to participate in any discussion over the status of the area (Berg 1954:113). The Soviet government accepted this point of view and on 7 June 1950 all countries involved in the Antarctic received a Soviet memorandum which pointed to the Soviet Union’s historical rights (Toma 1956: app. I). The Soviet memorandum contained some statements that were remarkable from a legal point of view, since it claimed that the Antarctic mattered to a number of countries that had not been invited by the United States; whaling and meteorology made the region important also to others, who should for that reason take part in the negotiations. This argument completely contradicted the Soviet Union’s sector theory in the Arctic. If economic and scientific interests were taken into account, then the rights of lands wilhout sectors in the Arctic should be recognized as well. This was clearly incompatible with the sector system, the mainstay of Soviet rights in the Arctic. How could the Soviet Union take a position so critical of the sector theory? THE REVISION OF THE SECTOR THEORY BY THE SOVIET UNION This change of attitude was possible because the Soviet Union had reconsidered the legal basis of its claims in the Arctic, prompted by the situation in the Antarctic as well as the increasing American influence on Greenland. This revision of its legal position took place at a conference in January 1949, held jointly by the Academy of Science’s legal institute and the Arctic Institute, GUSMP’s research organization. The title of this conference was The undivided and unrestrained sovereignty of the Soviet Union over the Polar Sea’ (Vyshnepol’sky 1952). The conference offered two innovations: the first was to make a sharp division between the legal situation in the North and in the South; the second was a reassessment of the legal status of the Soviet Arctic. One of the first publications that explained these ideas appeared in 1950, written by V.N.Durdenevsky, who assumed that there were, generally speaking, three groups of legal theories concerning the polar regions. One group considered them no man’s land, the next opted for joint administration (the so-called condominium theory) and the third group accepted the sector idea in one form or another (Durdenevsky 1950). Durdenevsky explained that these theories could not be applied everywhere and geographical circumstances should be taken into account. The North Pole area was close to the north European centres of population, which gave it great strategic and economic value. The North had also been exploited from time immemorial. For these reasons the sector system had been applied here since 1924. (It is easy to recognize Lakhtin’s influence here.) The lands within the Arctic sector factually came under the sovereignty of the nearest state. Moreover, sectorial seas were often ‘historic bays’ or ‘internal waters’, like, for instance, Hudson Bay in Canada, and therefore also belonged to state territory. It was therefore easy to understand that the Arctic had been tacitly divided into sectors. But in the Antarctic, matters were completely different. This area was far away from the nearest continent. Studying it was important to the whole of humanity. Therefore there was no reason to apply the sector theory here. This had only

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happened because imperialist nations tended to divide the world among themselves. Durdenevsky suggested that an internationally viable solution should be found for the status of the South Pole. A good example of reaching such an agreement had been the conference of Berlin in 1884 on the division of Africa. Even countries that had no colonies in Africa had taken part, such as the United States, Russia and the Netherlands. Durdenevsky tried to prevent any political system developed for the Antarctic being transferred to the Arctic. Whatever system was developed for the South Pole, it could not be applied to the North, because here a certain historical tradition existed, which was generally accepted. In fact, Durdenevsky had returned to the ideas Lakhtin had expressed twenty years earlier. To consider the sector as a historical fact had been his idea, as was the idea that the seas within a sector could have different legal positions and should be partly under state sovereignty. How influential was Durdenevsky’s article? In the first place, it was no unique case. A similar opinion had been expressed by the Bol’shaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (1950: vol. III, 32 and 485). Much of its influence depended on the fact that the Arctic Institute in Leningrad supported it, which is apparent from other articles and from a remark by Durdenevsky himself. As J.Löwenhardt wrote, scientific institutions in the Soviet Union are quite influential in transmitting opinions of specialists to government policy (Löwenhardt 1981:192). This kind of article should be seen as a recommended policy, just as Butler suggests (Butler 1971:14). In this case the recommendation was incorporated in government policy, as can be seen in the Soviet memorandum on its rights in the Antarctic, where similar arguments were used. From now on there was to be a clear distinction between the legal regimes in the Arctic and in the Antarctic. The need for such a distinction was further developed in two articles written in 1951 and 1952. The first was written by B.V.Kostritsyn and dealt with the South Pole; the second, by S.A.Vyshnepolsky, considered the Arctic. These articles appeared in Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Pravo, a legal journal (Kostritsyn 1951; Vyshnepol’sky 1952). First, Kostritsyn again outlined Durdenevsky’s opinion, by pointing to the geographical differences between the North and the South Pole. In the North, the Soviet Union, together with the other states bordering on the Pole, had always maintained close economic and strategic ties with the polar regions, thus allowing a division in sectors. Antarctica, on the other hand, had international significance and therefore could be divided only by an international conference. Then Kostritsyn went on to say that every supranational solution, such as the foundation of an international committee for the administration of the Antarctic, had to be rejected as ‘petty-bourgeois cosmopolitism’, because it infringed upon the sovereignty of the individual state (Kostritsyn 1951:42). A solution should be found in the cooperation of sovereign states on behalf of the peaceful exploitation of the Antarctic, since the United States might take advantage of any other solution as a ‘fig leaf for American Imperialist plans in Antarctica’ (ibid.). True internationalization could only depend on cooperation, mutual respect for the rights of other countries and on participation of the Soviet Union. Clearly, Kostritsyn was worried that, even with Soviet participalion in a conference over the Antarctic, a politically dangerous situation might arise.

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The article of 1952, by Vyshnepol’sky, equally began by repeating the opinion that different political circumstances prevailed in the North and the South. It was only with S.V.Molodtsov in 1954 that this now familiar statement was expanded (Molodtsov 1954:37). According to Molodtsov, the sector theory had been introduced in the Antarctic only because it had given such excellent results in the North, where sectors had factually existed for a long time. Molodtsov completely ignored the fact that the sector theory had first been applied in the case of the Falkland dependencies in the Antarctic; the Soviet Union had adopted this system in 1926 and transferred it to the Arctic. But Molodtsov’s opinion was quite logical if the sector had indeed been the result of a historical development, in the way Lakhtin asserted (Gidel 1948:41; Lakhtin 1928:22). The revision of the Soviet Union’s legal position in the Arctic proved effective. Whatever political system would be used to divide the Antarctic, it could never have any consequences for the Arctic. This considerably eased the Soviet position in the negotiations over the Antarctic, which began on 3 May 1958, with the United States inviting the Soviet Union and ten other nations. When in 1959 discussions on the situation in the Antarctic resulted in the Antarctic treaty, it contained a formula to avoid territorial division: all territorial claims were left unaffected for a certain period, while scientific research could take place everywhere. This solution, which entailed no restriction on national sovereignty and also could not be transferred to the Arctic, was immediately accepted by the Soviet Union, to the amazement of Western observers, who had expected a more aggressive attitude (Quigg 1983:110). THE NORTH: THE HISTORIC WATERS DOCTRINE Making a clear distinction between the North and South Pole averted one of the two dangers that threatened the Soviet Union in the Arctic. The second cause for alarm concerned the American advance to the Arctic. Therefore, the Soviets would try to strengthen their claim to a sector. Since 1926, when the sector theory had been incorporated in Soviet legislation, international lawyers had worried over the fact that the sector law could be applied only to land. Any basis for applying it to the Arctic seas was lacking. As has been mentioned on page 32, E.A.Korovin had suggested in 1928 avoiding this by using a broad interpretation. Lakhtin had divided the waters within the sector into different categories. However, since the development of flying in the Arctic was less impressive than expected, this question had remained unresolved and had to be taken up again. Thus, after the Second World War a second attempt was made to expand Soviet sovereignty over the Arctic seas. This had been the main topic of the 1949 conference about the ‘indivisible and unrestrained sovereignty over the Polar Sea’. One of the ways in which this was reached was the defence of the sector theory. Another way was to develop theories that increased government authority over Arctic seas. One possibility was the theory of the ‘historic sea’. Durdenevsky had initiated this in 1950 by stating that the Arctic Institute considered the seas near Siberia to be ‘historic seas’. Kostritsyn had mentioned this briefly, but it was Vyshnepol’sky in 1952 who elaborated the concept (Vyshnepol’sky 1952).

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By origin, the ‘historic bay’ was a nineteenth-century concept closely connected to that of ‘internal waters’. If a country has a bay of which the access does not exceed twice the width of the lerritorial waters, then ships cannot, by definition, enter the bay without entering territorial waters. According to international law this bay may then be considered ‘internal waters’ and state sovereignty can be applied unrestrictedly. As to the ‘historic’ aspect, there are a number of bays whose entrance width exceeds twice that of the territorial waters, for instance because they are funnel-shaped. But they are of such importance to the coastal state in question that it is necessary to extend state control over them. Of course, if the rights of other countries are not harmed by this, no quarrel will arise from it: for example, if the bay in question lies far from important shipping routes and only one country uses it. If no protest is raised, then such a bay can be declared ‘historic’ on condition that the coastal state can demonstrate state control since time immemorial. An example of such a historic bay would be the Dutch Zuiderzee, at the time when it was still connected to the sea. To adapt this theory to Siberian seas, Vyshnepol’sky made a few preliminary remarks on their geography. First, he pointed out that these Siberian seas were considered by the Soviets to be seas of the ‘bay type’. These were in any case different from the Bering Sea and the Barents Sea, both being high seas. Next, the ‘historical’ character of these seas could be explained by a long history of exploration. Here, Vyshnepol’sky again brought up the decrees of Michael Romanov dating from 1619, to which M.K.Sidorov had already pointed. In addition, Vyshnepol’sky found in the correspondence between Queen Elizabeth I and Tsar Ivan the Terrible that the latter had refused the British the right to trade at the mouth of the Ob’ and the Yenisey. According to Vyshnepol’sky, this letter showed that Ivan the Terrible exerted sovereignty over the Kara Sea. But actually the letter forbade trading at the mouth of a Siberian river, not shipping on the Kara Sea (Arkheograflcheskaya Komissiya, 38, 94; Vilkov 1967). It seems unjustified to draw conclusions from this letter about the status of the Kara Sea. Nevertheless, this part of history being poorly known outside the USSR, these assertions were accepted in the West (e.g. Biermann 1978:492; Kulski 1953). Of course, Vyshnepol’sky also pointed to the development of the Northern Sea Route in the thirties. The existence of a national route which in the course of centuries had been conceived and realized by the Russian nation proved (according to Vyshnepol’sky) that the waters through which the route passed had been under Russian sovereignty since time immemorial. The Northern Sea Route made state control legitimate. Third, Vyshnepol’sky claimed that there was no international shipping in these waters. The Northern Sea Route was strictly Russian in nature and destination and the only foreign vessels to navigate these waters were there under Soviet flag or under Soviet contracts. This referred to British ships that transported timber from the Yenisey. In addition to the historic bay doctrine, Vyshnepol’sky had another argument to prove that the four Siberian seas under discussion were not high seas. He considered these to be no usual seas, but ones of an exceptional nature. The ice made normal shipping without icebreakers impossible. Therefore, risks were much higher and thus the coastal state was involved to a greater extent, having to offer more aid than usual, such as icebreaker support and ice forecasts. Also, in the case

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of an accident, the ensuing rescue operation might pose a threat to the security of the coastal state. This probably meant that if an American ship should remain stuck in the Siberian ice the Soviet Union could not permit all sorts of American planes and icebreakers to come to its aid (Vyshnepol’sky 1952:41). This fear is understandable, since a ship frozen in the pack ice may well serve as an air base for bombers, exactly what both the Americans and the Soviets feared most at the time. Vyshnepol’sky’s article had elaborated the notion that the Siberian seas were a special case of the historic bay theory. These Siberian seas were ‘of the bay type’ and had been under exclusive Russian sovereignty for centuries. Actually, Vyshnepol’sky did little else than adapt various arguments that had been used before by Lakhtin and others to the historic bay doctrine. The notion of historic relations of the Russian lands with the Arctic had subsequently been developed by Vize, D’yakonov and others, who, by concentrating on Russian history, reverted to a point of view similar to Sidorov’s. Vyshnepol’sky and, for that matter, other Soviet lawyers tried to expand Soviet claims by relying on history, without leaving the framework of ‘imperialism versus communism’. It was a typically Stalinist way of operating. By developing one’s arguments organically from what someone else had said before, one could avoid the need to stick out one’s neck on issues of ideology. Quoting Stalin or Lenin was not only patriotic, it was safe as well. Also, Vyshnepol’sky’s reasoning was expedient to the country’s policy according to Stalinist tenets, since it increased Soviet rights in the area without the need for international cooperation. Although less obvious to Western observers, in the eyes of the Russians it simply codified an existing situation. It is also worth noting that the same historical aspect that Lakhtin had used for justifying a sector claim was now used to claim certain seas. THE HISTORIC WATERS DOCTRINE AND THE WEST An important advantage of applying the historic bay theory to Siberian seas was the fact that it allowed the closure of huge seas. As an American naval officer strikingly put it, the Soviet Union was trying to extend the same buffer zones it had in Central Europe to the Arctic (Synhorst 1973). Such buffer zones were also established on other seas. This was done mostly by applying another legal theory, the mare clausum doctrine, which claimed that, if a sea was surrounded by land, then the coastal states had the right to close that sea to warships of other countries. The Black Sea and the Baltic could thus in theory be denied to American warships. In 1948 B.A.Dranov had studied the question of how to apply the mare clausum doctrine to the Black Sea. In 1949 S.V.Molodtsov had done the same for the Baltic. Of course, the Soviet Union’s reason for surrounding itself with such buffer zones was the Cold War (Bradshaw 1979). Vyshnepol’sky used Sidorov’s 75-year-old idea about the Siberian seas being historically under Russian sovereignty to enlarge this safety belt in the Arctic. For geographical reasons, the Arctic seas could never be subject to the mare clausum theory, but the historic water doctrine produced much the same effect Just as in Lakhtin’s case, it is difficult to ascertain to what extent Vyshnepol’sky’s opinion represented the official point of view. Did Vyshnepol’sky voice the position of

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the Soviet government? First, it seems clear that the Soviet Union was convinced of the validity of historical rights in the Soviet sector, since it paid much attention to historical research. To exactly what extent the theory of the historic bay was adopted is less clear. Again, this theory was not confirmed by a law. In the West there was some uncertainty over this and an American reviewer took Vyshnepol’sky’s article as an announcement that henceforth the four Siberian seas were closed to aircraft and ships of other nations (Kulski 1953). A Norwegian author stated that, as from September 1952, the Soviet navy were under standing orders to stop every foreign ship entering these waters, but no source was given (Skagestad 1975:70). The lack of legislation on this point follows from the very idea of a historic bay. Part of this concept is that it concerns areas regarded as having been under state control since time immemorial. Consequently, historic waters cannot be declared, since the statement that henceforth a certain bay always has been under state control would be self-contradictory. This appeared in July 1957 when Peter the Great Bay (on which Vladivostok lies) was closed to foreign shipping. Since the access to this bay is extremely wide, such a declaration could be based only on the historic bay concept. Its closure was promptly protested against by Japan, Great Britain, West Germany, the United States and the Netherlands (Bouchez 1964:281). If a written law was impossible in this case, then the Soviet Union might have used the Second International Conference on the Law of the Sea to explain its situation. This conference, which had been called by the United Nations in Geneva in 1958, was meant to codify the Law of the Sea. Such a codification was necessary because a number of new problems had arisen, such as the division of the continental shelf, the right to fish in coastal waters and the precise extent of territorial waters (Anand 1983:175). A number of related problems such as maritime nuclear tests were studied. The question of the historic bay did arise, but a majority considered that more research was needed before a decision on this matter could be reached and therefore the concept remained unclear. The only indication that the Soviet Union did apply this doctrine to the Siberian waters is the law on the Soviet borders of 1960, which under ‘internal waters’ mentions the seas and straits that belong historically to the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, there is no specification of which seas are meant. Nevertheless, this law was far less equivocal than the Soviet government’s earlier pronouncement on the subject. There was an excellent reason for this, namely the development of the nuclearpowered submarine. This increased the need to close the Siberian seas to foreign shipping.

6 Historiography in the Cold War

THE INFLUENCE OF THE HISTORIC WATERS DOCTRINE ON HISTORIOGRAPHY A side effect of the emphasis on the history of the Northern Sea Route in legal theory was its influence on historiography. Suddenly much more attention was paid to the Soviet interpretation of the exploration of the Northem Sea Route. Whereas Lakhtin had merely asserted that most islands off the Siberian coast had been discovered by Russians, it was now stated that the role of foreigners in the exploration of the route had been grossly exaggerated, for which D’yakonov and Vize were to blame (Lakhtin 1928:23; Belov 1956b:397). The idea of a Northeast Passage had been Russian from the beginning. It had arisen at the end of the sixteenth century. After that the Route had evolved during centuries of exploration by the Russian people. The true discoverers of this Route were the Pomory, the Russians who lived on the coasts of the White Sea. The Route’s history was inseparable from Russian history (ibid.: 396). An example of this was the voyage made by Semen Dezhnev, a Russian cossack who had sailed the straits between America and Asia in 1648, long before Bering in 1728. Dezhnev’s voyage was considered by the Soviets to be very important because, to them, he had been the first to prove that America and Asia were separate continents and therefore that the Northeast Passage might exist. In 1948 a special session of the Geographical Society commemorated the voyage that had taken place 300 years before. Nevertheless, at the time Dezhnev’s trip had remained unknown and an account of it had been found only much later, so the effect of that voyage on actual exploration was not very great. In fact, when Nordenskiöld first sailed the Passage with the Vega in 1879, he could not rely on any definite knowledge among the Pomory. This makes it clear that the role of the Pomory in exploring the Passage was, in historical respects, most limited. This certainly undermines the idea of a history of Russian exploration stretching back continuously for several centuries (Nordenskiöld 1882: vol. I, 26). THE ZALIV SIMSA FINDINGS In 1940 the remains were discovered of a sixteenth-century expedition on the coast of Taymyr, in Zaliv Simsa. This was important because it proved that Russians had

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actually explored all of Siberia’s Arctic coast before anyone else had done so. The part around Mys Chelyuskina that Vize had excluded from Russian exploration in his book on the Northern Sea Route in 1940 thus appeared to be known to the Pomory, which in Soviet eyes considerably reduced the importance of the Nordenskiöld passage. They overlooked the fact that Nordenskiöld had explored the whole of the passage in one voyage and the Russians had done so only bit by bit without making their findings public. Of course, the Zaliv Simsa discovery was given ample attention. The war delayed further study, but in 1945 A.P.Okladnikov, an archaeologist, led an expedition organized by the Arctic Institute to the coastal site. Three years later a booklet was published about the expedition, called Russian Seventeenth-century Polar Navigators on the Taymyr (Okladnikov 1948). This was expressly meant for the massovoy Chitatel’ or mass readership. It contained a description of the artefacts, a discussion of the historic significance of the expedition and a reprint of the first article that described how surveyors in 1940 found the remains of the camp, at first ignoring it, assuming that these were traces of the Amundsen expedition of 1919. But the absence of any food tins made them suspicious and a number of objects were taken for further inspection. Study of these artefacts and further excavation by Okladnikov soon proved that there had been a hunting expedition by three men carrying many gold coins (presumably for the fur trade) and expensive equipment. Okladnikov considered their navigation instruments surprisingly modern, a tribute to the high level of Pomory navigation. It was assumed that the party had been travelling east from Mangazeya. In discussing the historical significance of the findings, Okladnikov pointed out that they shed new light on the unknown Russians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from whom West European travellers would have obtained their information about the North and who had helped the latter as pilots. The whole idea of a passage was clearly Russian and had been brought to the West by Dmitry Gerasimov ‘as now had been established unequivocally’, which is much less vague than D’yakonov had cared to be in 1931 (see p. 48) (ibid.: 83). It was also said that Western expeditions had been given much help from Russians in their endeavours. An example of this was the selling of bread to the survivors of the Barents wintering in 1596, after these had returned to the Russian coast in their own boats (ibid.: 85). The fact that Russian travellers had reached the Taymyr before 1619 proved that they were very apt explorers, better than the West Europeans. The Russians had sailed regularly to the Ob’ and further east, while Europeans only rarely ventured beyond Novaya Zemlya. Russians had also wintered on Spitsbergen long before the Norwegians. Of course, all of this had been said before, although less unequivocally, mostly followed by some expression of regret that the Russians had no Hakluyt to describe their successes. But Zaliv Simsa now showed that archaeological support could be found for such allegations. Self-confidence was strengthened and it was assumed that these and other findings would confirm the natural and legal priority of the Russians in discovering the Northern Sea Route. From now on, West European sources about the Russians were not the only ones and archaeological findings would be equally important. Shortly after, in 1951, a special monograph appeared, dedicated to the Zaliv Simsa findings (Okladnikov and Pinkhenson 1951).

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FIRST ATTEMPTS TO DEVELOP AN EARLY HlSTORY OF ARCTIC RUSSIA Finding the artefacts of Zaliv Simsa had been an unexpected success, but since there were no further such spectacular discoveries, much attention was paid to the other known examples of early Russian Arctic explorers, Bering and Dezhnev. K. Osipov seized upon these in his booklet The First Russian Polar Navigators (Osipov 1949) and many others followed him (e.g. Yunga 1941, 1946). Dezhnev especially was an obvious link to the Pomory. In 1948 the tercentenary anniversary of his voyage was marked by the appearance of several publications, among them those of Belov and Markov. More or less successful attempts were made to expand the public’s knowledge about the Pomory, for example Vize’s Russian Polar Navigators, a biographical dictionary, which listed all sailors known to Vize from printed sources. Fairly unknown names such as Fedot Popov and Savva Loshkin thus became better known to historians and school teachers. Another more generally known example of an early Russian expedition was studied by G.E.Yanikov in his book about the Great Northern Expedition. While denying that this expedition had been inspired by Westerners such as Leibnitz, Yanikov saw it as a part of Peter the Great’s endeavour to build a Russian fleet, contributing to the necessary hydrographic studies. Thus it was implied that the idea of a passage was innate in the Russian people and likely to appear again and again. A similar idea can be found in Perevalov’s book on M.V.Lomonosov, a Pomor by birth, who made a brilliant scientific career in the eighteenth century, though his Arctic studies were less known (Perevalov 1949). In a pamphlet entitled Kratkoe opisanie he explained his ideas about a polar route (Lomonosov 1763). At the time, they had resulted in an expedition by V.A.Chichagov, who attempted to reach the Bering Strait by sailing north from Spitsbergen. Perevalov edited this pamphlet and other works of Lomonosov on the Arctic, pointing out that this was one of the first serious studies of the behaviour of sea ice. Even if the opisanie saw its first publication only in the nineteenth century, it proved the ‘priority of Russian science in studying the Arctic’ (Perevalov 1949:464). The Russians had priority, not only in actual discoveries, but also in the idea of a navigable passage. Lomonosov was quoted and regarded as a spiritual father to the Northern Sea Route by people such as O.Yu.Shmidt, I.D.Papanin and V. Yu.Vize. Neither the studies on the Great Northern Expedition nor those about Lomonosov had greatly expanded knowledge of the Pomory, although they did strengthen the case of Russian priority in Arctic exploration. Another author went straight to the heart of this matter. This was K.I.Badigin, who had been the captain of the Georgy Sedov during its famous drift across the North Pole (1938–40) and who wrote a novel based on the adventures of four Russian sailors on Spitsbergen in 1743–6 (Badigin 1953b). These adventures had been described in 1766 by a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Le Rua (Le Rua 1973). Intending it as a boy’s book, Badigin added a boy to the original four sailors and retold their story. But the interesting thing about the book was that it contained all sorts of detail about the Pomory way of life, about navigation techniques, methods of wintering, even special expressions used to denote different kinds of ice or ship’s parts. In an explanatory note at the end of the book, Badigin revealed that this knowledge about the Pomory came from a manuscript found some decades before

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by B.V.Shergin in the archives of the Solovetsky monastery. Shergin was a friend of Badigin’s and a poet interested in folklore. The manuscript, written in the fifteenth century by one Ivan Olegovich Amosov, related much about the Pomory that had been unknown. It proved that the Russians had been sailing to Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemlya and the Baltic before the sixteenth century. It even confirmed that the Starostins had been sailing to Spitsbergen before the founding of the Solovetsky monastery. The manuscript contained a good deal of detail about the daily life of the Pomory and their knowledge of navigation, which appeared to have reached a high level. All this new information allowed Badigin to write a very interesting book. Stimulated by the evidence of the manuscript, Badigin continued his study of the Pomory navigations. In 1953 he wrote a dissertation on The Ice Navigation of the Pomory from the twelfth to the seventeenth Century’ (Badigin 1953a), a popular version of which appeared in 1956 in his book Po studenym moryam (Across the Cold Seas, studeny being an ancient word for cold) (Badigin 1956). According to Badigin the heyday of the Pomory had been not the sixteenth century, but earlier. The sixteenth century was already a period of decline. This was exactly the kind of history the Soviets were hoping for, because it proved Russian priority in the discovery of Spitsbergen and other Arctic islands, thus rendering all Western expeditions insignificant. Nevertheless there were snags, since apart from the Amosov manuscript Badigin had very little to go by. His dissertation relied on such diverse sources as an analysis of Pomory language, climatological variations and Badigin’s personal experience of ice navigation. Even his editors admitted that Badigin’s work was based, to a large extent, on what they called his ‘sharp-witted suppositions’. None the less, they pointed out that, however hypothetical Badigin’s book was, it might at any moment be vindicated by new archeological findings or documents (ibid.: preface). Badigin set out to follow the history of ice navigation within the framework of political and economic development. The economic base of ice navigation was the so-called ‘fish tooth’, the heavy ivory incisors of the walrus. These were for sale in Constantinople as early as the tenth century, thus proving to Badigin that people from Novgorod had reached the White Sea by that time. Ivory had played the same role in Arctic discovery as spicc in Western discoveries, since it had forced its merchants to make ever longer voyages (ibid.: 59). The Pomory developed special craft for sailing through the ice, and soon, during the twelfth century, the first discoveries outside the White Sea were made, such as Kolguev and Novaya Zemlya. Spitsbergen, called Grumant by the Pomory, soon followed (ibid.: 66). Here several geographic factors aided discovery. First, the edge of the pack ice in summer extends from Novaya Zemlya to Spitsbergen, while the number of walrus increases as one approaches the archipelago. Secondly, the high mountains of Spitsbergen can be seen from a long distance. Finally, in August, the winds blow towards Spitsbergen. Badigin considered these excellent reasons for discovering Grumant in the twelfth century. In fact, it might well be possible, according to Badigin, that the Norwegians learned about Spitsbergen from the Russians (ibid.: 74). The discovery of Grumant brought a new refinement to sailing techniques, such as teaching the Russians how to winter. This in turn allowed even greater penetration into the Arctic. From a remark about an island near Novaya Zemlya by Nicolaas Witsen, a seventeenth-century Dutch scholar and geographer, it

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became obvious that the Pomory had visited Severnaya Zemlya. According to Witsen, the Pomory took only the teeth of the walrus and left the remainder. Badigin explains this habit by the fact that the return from Severnaya Zemlya was complicated by the extremely changeable ice conditions, so that every delay was dangerous. The argument seems somewhat inconclusive. By this time, the Pomory had developed their own type of ship which had a sledge-type bow and an eggshaped hull to protect it from ice pressure. Badigin considered these ships to be larger and better developed than contemporary Western ships. Things had been confused by the drawing of a Pomory ship that figured in Gerrit de Veer’s account of Barents’ voyage. This had been of a small coastal vessel, whereas long-range travel was done with the much larger lod’ya and koch, of which de Veer gave no picture. Once this step had been taken, Badigin could think of no reason why the Pomory should not have reached the Pacific. Gregory Istoma and Dmitry Gerasimov had known of the existence of a Northeast Passage and there were signs that a Novgorod colony had been found on the shores of Alaska (Farelly 1944). The straits of Anian, which according to Marco Polo divided Asia from America, had originally been called ‘straits of Akian’, the Pomory word for ocean. Why did nobody know of these impressive voyages? Badigin offered several reasons. First, there was the decline of Pomory sailing that set in during the seventeenth century. In 1619 the route to Mangazeya had been closed by the Tsar, thus forcing the Pomory to use overland routes. Second, the sea routes were kept secret by navigators to keep out competitors. Third, the decline of shipping had also been caused by the changing climate, because shipping tended to prefer the southern river routes, as the climate became colder and people forgot about the great discoveries made in the North. Finally, Arctic shipping was not an elite affair, as it had been elsewhere, so that names and feats were not carefully recorded as was the case with West European voyages of discovery. On the contrary, Pomory being regarded as muzhiki, their stories were never taken seriously and most of their valuable knowledge was irretrievably lost. Badigin ended his book with a plea for a thorough study to be made of the history of the Pomory. Badigin had argued a splendid case with next to no evidence. His approach, using toponymy and climatology to learn more about the ancient history of the Pomory, was in itself very promising; unfortunately, he lacked reliable sourees. To make matters worse, the single source that contained anything definite, the Amosov manuscript, was a forgery, as A.A.Mavrodin discovered in 1958 (Mavrodin 1958). This left Badigin with little more than a carefully developed hypothesis. At the same time, the fact that such a forgery could be produced at all was a telling one. Clearly, the Amosov manuscript showed a type of past that people believed to be true, but for which there was no written evidence. The book proved the Russians to be an Arctic nation par excellence. At any rate Badigin’s work did not all of a sudden lose its popularity when the falsification came to light. Badigin’s story TheRoute to Grumant was included in a 1971 reprint, while German translations appeared in 1955 and 1960 (Badigin 1955, 1960, 1971). At about the same time, another instance of forgery was attempted, although this one is still not proven beyond doubt. It was uncovered by Belov in 1967. Here, too, it was attempted to prove something that people felt should be true. This time it concerned V.A.Rusanov, a Russian social democrat who set out to explore a northern variety of the Northeast Passage in 1912, but who disappeared in the Kara

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Sea. It was believed by many people that Rusanov had managed to reach Severnaya Zemlya, so that he would be the actual discoverer of these islands rather than the tsarist icebreaker expedition a few years later. In order to furnish proof of this, A.S.Kosoy claimed that some human bones, cans and pieces of ship’s planking had been found in July 1947 at the east coast of Ostrov Bo’shevik, one of the biggest islands of Severnaya Zemlya. These findings Kosoy took to belong to members of the Rusanov expedition. However, in 1967 Belov proved that no cans or pieces of a ship had been found there. The reason for this fabrication is less obvious than in Badigin’s case, but it was probably an attempt to make the discovery of Severnaya Zemlya fit in with the idea that progressive people in the Soviet Union had always been in favour of polar exploration, and might have achieved great results if they had not been obstructed by an outdated political system. As a social democrat, Rusanov qualified more than any other explorer for this qualification—hence the attempt to build him up as an excellent explorer. THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF ARCTIC STUDIES The Badigin affair again showed the weak point in the allegations about the Russians’ exploring their Arctic coasts centuries ago: there was little or no evidence to support them. Until 1948 Arctic history had been restricted to printed sources. Thanks to the erudition of people like Vize, this had produced excellent results. But it was difficult to produce evidence centuries after an event that even at the time had scarcely been known. New techniques had to be applied and sources found, as Badigin had attempted in such an unfortunate way. Even before this episode, Vize had already noted the problem and at the plenary session of the second All-Union Geographical Conference in 1947 he mentioned it in his lecture on ‘The Successes of the Russians in the Exploration of the Arctic’. After surveying what was known of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century exploration, Vize noted that little had been done about early Arctic history. So far even printed sources had not been studied to an acceptable degree, and many records remained completely unsearched; archaeological sources were steadily decaying. In effect, the distinguished polar traveller told his audience that the history they were looking for did exist, as indeed they all believed, but could be found only by using a different, more professional approach. So the post-war years became the period of professionalization. Badigin had not been wrong, but had lacked the right methods. Some institutional changes came about Young historians were attraeted to the field and older historians came to their aid. It was decided to write an official history of the Northern Sea Route. This decision would eventually lead to the famous Istoriya otkrytiya i osvoeniya Severnogo Morskogo Puti (History of the exploration and exploitation of the Northern Sea Route) (AANII 1956–1969). The main work for this was to be done at the Arctic Institute, where a historical section was set up within the geographical department. The section consisted of D.M.Pinkhenson and M.I.Belov. They would receive support from a number of specialists in the history of Siberia, one of whom was A.I.Andreev, who had trained Belov. Andreev had edited some works of G.F.Miller on Siberian history. Miller was an interesting case. As a separate part of the Great Northern Expedition in 1733, he had been sent to

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several Siberian cities to study the local archives. Miller had thus become the first to report about Semen Dezhnev’s voyage to the Bering Strait. He wrote a general history of Siberia using his newly found sources (Miller 1766). Andreev also published a history of Russian exploration in the Pacific and North America and edited Sven Waxell’s account of Bering’s voyages (Andreev 1944, 1949; Vaksel’ 1940). But his real chef d’ oeuvre were the two volumes about sources on Siberia, in which many previously unknown documents were described (Andreev 1960). During and after the war his work tended to be more closely connected with Arctic history, for example his 1943 article on Vitus Bering. In 1949 he edited some additional sources on Bellinsgauzen’s expedition to the South Pole. Other historians who assisted in the Arctic studies were S.V. Bakhrushin and A.V.Efimov, who on behalf of the Arctic Institute began to collect documents pertaining to Dezhnev and other polar voyagers, which resulted in a publication in 1951. Most of the work, however, after Bakhrushin died in March 1950, was done by N.S.Orlova. Oddly enough, M.I.Belov was at the time also collecting documents about Semen Dezhnev. The two publications appeared within a year of each other and covered much the same ground (Belov 1952; Orlova and Efimov 1951). Another important means to further the study of Arctic history was the publication of a special periodical called Letopis’ Severa (Chronicle of the North). It first appeared in 1949. Vize wrote two of its articles, both pointing to the new direction Arctic history should take. One dealt with place names on Novaya Zemlya; the other translated and commented on various passages from Nicolaas Witsen’s book on Siberia, an important source about seventeenthcentury Arctic Russia. Nicolaas Witsen (1641–1717) had visited Moscow and showed a lively interest in the question of the Northeast Passage. Other topics dealt with in the first issue were ‘ancient shipbuilding in the North’ and ‘ancient maps of Siberia’. The most important work was done, of course, in the historical section of the Arctic Institute. Already in 1948 Pinkhenson had given a lecture on how to divide the history of the Northern Sea Route into different periods. The history of this route had to be linked to Russian history in general, so that it could easily be divided into a precapitalist, a capitalist and a Soviet period, each with its own technical means, methods and scale of exploration. The difficulty about Pinkhenson’s division was that it superimposed the search for a passage on history. It did not study Arctic exploration in itself in every period, but considered all exploration from the angle of its usefulness towards developing a sea route. This meant that a disproportionate amount of attention was paid to the history of Arctic navigation. The field was divided between Pinkhenson and Belov, with Belov studying the precapitalist period and Pinkhenson the capitalist period, taking the middle of the nineteenth century as the dividing line. BELOV’S EARLY WORK: SEMEN DEZHNEV On entering the field, Belov could do little but follow the most obvious course, which was to study the history of Semen Dezhnev and Vitus Bering. The latter being somewhat more accessible, much had been written about him, even before

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the Second World War, although most of it had been of a popular nature. B.G. Ostrovsky had written two books (Ostrovsky 1935b, 1939), Andreev had edited Sven Waxells account of the Second Kamchatka Expedition and Pokrovsky had published his collection of documents pertaining to Bering (Pokrovsky 1941). In the popular field there was the book by E.S.Yunga (Yunga 1946). K.Osipov had written Shturman Chelyuskin which was not the same subject but an equally accessible topic (Osipov 1942). General accounts of exploration in that period had been written by Efimov and Lebedev (Efimov 1950; Lebedev 1949). Lebedev had also written a biography of Bering’s companion A.I.Chirikov, and V.A.Divin did the same in 1953 (Lebedev 1951; Divin 1953). Since comparatively much had been published about Bering, Belov tumed to Dezhnev. Another reason for his doing so was the fact that in 1948 it would be 300 years since Dezhnev made his famous voyage. So it was only natural for Belov to begin his investigation with Dezhnev’s history. Nevertheless, Belov was not alone in this field; apart from Orlova and Efimov, several others worked on Dezhnev’s biography. For example, a reexamination of one of Dezhnev’s original reports appeared, in which the original was compared with the published version (Knyazev and Mal’kevich 1948; Fisher 1981:20). This was another example of the scholarly activity that marked Dezhnev’s commemoration. Belov’s work fitted perfectly into this with his first book, appearing in 1948, entitled Semen Dezhnev: 300 Years since the Discovery of the Straits between Asia and America. It contained some new source material which Belov, being a professional historian with access to hitherto unused archives, had had little difficulty in finding. Nevertheless, this first book was clearly meant for the public, stating that Dezhnev was as important as Christopher Columbus. Whereas Columbus had discovered America, Dezhnev had shown it to be a separate continent and a new world. To Belov, Russian travellers were not only more successful than their Western counterparts (who rarely passed beyond Novaya Zemlya) but the Russian achievements could, in themselves, easily stand comparison with the Western voyages to India and America. While paying lip-service to this inflated view of Dezhnev’s importance, Belov’s main task was the collecting of documents, which resulted in Russian Navigators in the Arctic and Paciftc Oceans, and a learned article in 1949 (Belov 1949, 1952). The most important difference with the collection made by Orlova was the fact that Belov did not confine himself to the CGADA archives as Orlova did, but used others as well. Belov searched the archives of the Sibirsky Prikaz and the Yakutskaya Prikaznaya Izba, the departments that had dealt with Siberian and Arctic affairs back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first to study the Sibirsky Prikaz records had been N.N.Ogloblin at the turn of the century, but those of the Yakulskaya Prikaznaya Izba were searched for the first time. This systematic approach produced excellent results and, where Vize had been able to mention only twenty-three polar travellers in his biographical dictionary of 1948, Belov knew of about 100 in 1952. Among other things, Belov was able to prove that many of the navigators of Dezhnev’s time originally came from among the Pomory and that there had been a maritime connection between the Lena and the Kolyma in the second half of the seventeenth century. Equally interesting were the voyages of the Pomory to Mangazeya. In order to reach this town, the Pomory had been crossing on a regular basis the very Kara Sea that had stopped several West European expeditions. Here

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at last were the first reliable traces of the Pomory, giving some basis to allegations about the Russians being the first to explore the Siberian seas. Belov’s convictions differed only in degree from Badigin’s. This can be seen in another article about Pomory ships (Belov 1964). After considering the few remnants of the boat that was found in Zaliv Simsa, Belov concluded that it must have belonged to a mother ship of the type called koch. According to Belov the koch was not the fragile craft that Fisher and Miller had considered it to be, using a stone for an anchor and reindeer hides for a sail. Instead, kochi were large ships, of the kind that Dezhnev, Stadukhin, Moskvitin and other discoverers had preferred on their travels. Belov based his opinion on the description of a koch given by Witsen in his Noord en Oost Tartarije, where the Dutchman called the koch ‘round’ (krugly). Belov took this literally, and began to explain that these ships were round in order to help withstand ice pressure, just like the hull of Nansen’s Fram. It was this feature, said Belov, that made the kochi so popular that they remained unchanged for some 400 to 500 years, although several government regulations tried to persuade the Pomory to build more Western types. This shows that Belov was looking for an area of Pomory pre-eminence. He concluded that Russian ships were better and faster than European ships, especially in the ice. Russian knowledge about local geography and navigation was much better than West European, thus explaining why the Europeans had had such poor results in sailing the Kara Sea. An often-quoted story is the meeting between Stephen Barrow and a Russian called Gabriel, recorded in Hakluyt. It tells how Barrow’s ship failed to keep up with a Russian craft which was showing him the way (Hakluyt 1965: vol. III, 3). This incident was thought to demonstrate that Russian ships were faster. Such convictions seem to have been nurtured during the post-war Stalin years, when Russia began to see itself as a world power, reinterpreting Russian history in appropriate terms. However, the idea was to remain after Stalin had gone. Destalinization never touched upon Soviet history to the extent of eliminating these unproven assumptions, and the idea of Pomory superiority in ice navigation is still current. The origin of this idea lies in the arbitrary division between the history of land and sea exploration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Pomory voyages were closely linked to overland travel. If ice conditions did not allow the use of the sea, then inland waterways were used and the two complemented each other. But by taking the sea routes to Mangazeya separately and fitting them into a history of the Northern Sea Route, these voyages acquired an importance that they had not enjoyed previously. BELOV’S FIRST MAJOR WORK: VOLUME I Belov’s chef d’ oeuvre, the first volume of the official history of the Northern Sea Route, appeared in 1956. Although basically a survey of all that was known on this subject, much new material from archives was added. Its title translated, was, Arctic Shippingfrom its lnception to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century (Belov 1956b). It did not consider Arctic exploration in general, but concentrated on those sections that were of interest to the development of the Northern Sea Route. Also, it attempted to bring a certain continuity to this history. Consequently, the parts on Semen Dezhnev and Bering did not dominate the book, which would have been

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an understandable tendency. On the other hand, the section on the nineteenth century was not as elaborate as other parts. Nevertheless, Belov clearly tried to give a balanced account, forcing himself to pay attention to lesser-known expeditions and periods. The book was divided into two parts, dealing with the periods 1400– 1700 and 1700–1900. Its first part consisted of some 195 pages, of which eight were devoted to Semen Dezhnev. Western expeditions were treated together in a single chapter. About the first voyages to Novaya Zemlya, Belov remained deliberately vague, saying that, although Novgorodians might occasionally have covered large distances, these were exceptions (ibid.: 50–1). The first references to regular visits to Novaya Zemlya for the purpose of fishing and hunting walrus dated from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although Belov had failed to bring new proof of earlier voyages, antedating those that had been known from Western sources, he at least came up with new Russian sources, which showed a certain regularity in these voyages (ibid.: 52). Belov treated the discovery of Spitsbergen in a similar way. Although according to Belov ‘Geographical literature unanimously recognizes the discovery of Spitsbergen by Russian navigators’, his arguments for this did not go beyond the usual stories, such as the Munck letter (see p. 51), the Starostin story and a few other vague indications, for example names on a Mercator map or a phrase in de Veer’s account (ibid.: 66). At the same time, Belov found reliable sources about later voyages to Spitsbergen by Pomory, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, because many Pomory who had been to Grumant and Novaya Zemlya became sailors in Peter the Great’s navy, mentioning their experiences on applying for enlistment. In short, Belov could not prove that Russian seafarers had been on Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya before West European expeditions reached them, but he did produce much new Russian material about later voyages to those islands. In addition, Belov showed that some lesser-known maritime activities had actually been quite important Volume I contained an interesting chapter on Mangazeya and the sea route towards it, which for the first time combined all available sources of information about this mysterious town in one narrative. The results were fascinating. For the first time it became clear that Mangazeya had played an important role in the history of Siberia, since it was initially the most accessible way into Siberia along which the costly fur, the ‘soft gold of Muscovy’, went to the West. However, as it became clear that this route could hardly be controlled, while the danger of foreign intrusion became more real, Tsar Mikhail Romanov decided to close it in 1619. This followed from allegations that a Dutch ship had reached Mangazeya (ibid.: 118). The fur trade was then rerouted over land and Mangazeya lost its raison d’être. Equally interesting was Belov’s description of the shipping between the Kolyma and the Lena in the second half of the seventeenth century, where for some forty years a coastal sea route was used. The documents on which this chapter was based had been published before, but here was the full story which, even only a hundred years after the event, had been forgotten. When Dmitry Laptev, at the time of the Great Northern Expedition, had visited the area, he had not known about this shipping. Here were the events, almost unknown even at the time itself, that were going to prove that the Russians had always been a nation of Arctic explorers. The link between the Mangazeya route and the Lena-Kolyma shipping was clearly the finds in Zaliv Simsa, for which Belov tried to find documentary

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evidence. True to his endeavour to find continuity in Arctic shipping, Belov unfolded the story of these finds from documentary evidence about journeys to Taymyr, thus adding the expansion to the East from Mangazeya, towards and beyond the river Pyasina, to the history of voyages in the Khatanga area. The journey that ended so dramatically on the icy shores of Taymyr ceased to be an isolated, courageous undertaking, and became part of the larger penetration into Siberia by the Russians. Shipbuilding was given a special chapter. Again, Belov came up with the thesis that Russian successes in the Arctic depended to a large extent on the fact that the Russians were the only nation to possess specialized ice-going craft, which for instance the English and the Dutch did not possess (ibid.: 191). Nevertheless, Belov was careful to distance himself from K.S.Badigin, whose elaborate description of various types of ships he seriously criticized by pointing out that most of those types had been used in the fifteenth century. The ronshina, according to Badigin the first ship meant for ice navigation, was first known in the eighteenth century! (ibid.: 191). The main thesis to which both Belov and Badigin adhered remained intact: they were both convinced that Russians were the first to have special ice-sailing ships. This volume of Belov’s book was later criticized by V.V.Mavrodin, a historian specialized in shipbuilding. Mavrodin considered it on the whole an important contribution to Soviet history, but complained that Belov did not explain from what earlier types and how the koch had evolved, indicating on what frail foundations his reasoning rested (Mavrodin 1964:199). Part I of Volume I concludes with a chapter entitled ‘Problems of the Northern Sea Route in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries’. This chapter discusses the various ideas in the West about a Northeast Passage to China. For some time it had been thought that China could be reached by sailing up a Siberian river, such as the Ob’ or the Yenisey. But soon the main question came to be whether or not there existed a continuous passage; whether or not Siberia and America were connected by a neck of land. According to Belov, Russian discovery had soon solved this problem, but it was a long time before the Europeans learned of this. This may seem to indicate a certain Russian advantage, but this is not the case. It is here that one has to note the absence of a Russian Hakluyt. Whereas Russian navigators might individually have possessed valuable information, nobody in Russia collected and published it, as Linschoten or Witsen did in the Netherlands or Hakluyt in England. A Northeast Passage was simply not an issue in Muscovy. This makes the idea of absorbing the Pomory into the history of the Northern Sea Route rather doubtful. Although Belov’s book paid far more attention to Bering and the Great Northern Expedition than to Dezhnev, the idea of continuity appeared here too. It paid much attention to lesser topics such as Lomonosov and the Chichagov expeditions, or even Arctic shipping in the second half of the eighteenth century, when no actual expedition took place, but several projects were conceived. Belov concluded from his studies that before the mid-nineteenth century Russians had visited all of Siberia’s coast and exploited parts of it for certain periods. Large-scale exploitation of the whole stretch was excluded because of the social and political structure of the country (Belov 1956b:515). It is significant that Belov pointed to this aspect in his conclusion, for it shows that he was well aware of the

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political implication of his work. His task was to show Russian presence in the Arctic, preferably in the form of Arctic shipping. PINKHENSON’S VOLUME II: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND IMPLICATIONS For obscure reasons, Volume II of the history of the Northern Sea Route, the section written by Pinkhenson, appeared much later, in 1962. Pinkhenson and Belov began together at the Arctic Institute in 1947, but for some reason Pinkhenson was transferred to other projects from 1950 to 1956. But since most of the text was written before 1950, the book will be considered here (Pinkhenson 1962b). When in 1947 Pinkhenson began writing his part of the official history of the Northern Sea Route, he took to heart O.Yu.Shmidt’s advice to Arctic historians: ‘Either you try to mention all possible polar expeditions (which is useful, but not science) or you describe the most important expeditions, with their vicissitudes, which is interesting but still not science.’ According to Shmidt, history should be the defining and solving of problems, the replacement of ignorance by knowledge, with due attention to the advance of science and the precise conditions of the time, including the Soviet period (Shmidt 1959:22). The main difference between Volumes I and II of the official history seems to be Pinkhenson’s interest in theoretical questions, compared with Belov. Perhaps it is a question of training, Pinkhenson being originally a geographer. At any rate Pinkhenson had already shown this interest in his article on the periodization of Arctic history, in which he had divided history into precapitalist, capitalist and Soviet phases. Pinkhenson understood history to be, as Shmidt had said, a theoretical framework, in which various expeditions would find their place. Pinkhenson’s framework was, of course, derived from Marxism-Leninism, and asked for such a fundamental division. By using a Marxist-Leninist framework, Pinkhenson came up with some interesting questions. Why was it, for instance, that during the years before the First World War, when the icebreaker and the radio were already known, still no effective use of the Northeast Passage had been made? Pinkhenson’s answer was that the internal contradictions of capitalism made it impossible. And, actually, Pinkhenson’s task in this book was to show and explain these internal contradictions. The most important of these were derived from capitalism being oriented to profit, and from the conflicting interests of the ruling class. Profit orientation meant that every undertaking under capitalism had to produce quick results (Pinkhenson 1962b:9–10). This hampered long-term investment, which is indispensable to Arctic shipping, since icebreaking services, the development of a scientific organization to forecast ice movements and the necessity of a large-scale radio network across the Arctic precluded anything like making easy money. Under capitalism this development was thought to be precluded by climatological conditions, without anyone realizing that the real problem was one of organization and investment policy, and therefore of the political system. As Pinkhenson understood it, development by private enterprise was out of the question, so that the only solution would be large-scale government investment But here the political contradictions appeared, since Russia’s ruling class still

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consisted of capitalists and the big land-owners of Central Russia, who stood to gain little from the development of Siberia. The few Siberian entrepreneurs who did see a bright future in the export of grain by Arctic shipping could not change this (ibid.: 10). Nevertheless, Pinkhenson still saw some progress during the capitalist period: first, a number of scientific organizations, such as the Russian Geographical Society and the Academy of Sciences, had organized expeditions and studied Arctic conditions. Second, the problem of a Northern Sea Route had been studied by Russian scientists and experts, such as S.O.Makarov, D.I.Mendeleev, V.A. Rusanov and G.Ya.Sedov. Third, and most important, the passage had been shown to be navigable by the expeditions of Nordenskiöld, the Tamyr and Vaygach, and various commercial voyages to the Yenisey (ibid.: 11). To Pinkhenson, these examples of progress in the capitalist period were exceptions; generally speaking, pursuit of gain and internal strife made it impossible for a capitalist regime to develop a Northern Sea Route. This was the theoretical framework underlying Pinkhenson’s book. What were the consequences of using such a framework? In the first place it allowed Pinkhenson to take a stern view of foreign literature, which mostly took what he called an ‘idealistic’ stand, not looking at the economic base of things (ibid.: 12). V.Stefansson, whom he accused of offering sport as a reason for polar expeditions, had similarly failed to see the political and economic reasons behind exploration, just like those who asserted that polar expeditions might simply have scientific motives. ‘Pure science’ was more often than not a mask for economic and strategic aims (ibid.: 13). The real argument for polar exploration was its contribution to the economy of a country. Another implication of this framework was that, after removal of these political hindrances, rapid development of the Northern Sea Route was inevitable. This meant that whatever progress was made before the Revolution, it had to be negligible when compared with what happened later. For this reason, Pinkhenson criticized Armstrong’s book on the Northern Sea Route for asserting that even before 1917 firm foundations for its further development had been laid (ibid.: 16). To some extent this attitude complemented D’yakonov’s ideas in 1938 that after 1917 there simply must have been rapid progress. A third interesting aspect of Pinkhenson’s framework, which explained Arctic history by pointing to its dependence on a capitalist society and its ensuing internal contradictions, was the framework’s usefulness in explaining why Russia had had so little success in the Arctic in the nineteenth century. The history of the previous centuries had been full of great, but little-known, Russian exploits such as Dezhnev’s voyage. Careful study of the Pomory by Belov would bring much of this back. The difficulty for Pinkhenson and his colleagues here was that the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had unmistakenly been the age of the great Scandinavians, of Nansen and Nordenskiöld, who had been the first and the second to navigate the Northeast Passage, not the age of the Russians. The first Russian expedition took place in 1900. This absence of Russian expeditions could now be explained by politicai factors, at the same time pointing out that ‘progressive’ people, such as Decembrists, social revolutionaries and others had always shown great interest in polar exploration.

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That also explained why foreign literature paid so little attention to Russian exploration. Since there was such a lively interest in polar exploration among the scientific community and in business circles, much foreign literature was translated, which tended to overrate the importance of non-Russian expeditions and ignore the influence of the Russians (ibid.: 15). Some of the examples Pinkhenson cited were K.Gassert, who virtually ignored the Russians in his Exploration of Polar Countries, A.Getner, Dzh. Bayker and K.Vallo (Getner 1909; Gassert 1912; Vallo 1948; Bayker 1950). There can even be found statements in Russian prerevolutionary literature to the extent that ‘the interest for the polar regions has been brought to Russia from the West’, for instance in Peter Kropotkin’s work (Kropotkin 1920:179). The underrating of Russian exploration in the past was caused, in Pinkhenson’s view, by a lack of government initiative in the field, coupled to a lively interest in polar exploration among the Russian people. This had led to an unbalanced view of Arctic history, which paid too little attention to the Russian work in this field. In Soviet times this view was being changed; it began to focus on Soviet and Russian expeditions. Nevertheless, Pinkhenson here used an a priori view of history, the correctness of which depends on whether one accepts the framework or not. If capitalist states prove able to explore the Arctic as well as the Soviet Union, then all the reasoning collapses. One might ask, for instance, why the same capitalist phase in Norway and Sweden did not inhibit the expeditions by Nansen and Nordenskidld. In order to show how Pinkhenson applied his theoretical framework to his sources, we shall now look at his remarks about some specific travellers, namely Ber, Nordenskiöld and Peary. Pinkhenson’s book was divided into two chronological sections. In the first period, before 1900, shipping was limited to the western end of the Northern Sea Route. Voyages were organized by private firms, while the attitude of the government was restrained (Pinkhenson 1962b:11). The second period, from 1900 up to the First World War, differed from earlier times by the availability of new technical means, such as steel ships, icebreakers, radio and aircraft. At the same time, the political situation in the Far East and strategic necessity forced the tsarist government to send out state expeditions (ibid.: 12). Clearly, Pinkhenson was indebted to Vize for some of his opinions. For instance, the story of academician M.Ber, who reportedly had retarded the development of the Kara Route by declaring the Kara Sea to be an ‘ice cellar’, found its way into Volume II of the official history, though without mention of its source (ibid.: 68). Only in later years did V.M.Pasetsky clear up this misunderstanding, which had been brought into circulation by Vize. One of the interesting points in Pinkhenson’s reinterpretation of Arctic history was his evaluation of Nordenskiöld’s passage in 1878–9. According to Pinkhenson most people at the time overrated its value, seeing it as a turning point in the history of relations between Europe and Siberia. Also ‘the decisive influence of Russian navigators and travellers’ was treated very cursorily at the time. The true value of Nordenskiöfld’s voyage was that it had proved the actual possibility of sailing the route that had been discovered by the Pomory and the Great Northern Expedition (ibid.: 97). But in practice this value was only limited, because the Northeast Passage

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had become less important to Europe since the Suez Canal had been opened in 1869 (ibid.: 98). Pinkhenson’s view of the Peary expedition was less original. Robert Peary’s journey to the Pole was compared with Lt G.Ya.Sedov’s failure to reach it in 1912. Peary’s short visit had made nobody any wiser about the geography of the Pole, because he had failed to do any substantial scientific observation. It was clearly a sportsman’s achievement. (On this point, Pinkhenson did quote Vize (ibid.: 506, n. 1). And it was typical of the whole atmosphere surrounding Peary that F.Cook claimed to have reached the Pole before him and that to this day people were trying to determine who had been first. In the Soviet Union little attention had been paid to Cook’s claim. Whereas Peary’s book was translated and edited by Vize, nothing appeared about Cook, whose story was flatly dismissed by A.F.Laktionov in his account of voyages to the North Pole (Laktionov 1955:173–7). Pinkhenson initially considered Peary to have been the first; but in the notes to his book, which were probably added later on, or by a different author, an article by Silvio Zavatti is mentioned in which Cook’s achievement is re-evaluated and his claim accepted (Zavatti 1957). The note then concludes that the Soviet scientific community henceforth should consider Cook’s account as truthful (Pinkhenson 1962b:507–8). Since Peary’s expedition had produced so little scientific material, various other explorers planned expeditions to reach and study the North Pole, for example Roald Amundsen, who at the last moment turned south, to the considerable annoyance of Robert Scott. Another example was the son of Julius Payer (the discoverer of Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa), who tried to lease or buy a Russian icebreaker to bring a Fram-type ship up north from the Bering Strait. Pinkhenson came across the Payer correspondence in the Naval archives, one of the many curious details that his search of the archives brought to light. Finally, a third man who had plans for a polar expedition was Georgy Sedov. But this expedition did not receive the necessary support from the government. Referring to the refusal by the Hydrographical Department to endorse Sedov’s plan, Pinkhenson brings up Pinegin’s complaint that no one among these distinguished Arctic specialists came to Sedov’s assistance (Pinkhenson 1962b:509). Pinkhenson does not give any source material about this incident. The failure to support Sedov’s plan is a classic example of tsarist shortsightedness in Arctic matters. Here was a Russian with excellent ideas about what an expedition should do at the North Pole having his plan refused by the government. That did not stop him, but he died in the attempt while trying to do his utmost. Under a more enlightened political system Sedov would duly have reached the North Pole, is what Pinkhenson seems to imply. In short, Pinkhenson did not bring much new reinterpretation, but as these examples show, he took up many things that had already been said by Vize or others, and presented them in a more systematic way. Finally, the true value of his book lay in its source material, since Volume II was far better documented than Vize’s Morya. LENIN’S INFLUENCE In Pinkhenson’s study of the period after 1917 as well, some progress was made in filling the empty spaces in the Soviet Union’s Arctic history, but it was not as

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impressive as the pre-1917 work. Since in 1917 a new political structure came into being, it should have been only natural that great progress was immediately made in Arctic exploration, since the old obstacles had disappeared with the capitalist order from which they emanated. Nevertheless, pre-war literature often gave the impression that Soviet exploration really only started in the thirties, with the Sibiryakov and the Chelyuskin. This view was not in accordance with official theory. It became necessary to prove that the years 1917–32 had been very important and full of change. If the Northern Sea Route had been the consequence of a new political system, then the impact of that system must have been noticeable after 1917. Why did it take until 1928 for anything to happen on the Northern Sea Route? The first to solve this problem had been D’yakonov who had put it differently by saying that after the Revolution a new policy towards the development of the Northern Sea Route had indeed been accepted, but until 1919 the Civil War made all exploration impracticable. After that, planned and continuous study of the Soviet polar sector had begun. Gradually the work of different scientific organizations was integrated, until finally all Arctic exploration was centralized and incorporated in the nationwide economic planning in 1928, the first Five-Year Plan. This kind of reasoning made it superfluous to change official theory, since it proved that immediately after the Revolution the Soviet state had actively begun to develop the Northern Sea Route. This is important, because it leaves no room for other than political explanations of Soviet successes in the Arctic, and climatic explanations, for example, were thus ruled out. Oddly enough, it was to become the merit of GUSMP’s Bureau for Economic Research that this part of history was revised (Egorov 1941; Slavin 1977a, 1982). This bureau had been installed after the disastrous season of 1937 to study the functioning of Arctic shipping, and therefore its personnel were given access to most documents on the organization as well as carte blanche to interview the officials concerned. This produced some interesting results. Immediately after the Revolution, Lenin himself had signed plans which were of a new and completely different character, in which Soviet exploration would be governmental, concentrated on practical problems and supported by various scientific disciplines. (In the Soviet view, planned exploration with practical objectives had been the characteristic difference from the various unsystematic and individualistic capitalist undertakings.) The head of this Economic Research Bureau, S.V.Slavin, and members of his staff published various interesting articles on the history of the Northern Sea Route along these lines. Slavin’s book on northern transport contained an excellent historical survey. Members of the bureau credited Lenin with the idea of making Arctic research work according to a plan and concentrate on practical issues. This idea was consequently laken up in various general histories such as those by N.N.Zubov and V.D.Novikov. One of the first to benefit from it had been D’yakonov in 1938. Novikov used this to structure Soviet Arctic history in a clear way, maintaining that the development of the Soviet Arctic was an integrated process, a system of measures, conducted by the Communist Party. It meant progress, in the sense that it answered the question of why it took so long for the new political order to achieve anything in the Arctic, by showing that immediately after the Revolution, at Lenin’s suggestion, exploration had been put on a new, planned basis. This in itself had been no small achievement in 1917, even if not very visible to the outside.

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In his third volume of the History of the Northern Sea Route, Belov borrowed extensively from the work done by Novikov, Slavin, Chernenko and others. Publishing every scrap of paper and note that Lenin had ever written on Arctic matters, Belov concluded, in a series of articles on Lenin and the Arctic, that Lenin had profoundly changed Arctic exploration by making it government business (Belov 1960:4; 1961:5; 1962c). It is difficult to say how original Lenin’s plan actually was. Its basis was a plan from the Hydrographical Directorate, which had suggested the inslallation of a governmental service 10 assist shipping with information about ice and to help it pass difficult spots (Belov 1959:37). Actually, the idea of combining icebreakers with radio stations had already existed earlier. For instance, the stations on Vaygach and Mare Sale had been built to support shipping on the Kara Sea Route (Kripton 1956:130). Breitfuss had in 1915 proposed the opening of a station in the Taymyr Peninsula (Breitfuss 1915). The continuity of these pre-1917 projects with the communist plans is impaired by the division into separate parts dealing with the capitalist and communist periods, a division clearly inspired by ideological considerations. By putting the emphasis on Lenin’s plans, Belov could vindicate the official historical framework, which contended that under socialism a completely new approach to Arctic affairs became possible. However, the fact remained that the first major expeditions took place in the thirties, not until ten to fifteen years after the Revolution. Here, Belov felt constrained to offer an explanation, which went as follows. Since the Arctic was closely connected to the Soviet economy in general, the Revolution had to affect it as a matter of course. Nevertheless, the economy of the Arctic had its own characteristics, such as a difficult climate, low population numbers, lack of transport. These factors made its development lag behind that of other parts of the Soviet Union (Belov 1959:8). This contradicts Pinkhenson’s idea that not nature but political structure delayed development in the Arctic and that, once the structure had been changed, exploration would progress uninhibited. In Belov’s view the delay was caused not by historical backwardness, which would be understandable, but by natural factors, which was in contradiction to official theory. The absence of large expeditions in the years between the Revolution and the Krasin expedition are clearly difficult to explain. The new emphasis on Lenin fitted perfectly with the need for continuity, since it was, after all, Belov’s aim to write a book about the history of the Northern Sea Route. So, he expected to prove that immediately after the Revolution progress was achieved in this respect. By pointing to Lenin and studying the development of the Kara Route, this could be achieved. Belov clearly wanted to avoid the impression that the Northern Sea Route was some sort of accidental discovery, which happened after the Italia incident had proved the usefulness of icebreakers and an exceptionally mild season had let the Sibiryakov slip through the passage. Nevertheless, it is quite clear from Belov’s book that the Krasin voyage was a turning point as far as the use of heavy icebreakers in the Arctic was concerned (ibid.: 299). Here again the difficulty appeared of studying history from the angle of Arctic shipping. As we saw on pages 21–2, the main issue in Arctic exploration before the Second World War had been flying. In 1930 even a survey appeared, entitled A Brief History of Polar Exploration since the Introduction of Flying (Joerg 1930). Amundsen, Byrd and Nobile had been achieving incredible results, so that large

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parts of the North Pole had been explored for the first time. Nevertheless, flying caused serious problems for Soviet sovereignty over some parts of the Arctic. It forced the Soviet Union to accept the sector principle and to take part in air exploration. In this respect it had little to offer, but the Krasin expedition made it clear that icebreakers could achieve more than had hitherto been expected. Before 1928 the Soviet Union’s attempts at aviation could not really compare with what happened elsewhere. This does not show in Belov’s book, because Belov looked at history from the viewpoint of Arctic shipping. But in the chapter on the Krasin, bringing up the point of air exploration was unavoidable. Belov found some exonerating feats. For example, the first use of planes in the Arctic had been in 1914 by Yan Nagursky, during the rescue expeditions for Brusilov. Then there was the fact that the Soviet Union had never organized any large airship expeditions, which could be explained as a remarkable foresight, since the unwieldy airship eventually disappeared from the air (Belov 1959:279). CLASSICS OF POLAR LITERATURE After 1945, Arctic literature about post-Revolution subjects continued much the same way as it had done before the war. Stalin’s precept that the experience of pilots and navigators should not be lost still carried weight. Indeed, Arctic literature still remained good propaganda, and in addition a new literature surfaced, consisting of biographies and monographies based on the earlier biographies, but dealing with related subjects. Examples of these are the various attempts to find out what happened to the Rusanov expedition after 1912. But for the most part this literature consisted of reprints. Various new editions of the books by Akkuratov, Baydukov or Bobrov (especially his book on Chkalov) appeared, as well as a new book by Vize which essentially combined the narratives of his earlier books on the Litke and Sibiryakov voyages (Akkuratov 1947, 1948; Baydukov 1952, 1975, 1977; Bobrov 1947, 1949a, b, 1952; Vize 1946b). The same happened to G.A.Ushakov, whose book On Untrodden Grounds appeared in 1951 (Ushakov 1951, 1952, 1959, 1972). It was an account of Ushakov’s expedition to Severnaya Zemlya of 1930– 1, which had two objectives: one being to safeguard Soviet claims to Severnaya Zemlya in view of possible foreign air expeditions, and the second to study the Vil’kitsky Straits for eventual use by shipping. The expedition had been a great success in both respects. Ushakov’s companions N.N.Urvantsev and V.V.Khodov had their recollections reprinted (Sigunov 1963; Urvantsev 1971; Vinogradov 1981; Khodov 1981). Urvantsev, the geologist, wrote two other books on his work on the exploration of Taymyr (Urvantsev 1978, 1981) Apparently, his work was closely connected with the development of Noril’sk. The town of Noril’sk itself became a popular theme in Arctic literature, being one of the largest settlements in the Arctic (Shchegolev and Bondarev 1958; Markov 1959; Dunaev 1960; Popov 1972). Ushakov was an excellent example of the powerful influence that Stefansson’s ideas had had in the Soviet Union. Another example is found in Papanin’s book Life on an Icefloe. The book title was not meant to signify ‘living on an icefloe’, but alludes to the fact that one day two hungry bears had walked into Papanin’s camp, thus proving once and for all that there was life near the North Pole, that the Arctic

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was not the dreary ice desert it was commonly believed to be. In the German edition, Papanin noted that it was not Arctic nature that made exploring so difficult, but the human conviction that the Arctic was a desert (Papanin 1947b:32). This clearly reveals Stefansson’s influence, at a time when his ideas were somewhat discredited in the West. Apparently, the Wrangel episode of 1922, which nearly destroyed Stefansson’s reputation in the West, enhanced it in the East. The precise extent of Stefansson’s influence would make an excellent topic for further research. A necessary starting point would be Stefansson’s biography, written by his former secretary Mrs E.A.Ol’china (Ol’china 1970). The book was introduced by a wellknown Soviet expert on the Western Arctic, who said that many ideas of Stefansson were comparable with those held by Soviet explorers. Conversely, Stefansson himself was very enthusiastic about the Soviets, and in the preface to the eleventh edition of Friendly Arctic he maintained that, since the appearance of the first edition twenty-one years before, the Soviet Union had done more for Arctic exploration than any other country (Stefansson 1921). A lively correspondence was exchanged between him and Otto Shmidt, V.Yu.Vize, Papanin and Badigin (Ol’china 1970: 63). Papanin was another of these authors like Ushakov whose books underwent several new reprints and editions. The memoirs of this former chekist and Arctic explorer were certainly considered to be good enough propaganda to be sent abroad, and his book, together with Bobrov’s, was translated into German immediately after the war (Papanin 1947a,b; there was also a Serbo-Kroatian translation, 1947c). Another typical example of Arctic voyages used as propaganda after the war was Alex Wedding’s Das Eismeer ruft, in which a story about a group of children in Prague is told together with that of the Chelyuskin. The combination of the two stories encourages people to adopt values from the polar travelIers to ordinary city life. The rich owner of the house in which the children live (depicted as a real capitalist in morning coat), whose son always spies and betrays the plans of the children, makes a bet with one of the parents that the Chelyuskin people will not be saved by the ‘Bolsheviks’. Meanwhile, the children decide to go and rescue the Chelyuskin crew. In the end, after the rescue has taken place, one of the characters explains to the landlord You see, Molokov has not always been a pilot He was a poor lad, such as Alex or Anton or any of the children that live in a dark apartment such as the ones you own. He was the son of a poor Russian peasant. His mother sold her last cow to pay for his father’s funeral. That was in the time of the Tsar…. Or he would have gone to the city and become a labourer or an unemployed man. But never a pilot, to whom the whole country looks in awe. That was only because everything belongs to the people. At this point the landlord throws him out. But the character still manages to say: When we have understood this, and when we all support each other, in the way the three children wanted to support the Chelyuskin people, then you will be amazed at how quickly everything changes.

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will be amazed at how quickly everything changes. (Wedding 1949:242) But let us return to the works of Ivan Papanin. Apart from having participated in the first drifting station, Ivan Dmitrevich Papanin headed GUSMP for some time. He proves himself an ardent Stalinist: In the legendary thirties our country vigorously gathered strength, realized an enormous leap forward, which not only helped us to become one of the most powerful nations of the world, but without which our victory in the Great Patriotic War would not have been possible. (Papanin 1977:205) When asked what his favourite books were, Papanin mentioned Concrete by Gladkov, The Young Guard by Fadeev and How the Steel was Hardened by N. Ostrovsky, all typical of the literature of the thirties (ibid.: 148). Arguably, polar explorers such as Papanin benefited tremendously from the Stalin regime, since their successes were used as propaganda. In the long term, this proved a wise investment, since even in 1977 Papanin could sincerely write that ‘At the call of the party, thousands of Soviet people went to the Arctic to build ports, factories, airfields etc.’ The problem of manning the Arctic enterprises has been mentioned before in the section on penal camps. This gives another reason why these ‘classics’ are still reprinted. Even nowadays they are a valuable counterweight to horror stories about ‘Arctic death camps’. Papanin’s memoirs lce and Fire proved a very readable book, full of interesting details (Papanin 1977). There was even a reprint of his biography (Tikhomirov 1984). Another classic was the memoirs of T.E.Krenkel’, of which an English translation appeared in 1978 (Krenkel’ 1973, 1978; Byurland 1973; Bolotnikov 1975; Kanevsky 1976a:38–9, 1979:259). Moreover, Pinegin published a new book on Sedov, a straightforward historical novel, not concerned about sources or the historical truth (Pinegin 1948). His Notes of Polyarnik, which appeared in 1952, was essentially a collection of earlier published articles (Pinegin 1952). K.S.Badigin published several books on the drift of the Georgy Sedov (Badigin 1946, 1950a, b, 1951). During the difficult season of 1937, this ship could not be freed from the ice. Badigin, her captain at the time, had to remain aboard with a small part of the crew while she drifted with the ice over the Pole in a course not unlike that of Nansen’s Fram. Finally, in 1940, the vessel reached the Greenland Sea where it was freed by the new Soviet icebreaker Stalin. During this drift, the ship was transformed into a meteorological station. Comparing its results with those of Nansen, a small increase in temperature was noted, this being one of the most important indications that the Arctic was warming up. Incidentally, this adventure made Badigin’s reputation as an Arctic captain. It gained him much of the prestige that he needed for publishing his historical studies. Mineev’s book about his life on Ostrov Vrangelya appeared in 1946 (Mineev 1946). Vize, Papanin, Ushakov, Mineev, Pinegin: these were classics in Soviet Arctic literature. An obvious omission was Samoylovich, the leader of the Krasin expedition in 1928. Since he had been disgraced shortly before the war, his book was denied a new edition, although it was certainly on a par with the others.

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The next group whose memoirs were often printed since Stalin had pointed to their propagandistic value were the pilots, such as Chkalov, Levanevsky and Chukhnovsky (Baydukov 1975; Sal’nikov 1984; Vinogradov 1975). Then there were the ice captains among whom were Voronin, Khromtsov, Nikolaev (Nikolaeva and Khromtsova 1980; Nikolaeva 1963; Yunga 1957; Seleznev 1969). A third group was Western polar travellers. A number of reprints and biographies were devoted to them (Karpov 1955, 1956; Bolotnikov 1955; Shaklton 1975; Piri and Amundsen 1972; Treshnikov 1972, 1976; Novikova and Shumilov 1977; Amundsen 1959; Yakovlev 1957; Suzyumov 1960; Faynberg 1980). Finally, a special group of people who attracted continuing interest were the explorers who worked before the Revolution, such as Sedov, Rusanov, Brusilov, Begichev and others. The general opinion about their historical importance has never been challenged. Instead, research has concentrated on attempts to collect new facts, by looking for new sources or physical remains. For example, quite a nurnber of efforts have been made to trace V.A.Rusanov’s ship the Gerkules. (Pasetsky 1955, 1962, 1971; Troilsky 1962, 1973; Chubakov, Shparo and Shumilov 1974; Deev 1979; Belov 1977a). This line of investigation has not changed since Stalin’s demise. Al’banov, one of the few people in the world who could claim to have made a worse journey than J.Cherry-Garrard’s, found a biographer in M.A.Chvanov, who also re-edited his travel account, of which the last edition had appeared in 1953. V.A.Troitsky has recently published ten short letters from Al’banov to L.L.Breitfuss, the first editor of his travel account. Since these letters concern the period after 1917, their content adds little to what is known of Al’banov’s travels, but they allow us to complete Al’banov’s biography. It is a typical attempt to add to existing memoirs. Similarly D.A.Alekseev managed to retrieve some letters of Brusilov and others. These letters show how Brusilov was under considerable strain in 1912, lacking funds, while friends who should have accompanied him were deserting him (Al’banov 1978; Chvanov 1981; Troitsky 1985; Alekseev 1985). The third expedition that left in 1912, G.Ya.Sedov’s, has been comparatively neglected these last few years. This expedition received most attention in Stalin’s time, because Sedov could be depicted as having courage and perseverance, whilst clearly being a victim of the tsarist regime (Seleznev 1964b; Belov 1982; Chumak 1957; Egorov 1954; Nagorny 1939, 1944, 1950). Apart from attempts to gather more secondary information on the 1912 expeditions, several closely related topics have been developed, such as the life of Nikifor Begichev (1874–1927), who explored part of the river Khatanga and took part in the Toll expedition of 1900 and the rescue operation of the Taymyr and Vaygach in 1915. In 1921–2 Begichev searched for Tessem and Knutsen, two members of the Maud expedition who had disappeared (Bolotnikov 1949, 1976; Andreev 1971:298–300; Wotte 1970). Other examples of work on such secondary topics are the expeditions of Toll and Nordenskiöld, the latter mainly on account of the centennial of the Vega voyage around Eurasia in 1879–80 (Vittenburg 1960; Pasetsky 1979; Karpov 1955). Literature on the exploration of the Soviet Arctic has clearly become a classic part of Soviet literature and history, occasionally inspiring authors to study and clarify certain aspects of it and to re-examine on certain occasions. For example, thirty years after the Sibiryakov expedition, some books commemorated this feat

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(Shneyderov 1963; Suzyumov 1963, 1964). But the genre as a whole has remained unchanged and maintains a reverential attitude towards the thirties, the time of the Sibiryakov and Georgy Sedov expeditions, and, in the final analysis, towards the undisputed lord and patron of Arctic exploration, losif Stalin. LITERATURE ABOUT HIGH-LATITUDE EXPEDITIONS Research in high latitudes had become increasingly significant since the late thirties. Russia made its entrance to the field of exploration by air. In 1937 the Soviet air industry had reached the point where it could successfully compete with other countries, since in that year four Soviet planes had landed at the North Pole and built a floating polar station there. Although officially this expedition was mainly undertaken to improve weather forecasting, its significance was wider than that, for it was a major exploration of the central area of the Arctic, comparable with Nansen’s Fram expedition, the final step of bringing the Soviet Union up to the same level as other exploring nations. Much material was published about it, but no new historical perspective was developed. General studies such as that of Vize (1948) were given a few additional chapters on recent developments in the Arctic, but no major changes ensued. The first Soviet book to treat the exploration of the North Pole as a separate subject was A.F.Laktionov’s To the Centre of the North Pole (1949) This was essentially an account of expeditions to the North Pole, which, surprisingly, included Western voyages as well. The book is made up of a succession of chapters, each dedicated to a single expedition. Rather than seeing the North Pole drifting station as a way of catching up with foreign exploration, Laktionov regards it as the logical consequence of gradual development. He quotes Pravda of 22 May 1937 (the day after the first Soviet plane landed at the North Pole): ‘We have not reached the Pole at once but only gradually; surmounting obstacle after obslacle’ (Laktionov 1949:25). This attitude of perseverance Laktionov contrasted with capitalist expeditions which made quick dashes to the Pole and returned with meagre scientific results. The inciusion of Western expeditions made literature about high-latitude Polar exploration especially interesting to historiography, because it meant giving Soviet history a place in the general history of exploration and it constituted the final step in the process of constructing a Soviet view of Arctic history. This became especially clear in his introduction, in which Laktionov gave a brief survey of Arctic history in general. According to Laktionov, the Russians had been the first to explore the Arctic, together with the Scandinavians. When West European explorers began to look for a Northern Passage, the Russians had already found the way to Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen and were exploring the Arctic coast of Siberia (Laktionov 1949:7). Finally, Dezhnev reached Bering Strait. Under Peter the Great, the Great Northern Expedition was mounted. These facts proved that, while elsewhere interest waned, Russian interest continued at a stable level, while the British began to send out new expeditions only in the nineteenth century, until the Franklin episode once and for all proved that polar voyages had no practical usefulness. While the Northwest Passage was abandoned after Franklin, the

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Northeast Passage was explored far more assiduously. Laktionov had no difficulty in describing a large number of expeditions and projects, most of which had been fairly unknown before the Soviet period, such as Shvanenberg, Dobrotvorsky, Vil’kitsky, Kruzenshtern, Tsivolka, Pakhtusov, Litke and Wrangel. The fact that Laktionov could give such an account proved that Soviet historical research had come a long way since the twenties, when Russian involvement in Arctic exploration was thought to have been fairly limited. Also, Laktionov could belittle Nordenskiöld’s part in the exploration of the Northeast Passage, since the Swede’s comments on the limited commercial value of the passage had caused a lapse of general interest in the Northem Sea Route. Nevertheless, the progressive part of the Russian scientific community and the navigators had remained convinced that the Northern Sea Route would one day have great political and economic significance. Laktionov clearly believed in the continuity of the Russian search for a Northern Sea Route. One gets the impression that the Northern Sea Route should be understood as an idée fixe of the Russian nation. About Western expeditions Laktionov noted that many of them worked in the Arctic but that as a rule they were not interested in studying the Arctic, because many expeditions, by using planes or airships, remained in the Arctic for too short a period to collect important scientific data. The international race to reach the Pole had had little scientific significance; the most ridiculous plans had been conceived, such as Bauendal trying to reach the Pole by using bridges, Andrée by using a balloon. In short, Laktionov noted that the Russians had been working towards the Pole from a strictly economic perspective and, as it had been said in Pravda, the Russians were late to be the first to reach the Pole, but this was because their preparation was more thorough and scientific. Russian polar voyages were not quick dashes, but part of a broad, general plan, so that on reaching it, the Soviets really had conquered the Pole. The development of the Northern Sea Route had been preparatory to this event.

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7 The age of the nuclear submarine

THE NUCLEAR SUBMARINE: THE DOCTRINE IN PRACTICE For most of the fifties, the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union had been dominated by the development of nuclear bombs and bombers. This meant that the polar regions were of great strategic importance, and resulted on the American side in the development of a radar network. The introduction of the intercontinental missile, which was not strictly limited to a course over the Pole, reduced this strategic interest, although the danger of a bomber attack still remained. But a new range of possibilities surfaced when, in 1958, the nuclear submarine Nautilus navigated under the icecap to the North Pole. This indicated that nuclear submarines could launch their missiles from near the Siberian coast. Under these circumstances a legal doctrine was needed that could prevent foreign naval vessels from approaching the Siberian coast. The question of sovereignty attracted fresh attention, as can be seen in the 1960 Law on the Soviet Borders. Technicaliy this law, which mentioned historic seas and straits, was nothing but a ratification of the results of the Geneva conference, although ‘Geneva’ had reached no conclusion about historic bays. The 1960 law was a clear signal, without causing a legal controversy about the Siberian seas. The first to attempt navigation under ice had been Hubert Wilkins in 1931. After that, submarines had occasionally navigated under ice, but only after the war had the problem been studied seriously. This began during the American manoeuvres in the Antarctic in 1947. An important step forward was the use of a sonar in the upper side of the submarine, which allowed it to measure ice thickness. A surprising discovery was the fact that the ice surface under water is even more rugged than it is above water: 20-metre stalactites were no exception. This fact, together with the shallowness of the Siberian coastal seas, made the use of large submarines no easy matter. Only much later did the United States admit that an early attempt by the Nautilus to reach the North Pole by the Bering Strait had failed, because of the ice and the shallowness. To use submarines in the Arctic necessitated a profound knowledge of the Arctic seas. After the success of 1958 a number of voyages took place. In 1960 the nuclear submarine Sargo managed, despite all the difficulties, to pass the Bering Strait In the same year the Seadragon passed the Davis Strait. The Northwest Passage, a route along Northern Canada

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which Amundsen in 1903–6 had managed to pass for the first time, with great difficulty, turned out to be plain sailing to the Skate in 1962 (Lake 1931; Sverdrup 1931; Anderson 1959; Calvert 1961; Steele 1962; Lyon 1963, 1987; Gorlatov and Gakkel 1965; Bich and Stil 1965; Kolyshkin 1966; Bartl’ 1967; Synhorst 1973; McLaren 1981:105–9, 1983). The first stage in exploration came to an end in 1962, with the meeting of the Skate and the Seadragon at the North Pole. The results of these researches were incorporated in the new Sturgeon class of nuclear attack submarines, which could operate year round in the Arctic. Some thirty-seven vessels of this type were built. At the same time the old idea of drifting stations was given new attention. Since Papanin and his men had managed to put up a station in 1939, the Soviets had been repeating this kind of operation on a regular basis, which had led to the discovery of a submarine mountain range, the Khrebet Lomonosova. This kind of station collected valuable information for submarines by sounding and studying the salinity of sea water (which influences the use of sonar). To study this and other topics, the Americans opened their station Alpha on a floating ice island in 1957. Much less is known about the development of nuclear submarines in the Soviet Union, but clearly there was a great need for them, since under the icecap submarines are protected from surface vessels and vulnerable only to other nuclear submarines, the so-called ‘hunter-killers’. The first Soviet submarines of this kind, the November class, duly appeared around 1958, but were generally regarded as ‘widow-makers’ (Jane’s Fighting Ships 1987:553). Nevertheless the Soviet press claimed in 1963 that the Leninsky Komsomol had reached the North Pole even before the Nautilus. The Novembers were followed by the Echo class in 1962. This was originally a ballistic missile carrier, which had its missiles removed and replaced by torpedoes. New and faster types were designed, such as the Victor class in 1967 —short, wide-hulled, with twin reactors that gave it considerable speed, it had been specially designed as a hunter. In 1970 the Alfa class followed, the first to have a titanium hull and a lead bismuth coolant New types have been commissioned ever since, the Alfa class, for instance, being replaced in 1984 by the Akula (ibid.: 554). The Arctic Ocean turned into a potential battlefield and the necessary preliminary reconnaissance of the area began, increasingly so after the introduction in the early seventies of the first ballistic missile submarines, which were able to reach targets well outside the Arctic. Soviet defence policy since then seems to have been the so-called Bastion theory, according to which the Soviet navy will try to deny an enemy access to the Arctic, where its missile launchers can be protected from retaliation and be safe from American submarines. An example of this policy is the new Typhoon class, able to launch its missiles from under the ice. In view of their increasing importance, it was unavoidable that the Americans would begin to study the Siberian coastal waters as to navigability. Clearly, the Soviets already possessed considerable knowledge about the Arctic Ocean, thanks to their drifting stations which had been organized regularly since 1954 and which the Americans were in a hurry to duplicate (Izvestiya, 27 January 1963; Gordienko 1967). Of course, this carried many political implications. In 1958 the Skate first entered the Soviet sector. Her captain described this voyage in such a way that it was obvious that his submarine had entered the Soviet sector, although he claimed to have remained in international waters. The Soviets never protested against this

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or any other voyage (Calvert 1961:260; Synhorst 1973: 104; Ostenso 1966; Smith 1971). American polar research, necessary for the operation of submarines, began in the American Arctic, but was soon extended to the Soviet sector. This research began with an expedition by the icebreakers Northwind and Burton Island to Bering Strait and the Chukotka Sea. In the following years, American icebreakers entered the three other Siberian seas. The appearance of these American icebreakers must have been a considerable annoyance to the Soviets. Clearly, this undertaking had a military background, although it had some scientific aspects. Moreover, the Soviet Union was forced to explain what status these seas had, which meant that the sovereignty over these areas was being challenged. The Soviet Union took no steps to arrest the icebreakers. In 1963 the Northwind passed through the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea to Cape Chelyuskin and back. In 1964 the Burton Island did oceanographic work in the East Siberian Sea. In 1965 the Northwind visited the Kara Sea (Petrow 1968:27). Finally, in 1967 the icebreakers Edisto and Eastwind went to Severnaya Zemlya and back. However, these expeditions did not take place without incidents. When the Burton Island met a large Soviet convoy, which included several warships, her captain sent out the ship’s helicopters to take pictures. A Soviet helicopter tried to stop the American aircraft from doing so by hovering closely over it, which is an extremely dangerous manoeuvre (ibid.: 102–3). A second incident took place when the Burton Island tried to pass between the Novosibirskie Ostrova and the mainland. This time the Soviet Union did protest, stating that these straits were internal waters of the Soviet Union (Synhorst 1973:104). After that the Americans avoided passing through them. Something similar happened to the Northwind in 1965. On her entering the Kara Sea, a number of Badger aircraft flew over the ship at a very low altitude, one of them firing Very lights in the code green-white-white, meaning ‘You are trespassing’. The Northwind ignored the signal, which was not repeated. Near Novaya Zemlya, a Soviet warship appeared, which behaved more genially and a number of questions and answers were exchanged. Some of the accompanying warships were less sympathetic. A frigate approached flying the K-flag, meaning ‘Stop immediately!’ When this sign was ignored, the Russians attempted to cut in on the icebreaker. These incidents notwithstanding, the icebreaker could fulfil her task of taking soundings in the Kara Sea. Difficulties only arose after the Americans attempted to enter the Proliv Vil’kitskogo. A Soviet memorandum was transmitted, stating that this strait belonged to territorial waters: not internal waters, but territorial, which nevertheless means that warships, such as the icebreaker officially was, may not pass. That the Soviets were not very pleased with these expeditions can be learned from a speech by Aleksandr Shepilov, at the time the head of the KGB, on the occasion of Navy Day 1965. He said that it had not been for the love of nature in the Arctic that American and British submarines had appeared in the Soviet Arctic (Krasnaya Zvezda, 25 July 1965). In autumn 1965 another Soviet protest followed, because the Northwind had been drilling rock cores, which, according to the Soviet Union, contravened the Geneva agreements and was a violation of Soviet sovereignty (Petrow 1968:27).

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The last icebreaker operation took place in 1967, as the Edisto and the Eastwind repeated the voyage of Northwind. It was their intention to go north of Severnaya Zemlya and reach the Bering Strait. Ice conditions were extremely severe and did not allow this, so that a fresh attempt was made to pass the Proliv Vil’kitskogo (Wells 1968). This time the Soviet Ministry of Shipping was given advance warning by radio as well as through diplomatic channels. Again the Soviet Union refused, because innocent passage of warships had to be requested one month in advance. (‘Innocent passage’ is a legal expression that indicates under what circumstances foreign vessels may navigate through territorial waters. Special restrictions apply to this, certainly where armed vessels are concerned. The Soviet Union has added some rules of its own, such as the one-month application period.) In view of the Soviet refusal, the American icebreakers returned the way they had come. THE SOVIET REACTION In retrospect it remains an open question as to why the historic bay doctrine was not applied to avert the American intrusions. Soviet reactions to American voyages are rare and allow no definite conclusions. One of these was the commentary by a Russian official to T.E.Armstrong that ‘such visits can by no means be called friendly’ (Dehner 1972). An American specialist in Soviet law, W.E.Butler, concluded from these events that the ideas of legal specialists should be distinguished from government policy. It meant that the ‘historic bay’ was only a solution put forward by legal specialists (Butler 1971:14). In fact, the Soviet government had treated the Siberian waters as it would have treated other seas. The lawyers had looked for the interpretation that was most advantageous to the Soviet Union, but the Soviet government had been unable to implement this, owing to other factors. However, the American icebreaker voyages did not suddenly put an end to the historic bay doctrine regarding the Siberian seas, which should have been the case if it had been merely an academic solution devised by a group of lawyers. Butler’s opinion must to some extent have been coloured by his hope that the Soviet Union would take a reasonable stand on some other international legal questions. In my opinion, this longevity of an obscure doctrine is a clear case of the Stalinist legacy showing itself. The historic waters doctrine had been developed in a period of general insecurity after the Second World War, but it nevertheless upheld the old framework that Lakhtin and later Sabanin had developed, based on independence from external cooperation and closely related to an ideologically biased view of history. Soviet authors have shown themselves to be extremely conservative in their work, while at the same time very creative in developing older concepts. They themselves have pointed to the fact that the sixties and seventies in particular were a period in which legal theory about the application of the historic bay theory to the Siberian seas took great strides (Palamarchuk 1981:121). The wish to expand sovereignty in the Arctic because of historical rights has become a guiding principle to Soviet international lawyers since the inception of the historic waters doctrine. The notion that the four Siberian seas were internal waters had been generally accepted in the Soviet Union since the late forties and was mentioned in official handbooks. Even the American voyages did not remove this idea from handbooks

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published in 1963 and 1964 (Shmigelsky and Yasinovsky 1963; Kozhevnikov 1964). After the Soviet Union had refused the Northwind permission to pass the Proliv Vil’kitskogo in 1965, Butler found, in a textbook of 1966, a section that had not been there in the 1964 edition. This paragraph treated the question of under what circumstances ice, frozen to the coast, could be considered state territory. This newly inserted paragraph could refer to the Proliv Vil’kitskogo which were more than twice the width of territorial waters and therefore could hardly be closed as territorial waters, a problem that could be solved by including the ice (Butler 1978:76). At the same time both editions, 1964 as well as 1966, did consider the Siberian seas as internal waters (Kozhevnikov 1964:210; 1966: 212–13). Although the Soviet government did not stop the American ships, it certainly took measures to confirm its sovereignty over these areas. This happened in March 1967, when it was announced that the Northern Sea Route would be opened to foreign merchant shipping. This might seem odd, but it actually meant that the Soviets were willing to help foreign vessels through the passage against payment (Laforest 1967). There were even leaflets distributed to announce this. In this way, it was made obvious, without offending America, that the passage fell under state control. The offer was generally recognized as a legal trick and no interested parties came forward. Later, the offer was silently withdrawn, because it gave the impression that the Soviets wanted to profit from the closure of the Suez Canal. At the time Soviet relations with Egypt were still cordial (Synhorst 1973:104; Butler 1971:85). THE DOCTRINE AND THE LAW OF THE SEA Besides this remarkable offer, the Soviets also made progress on a theoretical plane. The historic bay doctrine was increasingly based on the Northern Sea Route. The Northern Sea Route as a concept has the distinct advantage of linking a number of undertakings such as exploration, weather stations and shipping to the national economy, contributing to the development of Siberia and, be it to a lesser extent, to East-West transport. Vyshnepol’sky had been the first to use the Northern Sea Route as a legitimation to consider the Siberian seas as internal waters. This idea was now being pursued, by making icebreaker support obligatory and offering the route to others against payment. It was now stated that the waters through which the route went were internal. This meant, of course, a step back from the claim that all four seas were under unlimited state control, but there was an excellent reason for stepping back, because since the sixties the Soviet Union had rapidly developed its navy as well as its merchant shipping. This required a different approach to the Law of the Sea. Now a policy was needed that served the needs of the navy, which was especially the case on the point of what was called the ‘erosion’ of the ‘high seas’. This had been an important issue in internadonal law since the Second World War. Third World countries that had only recently gained their independence tried to give a more restricted interpretation to the expression high seas. To them this expression was a product of the high-handedness of the European nations that abused the liberty of the high seas to lay down the law with their gunboats, their technical advance allowing them to exploit the sea to their advantage. Therefore

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resistance arose from those countries to whom the liberty of the high seas was only disadvantageous. At the Second Conference on the Law of the Sea, in 1958, the Soviet Union had supported the Third World on this matter. But the quick naval build-up forced it to change sides, and in the sixties the Soviet Union began to oppose the erosion of the high seas: the reduction of the area that could be considered as free from any national claims (Anand 1983:189). This required some theoretical juggling, since such a theory would at the same time have to solve the problem of the American icebreakers and have no restrictive consequences for the Soviet navy. Indeed such a new legal theory did appear, as found by Butler in the legal handbooks of the Soviet navy (Butler 1978:87). Of course, the navy was most concerned about finding such a theory, since it had most to fear from the reduction of the high seas and did not wish its government to become involved in this praclice. The theory had been devised by P.D. Barabolya, a lawyer mostly working on the question of the regime of international straits. In 1966 Barabolya introduced a new type of straits, the ‘historical straits’, one example of which was the straits near the Novosibirskie Ostrova, closed to the Burton Island in 1964. Theoretically this category could be seen as an adaptation of Vyshnepol’sky’s theory to straits instead of seas. When in 1970 Morskoy Sbornik, the Soviet naval journal, published an article on the polar regions, it used this idea, together with that of the Northern Sea Route: The exceptional geographic position of the Northern Sea Route, of which the most important parts, especially those near the straits of the Siberian seas, lead through the territorial and internal waters of the Soviet Union, give the undeniable right to control the navigation of foreign merchant and naval vessels in order to protect their security as well as that of the Soviet borders. (Milovsky and Glazunov 1970:6, 88) As a hisiorical legitimation of Soviet sovereignty, the article pointed to Lenin’s plan for the exploration of the North, together with a survey of Soviet activities in the Arctic. The theory of the historic bay was thus replaced by a theory of historical straits. None the less, the authors of the article were convinced that there was still some claim to the Arctic seas, since these were factually ‘shallow bays, surrounded by Soviet coasts’. Moreover, the sea bed of these seas belonged to the Soviet Union, under the agreements made at the Geneva conference. Thus, while offering a new theoretical basis, the old system was not completely disavowed. SUPPORT FROM CANADA At this point the Soviet Union received unexpected support from Canada. Concern about the environment caused Canada to expand its sovereignty in the Arctic. To understand this concern, it is necessary to take into account the energy crisis in the seventies, when it was realized for the first time that world oil resources were not infinite. In consequence the oil price rose, thus making it worthwhile to drill for oil at less accessible spots, such as the Alaskan North slope, where indeed much oil was found. At Prudhoe Bay a major reserve of oil and gas was found in 1966. The main problem in exploiting these reserves was transport. Various fantastic projects

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were proposed. For example, General Dynamics suggested a nuclear submarine tanker. One of the other solutions was the use of an icebreaking supertanker, the Manhattan, which would be able to get through the Northwest Passage. (After initial attempts to bring out the oil by ship, Exxon, BP, ARCO and Humble Oil decided to build a pipeline which, because of the debate on the ecological consequences, was not accepted until 1973 (Westermeyer 1984:111–19; Williams 1977: Allen 1975–6; Jones 1981).) This solution was not ideal either, because the Canadian population looked upon the Manhattan plan with grave doubts. The fact that natural resources were becoming scarce changed people’s attitudes towards nature. For the first time it was realized that nature was vulnerable, while the disaster of the Torrey Canyon was fresh in people’s minds. When in 1967 this tanker was wrecked on the British coast, it caused severe pollution along the Channel coasts. Also, it was widely known that the Arctic environment was particularly vulnerable and pollution there could be extremely serious, because this region strongly influenced the weather of the Northern Hemisphere. Some even prophesied fatal changes in world climate in the event of an environmental disaster in the Arctic. Uneasiness over these developments caused public opinion in Canada to demand the prohibition of oil tankers in the Arctic. Led by Prime Minister P. Trudeau, the Canadian government reacted in 1970 by passing the Canadian Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act. This law applied to an area extending 100 miles north of the Canadian coast, which implied that state control was specifically regarded as extending that far. This was a much sharper definition of Canadian sovereignty than could be deduced from the sector theory. The Canadian sector theory, contrary to its Soviet counterpart, had no basis in statutory law, but rested on a number of statements by officials and additional measures. This new act extended state sovereignty in a very explicit way. It could be doubted whether such a step was still in agreement with international law, because it concerned waters that were in fact part of the high seas. At a press conference Trudeau admitted that the Act functioned at the limits of international law. Nevertheless the Canadian Prime Minister considered that the ‘unique nature’ of the Arctic and general principles of environmental protection would excuse a step which was relatively new in the short history of environmental conservation (Feder 1978:806). As an American lawyer put it, the Trudeau administration found itself between the Scylla of international law and the Charybdis of public opinion (Smith 1976). The United States vehemently protested against this step and suggested an international conference to discuss the problem. The United States were concerned not only about the very strict regulations on behalf of environmental protection, but also about the consequences this step might have for the Soviet Union’s position in the Arctic. If Canada could unilaterally annex part of the polar sea, then the Soviet Union might do so as well. Moreover, if both countries were to do so, this would make their decision much more defensible towards the international community. The United States, who considered the North Pole to be high sea, opposed this. The Americans considered the Canadian law as part of a general legal problem, called ‘creeping jurisdiction’. As will be remembered, a number of Third World countries had begun to oppose the principle of the high seas. To them this was wholly outdated, being a relic of colonialism. The developing countries needed a legal system that kept warships away from their coasts and protected their fisheries

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and offshore oil industry. This attitude expressed itself in unilateral declarations of special economic zones or extensions of territorial waters. This kind of development was termed creeping jurisdiction and was clearly widespread, since between 1967 and 1973 eighty states extended their sovereignty with 230 claims, the Canadian law of 1970 not included (Anand 1983:191). From this perspective, Soviet claims were far less exceptional, and it is no surprise that after the Canadian law the historic bay doctrine regained much popularity, since it remained the ideal solution from a theoretical point of view. Some handbooks, such as Kozhevnikov’s which appeared in 1964, 1966 and 1972 had never omitted it. One might attribute this to carelessness of its editors but the fact that the 1964 and 1966 versions did differ in their opinion on landfast ice makes this improbable. Butler had connected this difference with the voyage of the Northwind in 1965 (Butler 1978:76). ALTERNATIVE THEORIES Inspired by the Canadian example, the Soviet government extended its sovereignty too, which was done by the decree of the Council of Ministers of 16 September 1971, when it instituted the Administration of the Northern Sea Route. This would seem a minute change within the bureaucracy, but in fact all shipping on the route was put specifically under its control, for reasons of environmental protection and security (Zhudro and Dzhavad 1974:159). Since this included foreign shipping as well, it was a definite extension of sovereignty. Here the Soviet government seemed to emphasize the route as the basis for Soviet claims. Meanwhile the historic bay theory was still being developed. In 1972 D.F. Efendiev published an article which took the view that the American icebreaker expeditions were in fact a reason to declare the Siberian seas historic bays, rather than a reason to abandon such a theory. He considered that the expansionist tendencies of the United States were excellent grounds for closing the Siberian seas to foreign naval vessels (Efendiev 1972:127). Clearly, extending claims in the Arctic collided with the fact that the Soviet Union did not accept any extension of national sovereignty over the high seas by other nations. Creeping jurisdiction was as detrimental to the Soviet Union as it was to the United States, since it hindered the Soviet navy by reducing the areas through which it could move. This disadvantage concerned the Russians as well as the Americans, and when the Third Conference of the Law of the Sea took place in Caracas, it soon appeared that the Soviet Union no longer supported the Third World countries but had joined the West in the wish to stop the erosion of the high seas. It would seem that the Soviet Union’s point of view at this conference was determined solely by military considerations (Janis 1976:33). This implied free passage of international straits, restriction of territorial waters to a 12 mile zone, and finally the view that special zones were only acceptable in so far as they did not impede shipping. It would therefore seem logical that the Soviet Union should equally regard the Arctic Ocean as high seas. But this was not the case, for the Soviet Union apparently saw no contradiction between its attitudes towards the Arctic and those towards the Law of the Sea, unlike Canada, which tried to gain international support for its 100 mile zone. The Canadian delegation managed to

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achieve the inclusion of a special article in the preliminary text of the conference. This ‘Article 43’ allowed special measures in ‘extremely cold or ice-covered areas’ when protection of the environment was involved (Smith 1976:628). The Soviet Union did not try to support any claims in the Arctic on this article, since it considered the status of the Soviet Arctic not to be at odds with any high seas regulations. This was possible because the Soviet Union emphasized its historical relations with this area. In addition, the expression ‘historic bay’ had not been discussed at this conference either. Therefore, claims to historic bays were as yet undisputed. Finally, invocation of Article 43 would mean a considerable restriction, since sovereignty in the Arctic would then be based on the necessity to protect the environment, with no place for considerations of security. There were some American suggestions that Article 43 could be developed into a separate legal system for the Poles (ibid.: 633). A paper that appeared in 1973 in Morskoy Sbornik, the naval journal, set out the Soviet attitude towards the Arctic (Ovanesov and Sorokin 1973). International cooperation was necessary to develop shipping and oil production, but such cooperation was only possible if it was recognized that the legal regime of the Arctic differed radically from that of other seas. The Law of the Sea could thus only partly apply to the Arctic. The presence of great reserves of oil and gas in the Arctic regions made this area very important at a time when these resources became scarce. This in turn forced a settlement of the political situation and, in consequence, the question of sovereignty in the Arctic acquired new importance. A new answer was offered by P.S.Odnopozov (Odnopozov 1973). In 1973 he summed up all the known reasons why the Siberian seas should be declared historical waters, such as geography, history or the presence of the Northern Sea Route. But in contrast with his predecessors he did not want to invoke the principle of the historic bay, but the ‘straight base-line’. This is basically a regulation that allows countries with a very irregular coastline to draw a straight line for the delineation of their territorial waters. Odnopozov suggested to declare the Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea expressis verbis to belong to internal waters. In 1971 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet had promulgated a decree that made it possible to apply such lines to Soviet coasts. Remarkably, the article was followed in 1978 by a second article, not about the Arctic but about internal waters (Odnopozov and Tikhov 1978). Here, Odnopozov reached a conclusion that was completely different from the first one. He considered that the straight base-lines could be applied to only a limited number of bays, such as the mouth of the Ob’ or the Yenisey, and should be no longer than 10 or 20 miles. Also, there were strict conditions which had to be met in applying the concept of historic waters. Odnopozov suddenly added one more, namely that there should be a law or regulation that declared the area to be ‘historic’. An announcement by a public official would suffice as well. Perhaps this volte-face was the consequence of pressure from the navy, which was anxious to restrain other countries from exaggerated use of the straight base-line. The importance of Arctic shipping increased in the seventies because of the discovery of natural gas on the Yamal peninsula. Also, the sector claim still rested on a certain amount of exploration. Therefore the Soviet Union had to react when the United States launched two heavy icebreakers, the Polar Sea and the Polar Star.

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The Soviets not only added vessels to their nuclear icebreaker fleet but, for the first time in history, sent a nuclear icebreaker to the North Pole (Dyson 1979:173). In 1978 another such icebreaker, the Sibir, led a freighter along a northerly version of the Northern Sea Route. While the building of nuclear icebreakers made it obvious that the Soviet Union intended to retain its position in the Arctic, Soviet legal specialists still searched for a more dependable legal basis for their claims. In 1972 B.N. Nechaev had studied the problem of historic waters in general (Nechaev 1972: 45). Nechaev spoke preferably of waters instead of bays, because the doctrine covered straits as well. In 1980 this line of research was continued by another author, A.Vylegzhanin, who studied the criteria that decided whether areas could be considered historic waters (Vylegzhanin 1980). In this article a number of foreign claims were considered which the author did not think justified. It is interesting that he judged it absolutely necessary for the area under question to be far from international shipping routes. Clearly, this was an attempt to make the doctrine palatable to those who worried over the erosion of the high seas. In 1981 another article dealt with the application of the historic waters doctrine to the seas in the Soviet sector. Its author, P.G.Palamarchuk, again reached the conclusion that the Siberian seas were historic waters, but that a law or decree to this end still did not exist (Palamarchuk 1981: 124). In short, the development of the historic waters doctrine and its application to the Siberian seas is still dominated by the original Stalinist interpretation that these seas belong to the Soviet Union because of their exploration history. Soviet lawyers have gone to considerable lengths to avoid the disadvantages of this interpretation. Nevertheless, however ingenious they have been, no really daring new suggestions have come forward. Even those who did suggest new direction have been careful to retain escape routes to the original position in which the Siberian seas were considered historic bays, belonging completely to the Soviet Union. This theoretical conservatism is only too understandable in a country where sticking one’s neck out was often simply asking for a noose. At the same time, this explains the longevity of some of the ideas of the Stalin era.

8 Arctic shipping since 1953

DESTALINIZATION AND SEA POWER During the Second World War there had been little time to ponder the long-term implications of Arctic shipping, but afterwards the problem presented itself again. If the Northern Sea Route was to be of any use, its capacity should be increased. In the Stalinist period, this problem had been tackled by the plan to build a railway to Igarka, thus reducing the length of the shipping route. The drawbacks of this plan have been mentioned (see p. 70), but it complied with the main tenets of Stalinist policy, namely self-sufficiency and the use of forced labour. In 1953, however, after the Twentieth Party Congress, a revision of this basic policy began, destalinization set in, and with it came a change in the Soviet Union’s selfperception. The ‘first communist state’ was no longer seen as an embattled fortress, since eleven nations with some 700 million people had joined the communist bloc. Countries such as China and Vietnam had begun to develop, while in Africa several ‘liberation movements’ appeared (Guzhenko 1984:112). Besides, by acquiring nuclear weapons the Soviet Union had become a superpower, which was able to play an active role in world politics (Gorschkow 1978: 262). In consequence, a more outgoing policy was developed, which allowed greater cooperation in international questions. We have seen its consequences for the Soviet attitude towards the Law of the Sea. This in turn implied the need for sea power. In 1957 Admiral S.G.Gorshkov became Commander in Chief of the Soviet Navy. His ideas however, were, published only much later. To Gorshkov, sea power did not mean only warships, but a whole fleet of scientific and merchant vessels as well. It meant, in effect, that the Soviet Union was to become a maritime nation, acquiring all the facilities and advantages that came with it. By expanding foreign trade, which was shipped in Soviet vessels to socialist countries, and by displaying its power by visits of Soviet warships, the new foreign policy had important consequences for the Northern Sea Route. Arctic shipping was already an important marine activity of the Soviet Union, requiring expertise and special skills. Now it became one of the nuclei around which a new merchant fleet could develop. It was, after all, not illogical to begin expansion by enlarging the existing nautical enterprises. Another reason for boosting Arctic shipping was mentioned by a GUSMP economist, S.V.Slavin, who added it as an argument to his economic considerations. Canada and the

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United States had acquired fleets of modern icebreakers since the Second World War, which enabled them to exploit the Northwest Passage. By 1952 the Soviet Union was no longer the best-equipped and developed Arctic power. The voyage of the Nautilus to the North Pole, followed by other similar voyages, showed that the strategic importance of the Arctic had been extended to Arctic seas as well (Slavin 1961:289; Strobridge and Noble 1977). The first signs of an imminent expansion of Soviet Arctic shipping were experiments in 1953 and 1954 which showed that such shipping along the Northern Sea Route could be economically feasible if more than 300,000 tons were carried and if enough Arctic ships were available (Arikaynen 1984:115). At the same time new Arctic freighters were ordered in the Netherlands. In 1954 the first three ships of this Lena class were ready. They had powerful 8,200 hp diesel-electric engines, icebreaker bows and sides of 30 mm steel to protect them. In 1955 the first ship, the Lena, made a double trip starting from the East and managing to return within the same season. Her sister Yenisey did so from the West, both without aid from icebreakers. In the Far East an icebreaker, together with a Lena-class vessel carrying coal for the icebreaker, came to be regarded as an ideal combination (Chubakov 1979a:20). EXPANSION OF ARCTIC SHIPPING At the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, famous for Khrushchev’s secret speech, it was decided to make the expansion of the route government policy, so that the Northern Sea Route was to become ‘a route for mass transportation’, instead of a ‘normally functioning route’ as had been said at the previous Party Congress. This meant organizational changes, more ships and new icebreakers (Guzhenko 1984: 102). In 1957 the Arctic shipping organizations which had hitherto been responsible for Arctic operations were transferred from GUSMP to the Far East and Murmansk shipping companies. This meant that normal shipping companies became responsible for operations along the Northern Sea Route, although officially it was no more than an internal change within the Ministry of the Merchant Fleet. More attention was paid now to the economic aspects of shipping. More effective use was made of the navigational season by arranging convoys according to the icestrengthening of the ships, which allowed some convoys to go faster. Also the cargo capacity of the ships was more efficiently used (Dvornyak 1962:223–5). The decision to enlarge the capacity of the Northern Sea Route brought about a definite change of tactics in ice-shipping. More powerful icebreakers became available, which allowed the breaking up of land-fast ice in the Proliv Vil’kitskogo, instead of waiting until leads opened spontaneously. In this way the season could begin a fortnight earlier. New and more reliable ice-forecasting methods allowed a more efficient use of icebreakers. At the same time faster and more powerful freighters made possible a more intensive use of the season (Arikaynen 1984:108). All in all, the season was considerably lengthened. During the sixties it increased from one and a half to five months. The number of ships that plied the route each year came to be well over a hundred. The expansion of the Arctic fleet also started in 1956, when it was decided at the Twentieth Party Congress to build a nuclear icebreaker that would be the most

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powerful in the world (Guzhenko 1984:102). There have been suspicions that the real reason for doing so was to have a vessel in which nuclear propulsion could be tested before it was used in submarines (Morris 1979:37). For some reason, in 1966 its three reactors were replaced by two larger ones, while performance remained the same (Izvestiya 1984, no. 338). This may indeed have some connection with the development of submarine reactors. A similar plan may have been considered in the United States, since in 1960 a bill was passed to build an American nuclear icebreaker. However, the project was stopped by the White House. Even if this testing was an important reason, the Soviet Union had much to gain from this undertaking. Nuclear propulsion was a near-perfect solution to the problem of fuelling powerful icebreakers on the vast stretches of the Northern Sea Route. The Lenin, as the ship had been christened, was launched on 5 December 1957 and entered service in 1959. Her first captain was Pavel Ponomarev, a renowned ice captain. The vessel was provided with turbines, driven by steam from three reactors that had been designed by academician A.P.Aleksandrov. The turbines in turn produced electricity for the electric motors that turned the propellers. In this roundabout way some 44,000 hp were produced, making the Lenin indeed the most powerful icebreaker at the time. Of course, there was some apprehension about the safety of the reactors, which was turned into a joke when it appeared that several of the ship’s officers had fathered twins (Aganbegyan 1984:217). Little is known about reactor incidents. A.K.Sledzyuk, one of the first ship’s officers specialized in nuclear propulsion, once pulled out an object from a reactor and was exposed to some 1, 000 roentgen in the process, which damaged his hand permanently (Tyutenkov 1979:80). The ship functioned well. Her first Arctic season was that of 1960, when the Lenin worked for three months and ten days, escorting some ninety-two ships. The ship still operates nowadays. Rumour had it in 1979 that she was being sold for scrap to a South Korean enterprise for 140 dollars per ton, but this turned out to be untrue (Marine Week, 30 September 1979; Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya 1979, no. 267). Normally icebreakers remain in service for about twenty years, but this is not necessarily the case in the Soviet Union. In 1984 her twenty-fifth anniversary was celebrated. In 1981 it was suggested that she would last another five to ten years (Ibragimova 1981:121). Beside the Lenin, new conventional icebreakers were ordered as well. Since 1960 five 26,000 hp icebreakers were built, called Moskva (1960), Lenin- grad (1961), Kiev (1965), Murmansk (1968) and Vladivostok (1969). These were the first icebreakers able to withstand the ice pressure that had rendered previous models helpless. For example, the old steam icebreakers had not been able to move between icefloes when the winds started to press them together. The secret of their power lay in the fact that these new ships had diesel-electric engines. A diesel engine would power the electric engine that moved the screw. Electric engines distribute power more evenly, and thus more effectively (Afanas’ev 1985:30). So the Soviet fleet began the expansion which appeared so threatening to the West. The number of ice-strengthened ships began to grow quickly. Large series were built, or bought, in the West. In 1957 three more ships of the Lena class arrived, but these were exceptional vessels. Most new Soviet vessels had a lesser form of ice protection. A good example of such ships was the Neptun class. These were small freighters of 4,200–4,600 tons deadweight built in East Germany

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between 1958 and 1971, of which more than a hundred were commissioned. They were built at the Schiffswerft Neptun in Rostock. One of them, the Novovoronezh (1963), made a double passage in 1967, crossing in August from the West to the East in eleven days, while her return in September took nine days. Another ship of this series, the Vitya Sitnitsa, proved even faster (Chubakov 1982:93). In 1971 she made the passage in eight days. Less successful members of this class were the Kolya Myagotin and the Nina Sagaydak, which were both seriously damaged in the difficult 1983 season. The Nina Sagaydak was lost. Another example of these numerous ice-strengthened classes were the Polish B-514 timber carriers of the Volgoles class. Some sixty of these have been bought by the Soviet Union since 1960. Other ship types were built in the Soviet Union, such as the Mesenles (1960–5) and a longer variety, the Vyborgles, which had not only the ice-strengthened bow of the Mesenles but a helicopter flight deck as well. The Vyborgles types were built between 1963 and 1967 (Soviet Merchant Ships 1969: 64–5). The Soviet Union also began to build its own special Arctic freighters, ships comparable with the Lena class. This type is designated by the Russian abbreviation ULA, which stands for ‘strengthened for Arctic ice’. Another class is UL (which means they cannot navigate independently in Arctic ice). The lower classes are numbered L1, L2, L3 etc. The first Soviet-built ULA ship after the war was the Amguema (1962). In some respects no more than a continuation of the Lena class, Amguema featured a shape of hull far superior to anything built so far. Amguema came to be regarded as the classic type of ice-breaking freighter. This was the result of using experimental techniques to test different kinds of hulls. Seven units of this class were built at the Komsomol’sk yard in Komsomo’sk na Amure between 1962 and 1969. Except for the Navarin, they all went to the Far East Shipping Company. From 1970 onwards this series was continued in Kherson on the Black Sea, where another four of them were built. After the last one, Mikhail Somov, was built in 1975, it was decided to transfer this task to the Wärtsilä yard in Turku, Finland. Among other things the Amguema class were considered too small. Cooperation between the shipbuilding department of the Arctic Institute and Wärtsilä in 1982 resulted in a new design, the SA-15 (Kanerva and Lönnberg 1985). Except for the ULA ships, most of the new ships were timber carriers, which gradually took over the Soviet export from foreign vessels. The Kara Sea Route, which had always known much British shipping, was by 1964 served almost entirely by Soviet ships, while the output of timber was rising steadily, from about 82,900 tonnes in 1950 to 306,600 in 1961 (Armstrong 1980). The increased use of icebreakers caused a need for a lighter icebreaker class, which could aid regular shipping without being as costly as the heavy Arctic icebreakers. Between 1961 and 1965 such a series of small ice-breaking vessels were built of some 1,100 tons deadweight and 5,400 hp. Three of these were stationed in Leningrad, two went to Sakhalin, others to places such as Odessa, Vladivoslok, Nagayevo and one to Tiksi. The one that went to Tiksi, the Semen Chelyuskin, was attached to the Northeast Department set up to organize the sea-river shipping, taking over from the port authorities of Tiksi (Arikaynen 1984:120; Guzhenko 1984:171). Sea-river ships had been plying between the Lena, Kolyma and other Siberian rivers ever since the railway connection Tayshet-Ust’kut had been built As the relatively warm water of the Lena makes the ice break up earlier in the Laptev Sea than elsewhere, it made sense to keep a small icebreaker permanently

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in Tiksi. It thus became possible to sail from the Lena to the Kolyma before the Kolyma could be reached from the Bering Straits. As in other fields of shipping, the Soviet nautical expansion carried its consequences for Western shipping. In 1965 the so-called Arctic Line, between Europe and Canada, came into being. The Murmansk Shipping Company, which had several ice-strengthened ships at its disposal, normally sent these to the Baltic during the winter. From 1965 onwards a number of these went to Canada, which is difficult to reach in winter. In January 1965, the Volgoles was the first ship of the year to reach the gulf of St Lawrence and received the customary reward for this feat. It was the first time a Russian ship had won this reward. By 1969 the Arctic Line was calling at Montreal about once a week and had ousted its West European competitors (Cook 1985). The basis of the Arctic Line was an agreement with the Polish merchant marine which arranged that during the summer, when the icestrengthened ships would be needed in the Arctic, Polish ships would take over the obligations of the Arctic Line to Canada (Guzhenko 1984:40). The increase of Arctic shipping certainly did not signify that all difficulties had been overcome. The year 1965 proved a fresh reminder of that. It was one of those years when the ice in the Chukotka Sea was very hard to negotiate. Some forty ships were damaged and a number of ships from the Far East did not manage to return to Vladivostok and had to proceed to the West (Chubakov 1979: 22). Both the Leningrad and the Moskva damaged their screws, which had to be replaced. The Vitimles, a sister ship to the Volgoles, sank, despite the fact that two icebreakers were in attendance. Nevertheless the season was regarded as successful, since more than 300 ships visited Igarka and Dudinka, while scores of ships navigated along the east part of the route (Guzhenko 1984:171). As a result of this expansion of the Arctic Fleet and the more efficient use of the season, total turnover began to increase. Although no definite figures are given, it is hinted that during the Seven-Year Plan (1959–65) the threshold of 1,000,000 tonnes a year was crossed, of which about half went to the Far East (Golov’anov 1967:134). With some 300,000 tonnes coming from Igarka, the surplus must have consisted of supplies for Arctic stations and mining enterprises (Slavin 1961:289). Since the basic reason for this expansion of the fleet was a change from autarkic development to an internationally respected sea power, it is not astonishing that the Soviet Union began to take part in all sorts of international undertakings concerning shipping. One of these was a change in its position regarding the Law of the Sea, as we have seen. It will be remembered how the Soviet Union changed its position after 1958 to a more positive attitude towards the freedom of the high seas. At the same time, it began to take part in the Western Shipping Conferences, which govern the trade on certain sea routes. Finally, in the late fifties, the first Soviet expeditions appeared in the Antarctic, which so far had been almost exclusively a Western domain. In 1948 the Soviet Union had already mentioned its interest in the Antarctic, but it had never given any stronger proof of this than in the form of a resolution by its geographic society and some whaling activity. This changed after Staiin’s death, when in the winter of 1955 the Ob’ and the Lena departed to the extreme South for what was to become the first Soviet Antarctic expedition. Earlier that year, in July 1955, a Soviet delegation had shown up at a meeting for the organization of the International Geophysical Year and, much to everybody’s amazement, proposed a large-scale project, including six wintering

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stations on the Antarctic mainland (Quigg 1983:48). The excellent cooperation during the International Geophysical Year did much to establish the Antarctic Treaty. Initially the Soviet Union had been vehemently opposed to any attempt to devise an international legal framework for the Antarctic, since internationalization of the latter had always been regarded as an advantage for the great number of capitalist nations (see p. 77). However, in 1959, the Soviet Union suddenly changed its position and agreed to the treaty, which included a postponement of any territorial claims (Quigg 1983:147–8). Here again, the Soviet Union opened itself to the world. SPECIALIZATION The Merchant Navy had a strong influence on the Northern Sea Route. When specialization of its vessels began, the Arctic fleet not only followed suit, but actually gave the lead. Many innovations were first applied in the Arctic; others were specially developed for Arctic services. This was certainly the case with winter navigation. One of the novelties of the sixties was the introduction of containers. These can be unloaded from ships in a short time by a small number of people and are therefore very effective in Arctic conditions. Already by 1967 25 per cent of the incoming goods in Dudinka were containerized. Containers were very effective, especially for products such as tinned fruits, wine, potatoes and vegetables, which arrived by rail at their ports of departure, such as Krasnoyarsk or Kandalaksha (Trushkin 1971: 413). From 1971 onwards the Soviet Union began to experiment with container ships, by adapting a timber carrier of the Vyborg class, the Kargopol’, to containers. Not surprisingly, the line Arkhangel’sk-Dudinka was one of the first on which it appeared. Containers proved a mixed blessing to Arctic shipping, since they also made possible the so-called ‘land bridge’ by which containers were moved by rail from Western Europe to Japan and vice versa. In 1971 Soviet railways opened this possibility to the West and soon 20 per cent of all container transport between Europe and Japan went by the transSiberian (Guzhenko 1984:139; Lydolph 1979). The railways thus partly took over one of the more promising assets of the Northeast Passage. Specialization was an overall trend. By 1972 the first specially designed container ships came into commission. Two years later ro-ro ships followed. For the still growing stream of ores from Dudinka a special ore-bulker was designed which could carry containers to and ore from Dudinka. Ships of this Kapitan Panfilov class are moderately ice-strengthened, grade L1. There are eight ships of this type with the Murmansk Shipping Company, which is, in fact, the total series. They were built between 1975 and 1979 (Chubakov 1979a:22). Specialization had the least consequences in the timber trade. It did not lead to any rapid expansion, but made the existing trade more profitable. Timber was bound up in packets, which made loading easier. From 1973 onwards a special type of ship appeared to handle these packets. This was the Nikolay-Novikov class of 14,200 tons deadweight built in Poland. Eleven of these joined the Northern Shipping Company in Arkhangel’sk. Another series of timber packet carriers was the Pioner Moskvy class of 6,780 dwt, UL strengthened and built between 1972 and

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1976 in the Soviet Union. These ships were meant to replace the timber carriers of the larger series in the Far East and Arkhangel’sk Shipping Companies which had been acquired when it was decided to make the Soviet Union a sea-going nation (Arikaynen 1984:107).

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9 The western section: winter navigation

INTRODUCTION One of the more impressive developments in Arctic shipping is the endeavour to make it ‘all year round’. The incredibly hard and thick ice of the winter which for centuries had chased the very idea of navigation from the mind of any sensible sailor, and which caused the dangerous and costly winterings, could now be attacked by means of new, powerful icebreakers and ships. The economic advantage of such possibilities is beyond doubt, because seasonal activity means that capital goods will be used only for a short period, which in turn means that capital yields only a part of its potential return, because even if some icebreakers went south a number of them remained unemployed during the winter. Equally, harbour equipment in the Arctic can be used only for a short period, so its capacity has to be larger than in ports that can be used in winter to achieve the same results. Moreover, lengthening the season is a simple way of increasing shipping in the Arctic. Since effective occupation of the Arctic remains difficult, the political weight of this kind of economic activity is still great; exploration and shipping are the pillars of sovereignty in the Arctic, especially where the Soviet Union is concerned. In the military field, the capacity for winter navigation assures the provisioning of airfields and other installations under all circumstances, which may well be decisive to the fulfilment of their tasks. In addition, it is an attractive idea to be able to exchange navy vessels between the Pacific and the Atlantic. In spite of modern icebreakers, winter navigation remained nevertheless a very costly and difficult exercise. Although it could have been undertaken as soon as the Lenin came into commission, it took several years to happen. Then, it began on the American side. A year round maritime link via the Northwest Passage had become an interesting proposition for developing the large oil deposits at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. This possibility was discussed together with alternatives such as the use of a pipeline or nuclear submarine oil tankers (Truitt 1970; McLaren 1982, 1987). Eventually the pipeline was opted for, but only after some experimentation. The supertanker Manhattan (115,000 tons deadweight, 45,000 hp) was equipped with an icebreaker bow and made a successful attempt at passing the little-known Northwest Passage in the summer of 1969, but a second attempt, in April 1970, failed (Swithinbank

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1970a, b). In April the ice is at its hardest. The Manhattan, badly damaged, had to abandon the attempt. The plan for year round navigation via the Northwest Passage was discarded but not the idea of winter navigation. Experts felt that more powerful ships of 150,000 hp would be able to succeed. Some other attempts have been made since by ordinary icebreakers and designs have been made for such very powerful ones, but no definite results have been achieved. The American voyages, inspired by the wish to exploit Arctic oil deposits, were no great success, nor did they end in utter failure. It was generally assumed that to some extent winter navigation had proved feasible. This forced the Russian hand, because they felt they had to follow suit in view of the political importance of exploration, even if the development of Siberian oil deposits did not warrant such fantastic undertakings. The rationale behind their operations therefore became the development of Noril’sk, although oil exploration did play a certain role. THE NORIL’SK MINES Noril’sk had been a relic of Stalinist times. The disadvantages of Arctic mining in a place that was very difficult to reach had been overlooked in view of the fact that here strategically important and urgently needed ores could be found within the Soviet Union, and could be developed without outside help. The results were the penal camps at Noril’sk and Dudinka, similar to the Vorkuta complex where coal was mined. These camps relied on forced labour, and needed little machinery. Even so, the mines were difficult to operate and this must have been an additional argument for building a railway to Igarka, a project that was later abandoned. After 1953, it became impossible to continue camps and most forcedlabour operations on the previous scale. A new era began, in which these mines became more mechanized and employed paid workers. It is probable that a number of operations were abandoned, or in any case scaled down. Noril’sk would have had sound reasons for being replaced by the less rich mines in the Kola area, which were connected to the central railway network. But, in fact, the opposite happened, because in the sixties director V.Yu.Dolgikh, at present a Secretary of the Central Committee, initiated an intensive geological exploration of the Noril’sk area and discovered new and valuable veins of ore. They contained a complex mixture of fourteen different metals, among which were nickel, cobalt, silver, gold and platinum. This ensured Noril’sk’s future and new mines were built, some of them descending 5,000 feet. The expansion caused people to reconsider the problem of transport, which was necessary because with 120,000 inhabitants in 1962 and an annual provisioning of 1 million tonnes, Noril’sk still depended on seasonal transportation, although cargo planes could help to overcome the more troublesome shortages to some extent (Slavin 1961:195; Aganbegyan 1984:134). On the other hand, to guarantee year round communications it would be necessary to build a railway of 2,000 km, at an estimated cost of 400–500 million roubles (Slavin 1961). This had been considered far too expensive in the sixties and, for unknown reasons, even the discovery of new mines did not alter this (Arikaynen 1984:147). Instead, a different solution was adopted. The Noril’sk ores were shipped to the NIKEL enterprise in the Murmansk oblast. Nickel had been mined in the European

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North since the Revolution; mining centres were Monchegorsk and Pechenga. By 1936 the two enterprises had been combined into one, simply called ‘NIKEL’. This was done to feed the smelter at Monchegorsk with the richer Pechenga ores. The nickel ore found at Monchegorsk had been both rich and mixed with other metals, but the richer veins had been quickly exhausted (Slavin 1982:135). By 1964 it was decided to bring in the Noril’sk ores. This meant that Noril’sk ores would have to be shipped through the Kara Sea on a larger scale than ever before. The fact that no new transportation link to Noril’sk was set up but existing navigation was intensified instead bore out Stalin’s policy of developing Arctic mines as much as possible with available means. If the Soviet Union could not invest enough in the development of a railway to Noril’sk, then shipping should be used, also because it had favourable effects on the position of the Soviet Union in the Arctic and the use of the Northern Sea Route for military purposes. Nevertheless, some of the disadvantages of a shipping route remained, for example the necessity of oversized port capacity. Dependence on a short navigation season also meant large stocks to feed and clothe the local population, while the output of the mines would pile up. In short, this reliance on shipping was very costly because it required such extensive storage and port facilities. The answer to the disadvantages of Arctic ports was prolongation of the season. The more time available for navigation, the less storage and port facilities would be needed. Prolongation was begun by making return voyages somewhat later than had been the custom. In 1969 ships from Dudinka reached Murmansk as late as November (Literaturnaya Gazeta, 27 May 1981, no, 22). In addition to low temperatures and ice obstmction, winter navigation suffers from the fact that during the polar night it is dark, which renders ice reconnaissance by planes and satellites almost impossible. Yet, though less obvious than with the Alaskan oil fields, Arctic shipping could clearly make a valuable contribution to the expansion of Noril’sk. It was this expansion that would have to pay for the development of winter navigation, just as oil production would do in the American Arctic. SOVIET ATTEMPTS On the Soviet side of the Pole, the first attempts to navigate in winter were less ambitious than the American attempts. The first aim was a prolongation of the season, while the stretch chosen was the Kara Route, where ice was not as thick as in the Polar Basin (ibid.). This first stage of winter navigation began in 1970, when the Gizhiga navigated to Dudinka in November. The first attempt immediately made it clear that winter navigation was very expensive. Icebreakers that normally could be directed to non-Arctic seas when necessary were prevented from doing so now. A good reason for Soviet Arctic shipping had been the fact that the Soviet Union, in winter, needed icebreakers to maintain normal shipping services. This made it possible to use them in the Arctic in summer, with little extra cost. This advantage now disappeared. Also, the breaking of Arctic ice in winter is far more difficult than it is in summer. In November-December 1970 the ULA freighter Gizhiga, a sister ship of the Amguema, had to be accompanied by the Lenin across the Kara Sea, after which the Murmansk escorted her in the Yenisey estuary. Finally, a third icebreaker, the

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Kapitan Belousov, was used for the last part of the voyage, with additional assistance from the Kapitan Voronin. The reason for this costly succession of four icebreakers was the fact that the more powerful ships could not operate in the shallow waters near Dudinka, while the others were insufficiently powerful to operate in the Kara Sea during winter. The 1970 voyage must have been an expensive experiment, but a successful one too (Burkov 1985). Ever since, the time of the autumn-winter navigation is apparently called the Gizhigina in Noril’sk. In spite of the large icebreaker escorts, the operation was considered an economic success. It was said to have ‘great economic effect’ (Arikaynen 1984: 148). The experiment was repeated in 1971, this time to assess which types of vessels could be used in winter. Beside the Gizhiga two other ULA freighters and three timber carriers took part. The other ULA ships were the Lena and the Kuybishevges. The timber carriers were the Vostok-5, the Pechenga and the Pargolovo. The Vostok-5 was a Vyborgles-class ship with a helicopter deck. At the time, Vostok-5 was quite a new vessel and the Pechenga was scarcely one year old. Accompanying icebreakers again were the Lenin, the Murmansk and the Kapitan Melekhov, but not the Kapitan Belousov this time. Special attention was paid to deck machinery and the behaviour of the superstructure in the fierce colds of • 40 degrees Celsius. The operation ended successfully on 4 January when the Lena and the Gizhiga reached Murmansk as the last ships of their convoy (Burkov 1985). In 1972 sixteen ships were involved, but this time meteorological conditions were far worse. Three ships had to return before reaching Dudinka. On some ships the steel plates of the superstructure were fractured by the cold. Temperatures went down to • 50 degrees Celsius. Despite this, the voyage went on until 26 January, so that navigation lasted the whole of the Arctic night. On the 21st the sun had risen to meet the convoy near Karskie Vorota (ibid.; Arikaynen 1984: 148). These first navigations produced a great deal of useful experience. In the first place it was clear that shallow-draught icebreakers were needed that could operate on the Yenisey, as well as more powerful icebreakers to accompany them. This meant that new nuclear icebreakers had to be built. These arrived in 1975 (the Arktika) and 1977 (the Sibir’). Several shallow-draught icebreakers were ordered in Finland. Second, special ice-strengthened freighters were needed, which could withstand the severe cold. Another difficulty was unloading them. Most cranes and lift-trucks do not function at temperatures below • 40 degrees Celsius, and so special equipment is needed (EKO 1984:(3), 90). Ships were sometimes frozen to quays and were hard to move afterwards. Personnel needed special clothing and their work in the bitter cold and the dark of the polar night was very demanding. Another difficulty was the very limited timespan left for repairs to ships, since ships remained in the Arctic for such long periods (Literaturnaya Gazeta, 8 August 1984, no. 32). Organization of ships’ movements became more difficult for the same reason (Arikaynen 1984:154). Nevertheless, all these problems were manageable and winter navigation was continued. From 1974 onwards, the average season was lengihened to six months, while the number of ships involved kept increasing (Chubakov 1979a:27). Winter navigation was thus used to provide transport for the Noril’sk mines. The need to assure year-round operation made more nuclear icebreakers necessary. Here two birds were killed with one stone. The mines would pay for the transport and the Soviet Union would acquire new icebreakers that underscored its position

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as an explorer of the Arctic. In addition, this was another sign of the Soviet Union’s expanding maritime power. The result was the arrival of the Arktika nuclear icebreaker class, the first of which was registered in 1974. Heavy nuclear icebreakers were indispensable for winter navigation. The Arktika was larger (23,460 grt) than the Lenin (19,240 grt) and almost twice as powerful (75,000 against 44,000 hp). The number of winter voyages quickly increased to thirty-nine in 1976 (Demyanchenko 1986). Three years after the Arktika, in 1977 a sister ship followed, the Sibir’. By herself, the Sibir’ is no more sensational than any other nuclear icebreaker, but perhaps she is more comfortable. Each of the crew has his own cabin, and there is a music room, a library, a cinema, a sauna and even a swimming pool. The medical facilities are extensive, since apart from a sick bay there is a staffed operating room aboard (Arikaynen 1984:11). This clearly shows that these ships are meant to remain in the Arctic for long periods and perhaps to service other ships and remote settlements. Another type of specialized ship that came into service for use in winter navigation was the shallow-draught icebreaker Kapitan Sorokin. These ships draw 8.5 m, compared with the 10.47 m of the Moskva class, 10.40 m of the Lenin and 11.0 m of the Arktika class. Such a vessel becomes indispensable during winter when the water level of the Yenisey drops. The Kapitan Sorokin has 22,000 hp, comparable with the 26,000 hp of the Moskva class, and is thus capable of replacing Moskva icebreakers in winter, while still able to navigate on the Yenisey. The Kapitan Sorokin class consists of four ships: Kapitan Sorokin, Kapitan Nikolaev, Kapitan Khlebnikov and Kapitan Dranitsyn. Only the first and the second serve in winter operations; the last two are stationed in the Far East, where there are many shallow waters (Aganbegyan 1984:216). These icebreakers were built in Finland at the Wärtsilä yard. In 1969 this shipbuilding company had acquired its own test basin, comparable with the one at the Arctic Institute in Leningrad. The Kapitan Sorokin was not the first icebreaker Wärtsilä built for Russia; all the larger icebreakers such as the Kapitan Belousov, Moskva and others had been built by Wärtsilä. Only the nuclears were built in Leningrad (Ivanov 1984). As a consequence of the arrival of the shallow-draught icebreakers the older Kapitan Melekhov and her sisterships now became available for operations in non-Arctic seas. This allowed a prolongation of the shipping season in other ice seas as well and served the wish to expand shipping in general. In March 1977 the Kapitan Melekhov and the ULA freighter Pavel Ponomarev reached Kandalaksha on the White Sea carrying a cargo of Cuban sugar (Guzhenko 1984:174). Thus another port in the Arctic could be used for a longer period. Another necessity for winter navigation besides icebreakers were sturdier freighters. This had become clear in the voyage made in 1971. In 1977 the shipping of ores from Dudinka had become such a regular undertaking that a special series of bulk carriers arrived, comparable with, but more powerful than, the Kapitan Panfilov. This was the Polkovodets class, a series named after famous army commanders. Like the Panfilov, it could carry containers to Dudinka and return with ores, but it was better protected against ice, its ice grade being UL. This class was a clear indication that the Soviets were determined to expand winter navigation to Dudinka. The fact that these were 19,950 ton deadweight ships, all amongst the largest ships then to operate regularly on the Northern Sea Route, showed it to

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be no unimportant undertaking. The whole series consisted of eight ships which were all in the Murmansk Shipping Company. One of these ships, the Aleksandr Nevsky, even reached Dudinka as late as December, in 1978. But unloading at temperatures of • 50 degrees Celsius proved too much. The ship could not reach the quay and it took six hours just to lower the stairs onto the ice (ibid.: 173). By 1977 shipping to Dudinka had not really become year-round, but the shipping season had been substantially lengthened, from five to ten months. In November and December 1977 some 18 per cent of that year’s freight was transported. The total turnover between Dudinka and Murmansk increased from 600,000 tonnes in 1970 to 1 million in 1977 (Izvestiya 1978: no. 120). However, it took more than that to make navigation year-round. In April 1978 the first attempt was made to begin navigation earlier. The Kapitan Sorokin brought the Navarin and the Pavel Ponomarev to Dudinka, where they left 12,000 tons of cargo before returning with some 6,000 tons of copper and nickel. This voyage was made three months earlier than usual (Guzhenko 1984:173). Apart from such experiments, intensive study of the ice in the Kara Sea was made. It soon became clear that such studies could be linked to the provisioning of the gas and oil fields in West Siberia. Similarly, nuclear icebreakers were tested in summer in the heavier ice of the central Arctic Basin. During the sixties, large oil and gas fields had been found in the plains of Western Siberia. One of the biggest oil fields, found near the Siberian lake of Samotlor, consisted of some 2,000 million recoverable tonnes (Shabad and Dienes 1979:38). Since transportation of oil and oil-rig equipment was difficult in the swamps near the Ob’ in which the new oil fields lay, exploitation for some time concentrated on the big Samotlor field, but this did not solve the transportation problem. The largest gas fields, containing some 40 per cent of the Soviet Union’s reserves of gas, are Urengoy, Yamburg, Zapolyarnoe and Medvezhe, which were discovered between 1965 and 1969. Development started in 1972 with the Medvezhe fields, because they were the easiest to reach. The other large fields soon followed. A pipeline, Urengoy-Uzhgorod, was built to bring the gas to the European parts of the country. Gas was also exported to Western Europe (ibid.: 87). Clearly, transportation will always be a key problem in the exploitation of natural resources in the Arctic. For an exploratory drilling of 3,500 metres, 5,000–8,000 tonnes of equipment have to be moved, mostly through swampy, difficult terrain (Aganbegyan 1984:228). To some extent, Arctic shipping could help in this by bringing cargoes to the Siberian rivers, from where river craft could transfer them to their destination. This happened with the pipes for the Urengoy-Uzhgorod line. Large steel pipe sections are difficult to handle and take up much space. It was found to be more efficient to carry these pipes from Western Europe and Japan to the Ob’ by ship than by railway wagons (Aleksandrov 1984). This was done from 1979 onwards, so that by 1984 more than a million tonnes of pipe had come to Siberia this way. In 1984 large bulk carriers of a type that had no ice strengthening at all were used. Strictly speaking they should not have been used in the Arctic, but no serious problems arose. Some comparisons were made of the costeffectiveness of risking these large ships in the Arctic with pipes from Italy, against that of buying pipes in Japan and bringing them along the Northern Sea Route, but the results have not been published (Ponomarev 1985b). Although the participation of shipping in opening up the huge hydrocarbon resources of Siberia

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never reached a level comparable with what had been intended with the Manhattan in the Northwest Passage, Soviet shipping did take some part in the exploration of oil and gas resources, and in the exploitation of the gas fields near the Kara Sea on Poluostrov Yamal. This activity soon proved too much for the normal landing procedures. Either new port facilities had to be constructed, or another way had to be found to land goods on the shallow and wind-swept shores of the Kara Sea. Although it was comparatively easy to bring equipment and supplies to the Kara Sea by ship, the main difficulty consisted in unloading in roadsteads. This is always a slow and costly affair, but becomes dangerous in shallow, exposed waters when ice is drifting. It was therefore decided to experiment with ‘ice quays’, that is, to unload ships on the land-fast ice during winter. The ice is then strong enough to carry trucks and heavy ioads. Since the tundra and swamps are also frozen hard, equipment can be taken directly to its destination by winter roads. The first such winter expedition was undertaken in 1976 to Kharasavey, a small camp on Poluostrov Yamal named after a small local river, Kharasavey meaning ‘meandering’ in the Nenets language (Sushkina 1957:92). Gas deposits had been found on that icy peninsula in the Kara Sea. At the same time, these ice-quay operations would enable a study of shipping conditions and thus aid in the organization of winter navigation (Burkov 1985). Kharasavey was the centre of the Geological Service on Yamal. It consisted of a few stone buildings, a boiler house, a medical centre and of course the Klub, a communal building that the inhabitants were proud of, since it was reportedly the best club in Yamal. On Saturday nights there were even dances, for which there were only 100 women to about 1,000 men. People were brought to Kharasavey for short periods, leaving their families in the south. This is the so-called Vakhtenny Metod (Armstrong 1976). In order to allow more men to bring their wives to the camp, facilities would have to be expanded and this demanded better transport links. Kharasavey had no port facilities and its roadstead made most captains uneasy. In 1954 it had been visited by a Soviet naturalist who reported that her ship, the Rzhev, had had to stay well clear of the coast although it was only 3,150 tons deadweight. The coast was dangerous because of its sandbanks, the Sharapovye Koshki, which made the approach dangerous even to small landing craft. ‘Yamal is a low peninsula. Its completely flat, horizontal shoreline reaches as far as the eye can see. But even inland there is no visible rising of the land. Its landscape is hopelessly boring.’ But in the fifties there were still wild reindeer, and Kharasavey was known for its abundance of blackberries (Sushkina 1957:91). It was an excellent place to begin ice-quay operations (Aganbegyan 1984:198). The ice quay was prepared with great care. The nearest polar station, Amderma, was enlarged for the purpose. A group of specialists, led by meteorologist Artur Chilingarov, studied the development of the land-fast ice (Chubakov 1979b:117). After thorough investigation a spot was chosen where the off-loading could safely take place. On 3 March 1976 the ULA freighter Pavel Ponomarev left Murmansk and joined the nuclear icebreaker Lenin, already at sea. Near Kolguev they entered the ice, which was then at its most resistant. At low temperatures ice becomes more flexible, which makes it harder to break. Another difficulty during winter is the socalled Oblipanye, when the ice freezes to the icebreaker, rendering her specially designed hull ineffective. Finally the impact of an icebreaker is lessened by snow on the ice floes. Nevertheless, the Lenin reached her destination and cut out a

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harbour in the ice. After the Pavel Ponomarev had been pushed into this berth, unloading began immediately. Trucks began to drive the 15 miles of road over the ice to Kharasavey. Three different roads had been prepared in advance by the people from Kharasavey, in case sudden ice pressure broke the link with the ships. Within a week 3,000 tonnes were landed. The operation was considered a success. Even the weather obliged, since on 18 April the temperature even reached 2 degrees Celsius. By 20 April the Pavel Ponomarev was safely back in ice-free waters (Chubakov 1979b: 118). The next year, 1977, the Kharasavey expeditions were repeated on a larger scale. The land-fast ice was studied even more carefully by drilling holes into the ice and by using special radar apparatus. This time attention was also paid to the economic aspects of the undertaking. More ships were used, while the traffic and road maintenance on the ice were coordinated with their arrival. Besides the Pavel Ponomarev, the Gizhiga and the Navarin also took part in 1977. The Arktika escorted them to Yamal; the cutting of an ice berth was done this time by the Murmansk (ibid.: 120). Once the quay was ready, the ships began to shuttle. The Gizhiga and the Navarin each did two turns, the Pavel Ponomarev only one. This time the weather was stormy and colder (• 35 degrees) which made everything more difficult. Nevertheless some 36,000 tonnes were landed (Izvestiya 1978: no. 36). In 1978 the expeditions to Yamal were again repeated and some 70,000 tonnes reached the settlement (Tyutenkov 1979:142; Kanerva and Lönnberg 1985: 311). This year, for the first time, a tanker was used, the Samburg. Fuel was fed by a 5 mile pipeline to Kharasavey (Izvestiya 1978: no. 36). The Samburg belonged to an ice-strengthened class of tankers, the Samotlor. Almost all icestrengthened tankers of this type are normally stationed in the Far East. There are two exceptions, the Samburg and the Leninsk-Kuznetsky, which belong to the Latvian Shipping Company in Ventspils, so the Samburg was probably brought along especially for the occasion. The fact that there are no large ice-strengthened tankers belonging to the Arkhangel’sk and Northern Shipping Companies indicates that such fuel transports are rare in the westerly section of the Northem Sea Route. However, there are three small tankers (1,660 tons deadweight) with the Northern Sea Company, which are probably used for supplying ships and stations on a small scale. The Kharasavey exercise yielded additional experience in operating in the Kara Sea during winter and allowed some experimenting with local conditions. Once this was completed, nothing could stop the extension of winter navigation to Dudinka and in 1978, after a new nuclear icebreaker, the Sibir’, had become operational, the first attempt was made. Once the unloading on the ice quay at Kharasavey had been completed, the convoy did not return to Murmansk but moved on to Dudinka. It consisted of the ULA freighters Pavel Ponomarev and the Navarin and two new icebreakers, the recently launched Sibir’ and a new shallowdraught icebreaker. The Lenin was included too. The voyage to Dudinka proved difficult, especially the breaking of the ice in the Yenisey estuary. In spile of this, the shallow-draught icebreaker and the Pavel Ponomarev arrived at Dudinka, with some wonderful timing, on May Day 1978. From 1979 onwards, winter navigation has taken care of a regular quarter of all ore transports between Dudinka and Murmansk. While the winter operations had provided the rationale to expand the Arctic fleet, this did not mean that the ships were to be restricted to winter voyages.

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Indeed, the major advantage of this solution had been that the nuclear ships could be used on other occasions, such as high-latitude voyages. The new nuclear icebreakers Arktika and Sibibr’ were sent to the North in order to experiment with the breaking of the denser, older Arctic ice. The most famous of these expeditions was the 1977 journey to the North Pole. In 1978 the Sibir’ and a ULA freighter, Kapitan Myshevsky, went through the passage earlier than usual by a course more northerly than usual. A similar voyage had been made in 1971, beginning on 26 May, by the icebreakers Vladivostok and Lenin, but the possibility of using this route for freighters still seemed remote to the icebreaker captains then involved (Burkov 1985). An additional reason for studying conditions in the Central Arctic was the fact that a high-latitude course might be used during the winter for through voyages. Between the land-fast ice and the pack ice even in winter cracks and leads appear or at least areas with relatively thin ice. This makes it possible for strong ships to pass even in winter (Arikaynen 1984:179). Another good reason for Arktika’s trip to the North Pole in 1977 was its considerable news value. It was the first surface vessel to do so. A metal plaque was sunk at the North Pole to witness the event. It carried an inscription reading ‘Soviet Union, sixty years since October (1917)' (ibid.: 158). The Minister of the Merchant Fleet, T.B.Guzhenko, was present, probably one of the very few ministers in office ever to take part in an Arctic expedition. Other events were a unicycle tour around the world by a member of the crew and the unfurling of the flag that G.Ya.Sedov had hoped to take to the North Pole in 1912. The purpose of the journey was described as testing the icebreaker in old, heavy pack ice. According to one of the designers of the Arktika, the idea of going to the North Pole had arisen during previous testing in 1975, which had taken place 400 miles from the Pole (Komsomolskaya Pravda 1977:235). But other reasons were given as well. The Minister described it as exploration of a highlatitude version of the Northern Sea Route (Romanov 1980:30). The actual journey was made between 9 and 22 August 1977. From Murmansk it was 3,891 miles to reach the Pole, of which 1,609 were through ice. The course taken remained close to that of the ice drift made by the Fram in 1893. The Arktika departed from the Novosibirskie Ostrova and returned along Zemlya FrantsaIosifa. In addition to her 171-strong crew, the ship carried thirty-six expedition members for the occasion, all of them specialists from the Arctic Institute in Leningrad and other organizations. Additional equipment included diving gear, ship’s propellers, victuals for seven months and bulldozers to make an airfield on the ice. Besides her own helicopter, the Arktika was equipped with another Mil Mi-2, so that there could be continuous air reconnaissance. The North Pole itself was reached on 17 August 1977 at 04.00 a.m. (Chubakov 1982: 92; Romanov 1980:13–31). After the voyage, Minister Guzhenko announced in an interview his plan for a high-latitude east-west route, which would be almost 1,000 miles shorter than the Northern Sea Route. In his annual article on the Northern Sea Route, T.E. Armstrong commented on the statement of the minister by pointing out that no economic juslifications for such a version would exist since transit cargo is virtually absent, while a high-latitude route would not be economically useful to freight being carried to the Lena or Yenisey. He suggested that the new route might have

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been intended for international trade (Armstrong 1978d:186). In the same interview it was announced that the Sibir’, which had been commissioned in 1977, would make another high-latitude expedition after escorting a freighter to Magadan (Izvestiya 1978: no. 120). Preparations for this journey were duly made. The newspaper Izvestiya placed a journalist, A.Shmyganovsky, on the Sibir’. But in 1977 the ULA freighter due to be accompanied by the Sibir, the Kapitan Myshevsky, was moved to the West. The Kapitan Myshevsky belonged to the Far East Shipping Company but did take part in the Kara Sea winter navigation programme of 1977– 8. As a result the ship was said to be in bad shape when on 26 May she left Murmansk with 6,000 tonnes of metal construction materials bound for Magadan (Izvestiya 1978: no. 141; correspondent A. Shmyganovsky filed reports in nos. 141, 143, 145, 147 and, finally, 175). The course followed the ordinary Northern Sea Route trajectory but went north of Severnaya Zemlya and the Novosibirskie Ostrova. On 13 June the Sibir’ and the Kapitan Myshevsky parted company at Mys Serdtse Kamen. The freighter safely reached Magadan on 23 June. The voyage was said to have taken 25 per cent less time than the normal route of travelling by railway to Vladivostok and hence by ship to Magadan. Initially no news was given about the Sibir’s return voyage, allegedly a highlatitude journey. The Izvestiya correspondent was transferred to the Kapitan Myshevsky, and on 27 July filed a noncommittal story on Bering Strait, adding only that the Sibir’ had visited a drifting station, SP-24, on 20 June (Izvestiya 1978: no. 175). But its position was not given at the time. On 16 August, well after the voyage, an interview with V.Tikhonov, Vice Minister of the Merchant Fleet, appeared in Pravda completely ignoring the original plans of the Sibir’ voyage. Instead, the mere accompanying of the Kapitan Myshevsky was now described as a high-latitude voyage. But even a repetition of this enterprise seemed remote, since the attempt was said to have proved that more hydrographic exploration was needed as well as research in shipbuilding. No more such voyages were made until the North Pole voyage in 1987. Since 1978, no attention has been paid to the development of a high-latitude sea route, but for what reason the writer has not been able to ascertain. Perhaps the return voyage of the Sibir’ was less than satisfactory. Gradually, more has become known about this trip. The position of the drifting station visited was described as being situated on the 76 degree meridian, which is not unusual, since in 1973 a similar operation had taken place on the 76 degree meridian when the conventional icebreaker Vladivostok set up SP-22. In the past such undertakings have broken records for free northerly navigation. That happened, for instance, in 1961, when SP-10 was installed. But nothing of this kind took place in 1978 (Shpaykher 1975; Chubakov 1982:94). Neither was the return route very sensational. In 1980 its course was shown in a booklet by P.I.Romanov, head of the scientific section of the icebreaker expedition (Romanov 1980). As far as can be gleaned from this map, the voyage was nothing unusual for a nuclear icebreaker in siimmer, although indeed a northerly course was followed. On the other hand, it might be argued that the course of the Sibir’ led through the extremely difficult ice of the notorious Aion icefield (Tyutenkov 1979:111). Another possibility is that the Sibir’ was damaged during her trip, although this has never been confirmed. During the outward voyage, the Sibir’ did run into a so-called stamukha, a grounded iceberg. At the time the worst damage reported

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was caused by the water from the swimming pool: the shock caused it to flood the ship’s gymnasium (Izvestiya 1983: no. 265). Clearly, the high-latitude voyages were made to test icebreakers in heavy ice. For the brand-new Sibir, the voyage of 1978 had been an additional ‘shakedown’. Perhaps high-latitude voyages will become possible again, now that the Rossiya has been launched and tested as well. Nevertheless, it seems clear that a high-latitude passage for year-round use still belongs to the future. The most important result of 1977 and 1978 was therefore the experience gained in old ice, which could be used during the winter navigation in the Kara Sea.

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10 The season of 1983

THE EASTERN SECTION Winter navigation caused a significant increase in turnover on the western section of the Northern Sea Route. This underlined its historical position of being the most important part of the route, as it had been almost continuously since Joseph Wiggins’s first commercial operations in the last century. Other activities on the Northern Sea Route have always been much more limited. Transit voyages, which one would believe to be the most important activity, are relatively few, although some are made each year, especially since the first ULA freighters arrived in 1954. Less sturdy ships have been known to make the transit journey as well though, for instance the Neptun-class Vitya Sitnitsa did so in eight days in 1971. (Chubakov 1982:92–102). The commissioning of a new ULA class, the SA-15, has allowed a number of double voyages from the West to Vancouver and Japan, and vice versa. In 1984 four SA-15 bound for Pevek and Tiksi continued to Vancouver and returned to Murmansk by the Northern Sea Route (Ponomarev 1985a). These transit voyages were all cases in which shipping was preferred over other means of transport, for instance to get grain from Vancouver, and gas pipes from Japan for the Urengoy-Uzhgorod pipeline. Another of these few profitable cases was the transfer of barges and fishing boats, built in Europe and needed in the Far East. Once a year all ships of that type were gathered in one convoy and sent through the Northern Sea Route (Armstrong 1980:113). But on the whole it would seem that transit passages are not very important, although exact indications of how many goods are shipped in transit voyages are not available. This leaves about 30 to 35 per cent of the Northern Sea Route’s turnover for the eastern section, a small amount for a large area. Voyages in the east are mostly made to supply settlements on the East Siberian coast, but there is also a certain amount of timber export. Most supplies brought via the Northern Sea Route are destined for various mining enterprises, which produce valuable metals such as gold, silver and tin. Such metals can bear the tremendous cost of mining under Arctic conditions. Gold is mined on the Kolyma fields, diamond in Yakutiya, and tin at Yultin and Pevek. Most of these places rely on river shipping or winter roads which in turn rely on the Northern Sea Route, the Lena river shipping or the Magadan highway.

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It is important to note that much of the provisioning of Siberian settlements can be done by overland traffic. The Tayshet-Ust’kut railway has already been mentioned, which, besides supplying Yakutiya, allowed the transportation of goods to the area around the Yana and the Indigirka by sea-river craft from Tiksi. The local shipping company in Tiksi now operates everywhere from Pevek to Khatanga. A 5,400 hp icebreaker, Semen Chelyuskin, is permanently stationed there. The navigation season opens sooner here than elsewhere on the Northern Sea Route because of the vast quantities of relatively warm water that flow into the Laptev Sea from the Lena. This means that river ships from the Lena have a headstart on ships coming from Vladivostok or Murmansk. In 1967 the Tiksi organization became a real shipping company called North East Administration of the Merchant Fleet. Beside the icebreakers, it has three timber carriers of 4,016 tons deadweight and three smaller ships of 216, 300 and 318 tons deadweight The timber carriers were originally built for plying between the Baltic and the Caspian by the VolgaDon Canal (Soviet Merchant Ships 1969). Most of these ships have little or no icestrengthening. The latest ship in the North East Administration was built in 1975. Already in the late sixties this company was said to account for two-thirds of the goods shipped to the Kolyma and Indigirka (Belinsky 1978). The drawback of this system is its reliance on Lena river shipping and the port of Osetrovo. This port is a well-known bottleneck, which can daily handle about 260 railway cars, while at times more than 2,000 cars a day arrive! Consistent use of containers would increase its turnover fourfold, but freight consignors have little reason to send containers to Yakutiya, because it takes about eight times as long as usual before they are returned and containers are in short supply in the Soviet Union. Another problem is navigation on the Lena. Theoretically the shipping season lasts five months, but in summer the water level of the Lena drops so low that one quarter of the Lena fleet cannot reach Osetrovo. This could easily be remedied by a dam, an investment that would repay itself in a few years. It has been said that the money lost in delays would pay for a dam made of gold. Nothing like one has been built yet, since Gosplan and the Council of Ministers have decided to connect Yakutsk with the BAM railway at Berkakit. Until then Osetrovo will remain a bottleneck. In spite of this, some 5 million tons passed through Osetrovo in 1984, 80 per cent of which were supplies for Yakutiya (Sovetskaya Rossiya 1985: no. 192). About 800,000 tons came in by the Northern Sea Route. In fact, to relieve Osetrovo somewhat, port facilities at Tiksi have been expanded to allow more import by the route (Shabad 1981). After the difficult navigation season of 1983, the Minister of the Merchant Fleet pointed to the fact that this was no healthy development. Imports by the Northern Sea Route to Yakutiya should decline, not increase (Armstrong 1984:181). It should be noted that Osetrovo’s capacity is growing, since it rose from only 3.5 million tons in 1982 to 4 million tons in 1984 (Pravda 1982: no. 82). The Lena is not the only alternative for the Northern Sea Route. Other northsouth connections may equally be developed in East Chukotka. It has been suggested that some of its supplies could be send to Egvekinot instead, which can be reached year-round and from where a winter road could be used beyond (Pravda 1983: no. 293). This would make the supplying of this area more dependable and year round. A similar development is taking place in the area near Pevek. In 1983, due to the difficult circumstances, it was decided to bring most supplies to Pevek

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in heavy ULA freighters, from where they could be distributed by winter roads. This pattern, caused by the emergency which arose in 1983, seems to have been satisfactory and has since become the rule (Dudko 1985). Pevek has become an important trans-shipment point. In 1984, two and a half times more transit goods arrived, and new cranes, fork-lift trucks and storage have become available. Ultimately this road network still remains dependent on the Northern Sea Route, an important difference from the situation at Egvekinot, although here, too, there is the same tendency to replace transport by Arctic shipping by winter roads. An important source about shipping on the eastern section of the Northern Sea Route is the Soviet press coverage of the difficult season of 1983. This season will now be discussed in some detail to gain better insight into the activity on the eastern section. Western reports of the events appeared in Arctic, Polar Record and Polar Geography. While these accounts are excellent, they do not attempt to learn more about the Northern Sea Route, but instead concentrate on the events, giving a much-needed clarification of Soviet press reports. In consequence, their sources are limited to reports published during or immediately after the event (Armstrong 1984; Barr and Wilson 1985; Shabad 1983). Geographically, navigation on the eastern section is more difficult than in the western section, because it is open to heavy multi-year pack ice from the central Arctic. The Kara Sea, for example, is protected from such heavy ice by a chain of islands to the north. In the East Siberian Sea some exceptionally heavy ice-fields are known to develop each year. One of the most difficult is the Ayon massiv. In some years this massiv remains close to the coast, thus making summer navigation hazardous. In consequence, navigation may be well-nigh impossible on the eastern section, while the western section has normal or even excellent conditions. In 1965, it will be remembered, several ships were forced to pass to the west and return to Vladivostok by way of the southern route. The year 1979 also proved difficult By 19 September 1979, 65 per cent of the plan had been fulfilled against 82.2 per cent at the same time of the year in 1978. Even the icebreakers Vladivosiok and Leningrad were damaged, while a total of 124 cases of damage to ships were reported (Ibragimova 1981). Ice was 30–50 cm thicker than usual and fierce colds of • 60 degrees hampered operations. In 1981 the timber carrier Bryanskles was pierced by an icefloe and sank, although two icebreakers were in attendance (Izvestiya 1983: no. 332). The Bryanskles was a Polish B-514, a series then almost twenty years old. For Arctic voyages ships have to be new and well-built. The fact that the average age of ships in the Soviet merchant fleet has gone up from 9.5 years in 1975 to 14 in 1985 makes this requirement more difficult to meet (Nedelya 1985:50, no. 2). The shipping season of 1983 proved to be one of the most difficult ones. The situation seemed so serious that an unusual number of reports appeared in the press. ‘ARKTIKA-1983’ For the adversities of 1983, many sailors have put the blame on the Arctic Institute in Leningrad for not giving adequate warning. It has been alleged that the Institute showed greater interest in the Antarctic than in the safety of Arctic shipping. But the Minister of the Merchant Fleet and several of his aides disagreed. They put the blame on the freight consignors, who delayed the departure of the ships by not

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having cargoes ready on time. The Arctic Institute had done its very best. Although the long-term forecast in March had been wrong, the second forecast in July had made everybody perfectly aware of the seriousness of the situation. The 1983 season was to be very difficult in the east. Icebreakers were reassigned from the western to the eastern section. As the situation worsened, more and more followed, including the three nuclears Sibir’ Leonid Brezhnev (the former Arktika, her name was changed in 1982) and the Lenin. They were to assist the Yermak and the Admiral Makarov, both permanently stationed in the east. Also, extra freighters were sent to the east, to ensure the fulfilment of the Five-Year Plan (Izvestiya 1983: no. 284). The navigation season began on 20 June, about two weeks later than usual, and immediately proved difficult. The flagship of the Far Eastern Shipping Company, the 41,000 hp Admiral Makarov, was immobilized for five days off Mys Shelagsky, near Pevek. Her captain, V.I.Abonosimov, solved this predicament forcibly by forming a ‘tandem’ of his icebreaker and the Nizhneyansk (a new ULA-class freighter of the SA-15 type) in order to break through the ice tongue separating them from Pevek. The Admiral Makarov pushed the freighter at full power through the ice. The combination proved successful, and to the amazement of the inhabitants of Pevek the Nizhneyansk entered Pevek on 24 June as the first ship of the year. As was customary, her captain was offered the keys of the town (ibid.: no. 296; Shatalin 1984; Shatalin was the hydrologist on the Admiral Makarov). Reaching the Kolyma was equally difficult in 1983. By the end of July no ship had yet reached this river. Mys Zeleny, the main port on the Kolyma, lies some distance from the coast, comparable with Dudinka. Even without ice, it can be reached only under pilot guidance. Since it is accessible only to shallow-draught ships, it was decided to use a route close to the coast, leading between a stamukha and the shore. Since none of the larger icebreakers could be used there, the Semen Chelyuskin and her sistership Vassily Poyarkov took over, assisted by a helicopter from the Leningrad. In this way, thirteen small freighters shipped some 25,000 tons to the Kolyma. Larger ships with cargoes for ports which they could not reach accumulated in Pevek, while even ice-strengthened ships escorted by the Lenin were sometimes unable to advance (Polunin and Bogolyubov 1984). The real difficulties began on 30 August, when due to heavy northerly winds the pack ice, which normally covers the regions near the Pole, was pushed southward to the Siberian coast and choked Proliv Longa. Shipping became almost impossible except when southerly winds prevailed, which reduced ice pressure and opened leads. But this happened only in short spells: 18–20 September, 24–26 September, 3–4 October and 13–15 October. Things began to look grim and ships incapable of reaching the Bering Strait accumulated in Pevek. It was then decided to reroute most of the cargo so that it could be shipped in ULA ships. These ships were to shuttle between Pevek and the ice-free ports of East Chukotka, whence the relay could be continued by weaker freighters without risk. For instance, the Okha, a new SA-15, took over cargo from the Zapolyarny, which should have gone to Mys Shmidta but could now return before being confronted with the ice barrier (ibid.: 33). This meant that the new SA-15s were very much needed. The Arkhangel’sk went straight to Pevek upon delivery. Most of the ships in the eastern section of the Northern Sea Route belonged to the Far Eastern Shipping Company in Vladivostok. Some others came from nearby Sakhalin, which has its own shipping company. But the responsibility for the cargo

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ships in the Arctic lies with the larger Far Eastern Shipping Company, and when things became serious in the first days of October its directors flew to Pevek (Izvestiya 1983: no. 303). Activity on the Northern Sea Route is coordinated by two centres: Dikson for the western section and Pevek for the area between Tiksi and the Bering Strait. Each centre has its own staff, icebreakers, meteorologists and a hydrological section. The head of the eastern section in 1983 was F.Kh.Polunin. The meteorological section was headed by A.Dimitriev; the chief hydrologist was A.Dorofeev. Among those flying to this centre was N.Mishkov, who belonged to the Far East Shipping Company and who was in charge of the Department of Arctic Shipping of that company. The alarm was not only local. The deputy head of the Administration of the Northern Sea Route, G.Burkov, who had only recently succeeded B.S.Maynagashev, was also involved. The Administration, being responsible for the safety of ships and protection of the environment, needed to know what the situation was like. Burkov asked the government for satellite pictures. Fortunately, a new Sputnik, Kosmos 1500, had just been launched and its radar pictures gave an accurate view of the ice in the eastern section, showing that Proliv Longa was full of ice, as were large parts of the Chukchi Sea. But immediately south of Ostrov Vrangelya ice-free water was to be found (ibid.: 310). Chief Hydrologist Dorofeev considered the navigation circumstances the worst in a hundred years. He said so in the operations centre of Pevek, which was where dispatches were read and little paper ships were moved over large maps of the Arctic while the latest weather reports were brought in. It was in this room that crucial decisions were made on 3 October, when Dimitriev and his assistants predicted a two-day period of southerly winds. That was enough for the ships in Pevek to escape to the east. But the staff preferred to wait until the Leonid Brezhnev had arrived before taking a decision about further ship movements. At that moment about fifteen ships were waiting in Pevek to get through to the Bering Strait, while thirteen others were still at sea, waiting to take their cargoes to Pevek (Pravda 1983: no. 273). The people from Vladivostok protested, saying that they needed their ships, precious means of transport in the Far East, where often no alternatives exist (Trud 1983: no. 274). To them it was an unbearable idea to leave their vessels unemployed while weather conditions were favourable. So the ships took to sea. The weather forecast proved accurate, but not for long. After twenty-four hours the winds changed and, as one reporter described it, the gigantic Arctic ice floes unfolded their imaginary sails and descended upon the Siberian coast, taking several ships as their prisoners. It took some time to ascertain what had happened and several different reports reached the press. According to some, seventy ships were locked in the ice (Pravda 1983: no. 293). This was the total of ships at sea or in ports in the eastern section in September. But the number of ships that were actually drifting in the ice must have been lower. Two convoys were at sea when the winds changed and the number must have been about twenty-five. Izvestiya reported that there were twenty-two in October (Izvestiya 1983: no. 92). In addition there were ships west of Pevek, so a total figure is difficult to ascertain. Numbers of around forty appeared in the press on 11 October, but later accounts mention a total of about fifty (Izvestiya 1983: no. 284; Soviet Shipping 1984: no. 1, 33). The difficult situation of the ships became a major news item and people all over the world heard about it. Some commentators pointed to the fate the Chelyuskin had suffered exactly fifty years ago, sinking in the icy waters of the Chukchi Sea.

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In Pevek several additional experts and officials arrived. Among them was B.S.Maynagashev, Burkov’s predecessor as Deputy Head of the Northern Sea Route Administration. He now headed the V/O Moreplavanie, the merchant fleet’s department for rescue and salvage operations on the high seas (Directory of Soviet Officials 1983). Of course, K.N.Chubakov himself, the Head of the Northern Sea Route Administration, also came to Pevek. V.S. Zbarashchenko, heading the Transportation and Operation Department of the Fleet and the Ports came, probably to arrange the rerouting of cargo and to adapt the freight plans of ships that were caught in the Arctic. The Deputy Head of the Far East Company, A.Kashur, came too. Deputy Minister B.A.Yunitsyn was now in charge of the whole operation (Polunin and Bogolyubov 1984). The convoys between Pevek and the Bering Strait found three impassable ice barriers in their way, at Mys Billingsa, Mys Shmidta and Kosa Dvukh Pilotov. At Kosa Dvukh Pilotov the Kapitan Sorokin and the Leningrad were immobilized with two tankers, Urengoy and Kamensk-Uralsky (which was filled with highly inflammable petrol), the ULA freighter Amguema, on her way from Magadan to Mys Shmidta and three freighters. One of these was the Nina Sagaydak, named after a little girl who had been killed by the Germans during the Second World War. The ship, a Neptun class, had been built in 1970 and was therefore not exactly new. Carrying fresh vegetables (as she had been doing for years), she now lay next to the Kamensk-Uralsky, which with 17,125 tons deadweight was among the largest ships in these waters. But the ice moved the tanker like a toy, pressing the icestrengthened hull against the Nina Sagaydak. As metal rubbed metal, everyone feared sparks might ignite the petrol and cause a disaster. On the other side the weaker hull of the Nina Sagaydak was pierced by ice floes and on 7 October she sank, but not before the crew had been safely transferred elsewhere (Izvestiya 1983: no. 304). A sister ship of the Nina Sagaydak, the Kolya Myagotin, also found herself in a dangerous situation. An ice floe struck a hole in her side, 1 metre high and 3 metres wide. The crew was ordered to abandon ship, but her captain Valentin Tsikunov refused and with great difficulty the Kolya Myagotin was kept afloat (Golos Rodiny 1984: no. 4; Pravda 1983: no. 290). Other ships, although not fatally damaged, simply could not move. Near Mys Shmidta a number of small freighters which had been supplying small settlements on the Arctic coast were stuck. Likewise, west of Pevek the tanker Berezovo and her two small sisters Novik and Solnechny were ice-captured. The icebreaker Murmansk came to meet them. Further to the west near the 150 meridian another convoy was icebound. Its escort, the Vladivostok, began to tow one ship after another. Even so it progressed only six miles in twenty-four hours (Pravda 1983: no. 290). Rescue came from the west with the arrival of the Leonid Brezhnev. It reached Pevek shortly before 13 October, and so it used the short spell of southerly winds between 13 and 15 October to reach the Kolya Myagotin. Meanwhile, to the east, the Admiral Makarov managed to free the Dorya Tsarikov and three other freighters. The two icebreakers combined their efforts, first to escort the Kolya Myagotin to safety, then to free the others. Already on the 18th the first ships that had been caught reached ice-free waters. By the 21st, most ships had been freed. And in late October, the last ship, Igrim, reached open water (Izvestiya 1983: no. 304).

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Although many ships had been damaged and navigation was difficult, the ice operations were not ended. Four ships resumed the task of supplying the settlements on the Chukchi coast (Pravda 1983: no. 293). Some of the rescued craft had been brought to the south of Ostrov Vrangelya, to await a chance of reaching Pevek after all. Among these were the Amguema, the Urengoy and the KamenskUralsky, which had been with the Nina Sagaydak. Nevertheless, it was still very difficult to pass Proliv Longa and, since the season was drawing to a close, it had been decided to take some ships out of Pevek by the west, where the ice could be broken more easily. They would then have to return to Vladivostok by the south, but that would still be less expensive than a wintering in Pevek, in which case the ships could not be used for over six months. The Lenin was detailed to escort them, but one of her propeller blades had been damaged and had to be replaced. By 23 October all ships had left Pevek except for a small icebreaker, Vassily Poyarkov, and seven sea-river ships that would remain to winter. Along with the Lenin came the Arkhangel’sk and perhaps other ships that belonged to companies in the west of the Soviet Union (Pravda 1983: no. 296). Even this westward passage proved difficult. Although the Lenin and a first group of vessels passed without difficulty, the icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn, following with the remainder, failed to negotiate the ice at Ostrov Aion. In twenty-four hours only ten miles’ progress was made. The staff at Pevek decided to bring in yet another icebreaker from the west. On 25 October the Kapitan Dranitsyn was freed by the Krasin, a sister ship of the Admiral Makarov. The Krasin belonged to the Murmansk Shipping Company (Izvestiya 1983: no. 298; Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya 1983: no. 266). Near Ostrov Vrangelya a convoy was gathering for a fresh attempt to reach Pevek. The Okha joined this group, after taking on most of the cargo of the Kolya Myagotin, This SA-15 freighter had already taken over 465 containers from the heavily damaged Pioner Uzbekistana. On 2 November the first attempt was made. The Leonid Brezhnev and the Admiral Makarov moved the Urengoy, a tanker, to Pevek. The Okha reached Pevek on 6 November after twenty-four hours’ steaming. It is unclear whether the other units of the Vrangel convoy also reached Pevek (Izvestiya 1983: no. 313). The last stage of the operation began with the return of the Lenin from the west, accompanied by the nuclear icebreaker Sibir’ and the tanker Samotlor. They reached Pevek almost simultaneously with the Kamensk-Uralsky coming from Ostrov Vrangelya. The latter had finally succeeded in reaching Pevek after a strenuous month of battling with the ice and her crew received a congratulatory note from Merchant Fleet Minister T.B.Guzhenko. These were the last ships to reach Pevek in 1983 and on 17 November all ships left for the Bering Sea, from where the nuclear icebreakers and the Yermak returned, by the southern route (Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya 1983: no. 299). The Lenin reportedly reached Murmansk in January 1984 (Kurnosov 1984). SHIPPING USED ON THE EASTERN SECTION What can be gathered from this about the functioning of the Northern Sea Route? In the first place is the fact that the total number of ships in the eastern section in

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September was approximately seventy (Pravda 1983: no. 293). Fifty-two names of ships have been mentioned in press reports of ships that were or should have been on the Northern Sea Route. The type of ship occurring most frequently was the timber carrier, of which fifteen were mentioned, a fairly large number. There is some export of Siberian larch to Japan from the Lena and three ships were explicitly mentioned as carrying export timber in an eastward direction. According to Armstrong, 220,000 tons of timber passed through Tiksi in 1983 (Armstrong 1984: 176). But the most likely explanation for this large number of timber ships is that they carry various supplies on their outward voyages and the timber cargoes merely to avoid return voyages in ballast The ships going to Japan were the Vladimir Mordvinov, Mekhanik Gordienko and the Kapitan Shevchenko. Another timber carrier of the same class, the Konstantin Petrovsky, was mentioned as carrying cement to Tiksi (Polunin and Bogolyubov 1984:5, 30). Incidentally, these four ships all belong to the Nikolay Novikov class. There are fourteen of these ships in the Far East against eleven in Arkhangel’sk, pointing to much timber transports in the East, but perhaps not all of these operate on the Northern Sea Route. Another timber carrier class was represented by the Pioner Rossii which was among the last group of ships that tried to reach Pevek in early November. Clearly these ships too are used for bringing cargoes in and then taking timber out. Otherwise it seems difficult to explain why the export of timber seemed so urgent that the risk of ice damage was taken. Beside the relatively new ships there were also representatives of old classes. There were three old Polish B-514 ships, built in 1965, 1967 and 1967, as well as two old Rumanian ships, of 1969 and 1970. The Polish-built Shadrinsk was mentioned as unloading at Mys Billingsa, together with the Neptun Vitya Sitnitsa, another indication that timber carriers are used as general cargo ships on their outward voyages. Another prominent group of ships in the eastern section was the Neptun-class general cargo ships, another large series from the sixties. Ten of these were named, one of which was lost and another seriously damaged. Their icestrengthening grade is only L1. These small (4,000 tons deadweight) ships are well suited for supplying small coastal settlements and polar stations. The Nina Sagaydak was carrying fresh vegetables to a number of ships as well. By the end of September she had serviced four stations and thirty ships, while seven other stations were to be visited before Pevek, her final destination (ibid.: 31). There have been complaints in the literature about perishable goods being transported to roadstead points on the Chukchi coast by ordinary cargo vessels without temperature control. Some foodstuffs (especially meat and cheese) are spoiled en route, but nobody cares. Shipping companies will accept such cargoes only if they have prior assurance that no claim will be made for possible spoilage. Another complaint is that captains will ask for the consignee’s signature before unloading, which relieves them of the responsibility for the cargo during the landing, which is frequently difficult at roadsteads (Mashchenko 1971). The supplying of Chukotka by ship is not easy; neither are ships of the Neptun class very well suited for this task. Nevertheless they are still used for such purposes. Apart from the Nina Sagaydak and the Kolya Myagotin, the Neptun ships Lara Mikheyenko, Valery Volkov, Vitya Sitnitsa and Arkady Kamanin were said to be provisioning coastal settlements (Pravda 1983:293). The Zapolyarny was sent back before reaching the Arctic. In general, the 1983 season did not alter things, since in September of the following year the Neptun Indiga from the Baltic Shipping

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Company was taking vegetables to Zelenny Mys. A new, small type of Arctic freighter will appear in the coming years to take over. When the SA-15s were ordered in Finland, Soviet specifications also asked for a smaller type of ULA cargo ship, 5,000 tons deadweight. It seems reasonable to assume that this new series will join the Far East Company. If these are to replace the Neptuns, a large series of them will follow. However, the problems with the Kolya Myagotin and the other Neptuns would never have arisen if the East Siberian coast had not been so shallow and local settlements could have been reached by bigger ships. The use of shipping in this case is costly and complicated. Clearly many ice-strengthened freighters of ULA class were used. Of fifteen such ships, six were SA-15 of which at least the Igarka, Arkhangel’sk and Monchegorsk belonged to the Murmansk Shipping Company but were sent east because of the emergency. The Arkhangel’sk came from Kandalaksha carrying building materials, refrigerators, furniture, industrial equipment and several cars, among which was a fire engine. The Okha carried building materials, food and coal (Dudko 1985). The SA-15 class consists of large 14,500 tons deadweight icebreaking freighters which are commonly called ‘carrots’ because of their shape and orange colour. These ships have five cranes, which can operate in extreme cold. They can load ore, grain or containers as required and have hovercraft platforms for unloading in shallow water or ice, although little use seems to be made of these (Kanerva and Lönnberg 1985:326). Their speed, 18.5 knots, guarantees efficient use of the season. They have good Arctic qualities. For example, their steel can resist temperatures of • 50 degrees Celsius and their tanks carry two and a half months’ supply of fuel. Their crew of forty-six have comfortable quarters, a sauna, a library and a gymnasium for physical exercise. Propulsion follows a new system in which the screw is turned at a constant rate while speed is controlled by variable-pitch blades. This allows quick reversing and other manoeuvres necessary in ice navigation which otherwise put a big strain on the engines (Pravda 1983: no. 266). These ships can independently break up to 1 metre of ice (which is far better than the earlier ULA freighters could do). This capacity made it possible to lengthen the season for voyages to Pevek to six months. In addition, SA-15s are used on the run to Dudinka in the west, for winter voyages to Magadan from Vanino and of course for transit passages (Zbarashchenko 1986: 19). They can also be used outside the Arctic, in which case their cargo capacity can be increased to 20,000 tons deadweight by allowing their ice-strengthened parts to become submerged. In 1984 the Nizhneyansk displayed her generalpurpose characteristics capacity when on the last voyage of the season to Pevek the ship loaded all kinds of cargo which had been left over by other ships. By April 1985 some thirteen of these 40 million rouble ships had been delivered by their yard at Turku (ibid.: 17). A special shortened version for Antarctic voyages has also been built, called the Akademik Fedorov, of 7,600 tons deadweight. SA-15s are not ideal ships, of course, and press reports have mentioned short-comings in navigational systems, echo-sounders and lighting equipment The searchlights have not proved up to the rigours of winter navigation. Finally these ships are too large for supplying polar stations and the like (Kotov 1985). It seems obvious that the SA-15 will replace the older ULA freighters of which there are about fourteen, built between 1954 and 1972. It should be noted that for

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ten years, between 1972 and 1982, no ULA ships were built, while some of the older ULA ships, such as the Indigirka and the Yenisey, were regraded to UL or even L1. Therefore, the arrival between 1982 and 1985 of twelve freighters and three Mud’yug ships in itself is understandable, since the number of special ice transporters was dwindling. But the SA-15s are bigger than the older ships, so that there is unmistakably an enlargement of Arctic cargo-carrying capacity. The thirteenth SA-15, Anatoly Kolesnichenko, was commissioned in 1985 (Morskoy Flot 1985: no. 3, 28). This ship belongs to a second, improved version of which another eight ships will be built. According to an agreement between two Finnish companies, Rauma-Repola and Wärtsilä’’, and the Soviet government that was concluded in January 1987, some twenty ships will be built for the Soviet Union before 1990, although not exclusively SA-15s (Neue Zürcher Zeitung 10 January 1987). The latest to enter service was the Yuri Arshenevsky in September 1986. We can therefore safely conclude that the Soviet Union is in the process of enlarging and renovating its ULA freighters. A curious point was the presence of as many as twelve tankers among the ships trapped in the ice, though three were small ones. There were several reports of damage to them, but no oil spills ensued. The Samotlor class have double sides to prevent such eventualities and the part they played was considered vital. In September 1983 it was decided that they should be given precedence over other ships, and major efforts were made to bring the last tankers to Pevek. The KamenskUralsky battled for almost a month. Fuel is needed for civilian and military airfields in the Arctic, but it is also of great importance to northern settlements, which need fuel for their power stations, heating and means of transport. Sometimes local fuel in the form of coal can be used, but if this is impossible, fuel becomes an important item on the transport list. To avoid this, the gold and tin mines at Bilibino on Chukotka were provided with a nuclear power station in 1972, which also serves to heat the settlement The nearest coal to Bilibino is to be found at Zyryanka, 865 km away by road, and 85 per cent of the price of Zyryanka coal would consist of transportation costs. Also, the settlement at Bilibino was large enough to allow a nuclear reactor to be profitable (Tatevosova 1972). But in most other cases, it will remain necessary to ship large quantities of fuel through Arctic waters. Therefore a special class of icestrengthened tankers have been built by Rauma-Repola in Finland between 1972 and 1978. Twelve of these belong to the Primorsk Shipping Company in Nakhodka and two to the Latvian Shipping Company (Soviet Shipping 1984:4). It is remarkable that tankers are used at all in these waters. As has been mentioned, since the Manhattan experiments Canada has enacted severe legislation which forbids tankers to enter its Arctic waters. However, the use of tankers in Soviet waters cannot be expected to cease, since various settlements and mining enterprises are heavily dependent on them. There are indications that old tankers such as the Arsay (twenty years) and the Kazbek (twenty-four years) were sent to the Arctic in 1985 (Kurnosov 1985). In addition the North East Administration operates two 4, 000 tons deadweight tankers which are twenty-six and seventeen years old. One of the tankers in the navigation of 1983, the Samotlor, came from the west. Deputy Minister V.I.Zbarashchenko afterwards blamed the state oil company, GOSKOMNEFTEPRODUKTA, for not keeping its terms, which had forced the merchant fleet to bring fuel from Arkhangel’sk, apparently an emergency measure

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(Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya 1983:299). Almost all the Samotlor-class tankers on the route belong to the Primorsk Shipping Company, which is based near Vladivostok, at Nakhoka. Even the Samotlor out of Arkhangel’sk belonged to it. Apparently fuel is shipped only in the eastern section, with some exceptions. Beside the Samotlor, three small tankers, Solnechny, Nikopol’ and Novik, belonging to the company were on the route in 1983. These small tankers, with only L1 ice-strengthening, belong to a large series which has been used for various purposes, such as by fishing companies to refuel their ships at sea; they also ship fresh water in the Black Sea. In the Arctic these mini tankers are used for river shipping, as follows from a remark by Minister T.Guzhenko, who in an interview proposed that the Lena river fleet should send her own river tankers to discharge the Samotlors, instead of forcing the merchant fleet to bring her own river tankers from Nakhodka, since that would eliminate the need to bring small tankers from Nakhodka while the Lena fleet has such ships available (Izvestiya 1983: no. 332). There are no signs that fewer tankers will be used on the Northern Sea Route in the future. On the contrary, it has been announced that a new tanker class of 2, 000 tons deadweight, UL grade, will be built as well as a more powerful ULA tanker of 17,000 tons deadweight, which would probably replace the Samotlor class (Pervov 1985). In the eastern section, the need for oil is probably one of the more important reasons for Arctic shipping. In view of the enactment of legislation on environmental protection on the Northern Sea Route, this is a remarkable state of affairs. It seems to indicate that such legislation was enacted in the first place for reasons of sovereignty and to a much lesser extent out of environmental considerations. Finally, two refrigerator ships and a container carrier were caught in the east section in 1983. The refrigerator ships belong to DAL’RYBA, the fishing company in Vladivostok. The container carrier Pioner Uzbetistana had been damaged and had her cargo transferred to Okha. It should be noted that containers were also carried by other ships, such as the Kolya Myagotin. From the types and the numbers of ships used on the eastern section one may safely conclude that it is mainly used to carry fuel and industrial goods from European Russia and the Far East to the East Siberian coast. The main flow of goods seems to consist of building materials and industrial equipment from the west and food, fuels and cement from Vladivostok. At the same time timber seems to be the most important export product, followed by some quantity of ores, but no reference was made to special ore carriers, as exist in the west. The main difficulties in the east are the lack of port facilities, the old ships and the lack of icebreakers. Little seems to be done about ports. The old Neptun ships are mainly used to overcome this problem. They are small ships that unload on the roadstead onto boats. It would be more efficient to use lighters, which can be loaded from a ship and be towed to their destination by river craft. The Soviet merchant fleet has some experience with this kind of ship, since it maintains a link between the Danube and the Mekong. Since 1984 a lighter-on-ship (LASH) has been operating in the Far East This ship, the Aleksey Kosygin, is meant to be the first of a series of LASH ships, built for the Arctic and the Far East. Such a ship would be very effective in the Arctic and therefore a special Arctic version has been built, the large Sevmorput’ of 31,900 tons deadweight, which is UL icestrengthened, with a nuclear propulsion of 40,000 hp. This recently launched ship

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can carry seventy-four lighters of 500 tons each and will be one of the biggest vessels that has ever operated on the Northern Sea Route. The ship was built at Kerch on the Black Sea and was assigned to the Murmansk Shipping Company (Pravda 1986: no. 52) Her draught is comparable with that of Arktika-class icebreakers. It has been stated that in winter this ship will be used for exporting, for instead of lighters she can also carry 1,480 containers. Some have questioned the wisdom of making the Sevmorput’ wider (32.2 m) than the Arktika class (30 m), which renders it difficult for her to follow such icebreakers, though according to one reporter this would actually be an advantage. Ships in a convoy often have difficulty following the narrow and sometimes erratic canal made by icebreakers. A broader, more powerful vessel that widens the canal would solve this. It would even allow less strong ships to follow a high-latitude course (Tyutenkov 1979:138). It is not certain that the Sevmorput’ would be strong enough to do this. Her classification is only UL, not ULA. For the time being the Sevmorput’ will be used only in the western section, but it would seem that especially in the eastern section there are great possibilities for such ships. Another problem is the need for adequate ships. Of fifty-three ships mentioned in connection with ‘Arktika-83’, twenty-six were more than ten years old. Evidently, too many old and weak ships are operating in the Arctic. The new SA-15s are too large to operate in these waters. As to icebreakers, the situation there is much the same. The most powerful icebreaker in the east was (and currently is) the Yermak (1974) of 41,000 hp, since there are no nuclear icebreakers stationed permanently in the east, perhaps indicating a lesser interest in winter navigation in this section. The total number of icebreakers is eleven, but three of these (Moskva, Leningrad and Vladivostok) are definitely past their prime (Aganbegyan 1984:222). In the Far East there are five smaller icebreakers, but these are either research vessels or rarely used in the Arctic. They are named after famous Russian travellers, Fedor Litke, Khariton Laptev, Vassily Poyarkov, Ivan Moskvitin and Erofey Khabarov. They are being replaced by the Mud’yug class of small 6,500 hp icebreaker with the same variable-pitch screws as the SA-15 (Kanerva and Lönnberg 1985:311). Three of these have become operational so far: Mud’yug, Dikson and Magadan. They carry helicopters and hovercraft for unloading under difficult circumstances. In sum the activity on the eastern section cannot be described as very dynamic. Many old, ill-suited ships operate here under the most difflcult circumstances. Apart from timber export, there seems to be little cargo leaving the area, while ecologically dangerous transports of fuel make up a large part of the turnover. It is significant that, at the XXVIth Party Congress, which took the bold decision to make shipping through the Kara Sea year round, nothing more was said about the eastern section, except that it should become more reliable (Guzhenko 1984: 236). At the same time, things are undoubtedly changing: many new and in many ways better-equipped vessels are arriving in the Arctic.

11 Arctic studies since 1953

BROADENING THE FIELD It is a remarkable fact that Stalin’s demise did cause an important reappraisal of maritime policy, with marked consequences for the Northern Sea Route, while it had next to no influence on the development of Arctic historiography. The tone of Belov’s official history did perhaps become slightly less belligerent towards the West, but its character hardly changed. There was no major change of approach, except for some suggestions in the Introduction of Volume IV as will be noted in this chapter. Instead, most Arctic studies still toiled over the problem of proving priority and continuity, without making much progress. Belov occasionally wrote articles on topics such as using the lives of saints as a source for the Pomory or the life of V.A.Nordkvist, a Russian zoologist who took part in the Nordenskiöld passage of 1878–9; but most work was put into time-honoured subjects. The study of Dezhnev flourished, having obtained a new impetus from the tercentenary in 1948. Several people were working on that topic. T.D. Lavrentsova found another of the original accounts of Dezhnev’s voyage (Lavrentsova, in Belov 1964). Indeed, in the early sixties a person emerged whom Raymond Fisher has described as ‘the second major scholar of Dezhnev’, B.P.Polevoy, who found the last of the four documents on the basis of which Miller had concluded that Dezhnev had sailed through the Bering Strait (Fisher 1981:22). The first major scholar was, of course, Belov, who from time to time rewrote and updated his book on Dezhnev (Belov 1955, 1973). Similarly, the study of Vitus Bering did not lose impetus. A dissertation was written by E.V.Kushnarev (Kushnarev 1967), soon to be followed by a book (Kushnarev 1976, 1981 (in Danish)). A.V.Efimov treated the subject in a booklet (Efimov 1964). In fact, enough books and articles appeared to allow the American historian Raymond Fisher to write his penetrating work on Bering’s voyages (Fisher 1977). On a less scientific level, short and popular biographies appeared as well (Chukovsky 1961; Pasetsky 1958b). To some extent, continuation of interest in Bering and his times was linked not only to the popularity of the Arctic, but also to the great interest in Russian explorers in general, while an additional reason can be found in the contemporary interest in the Far East and its development Some attempts were made to broaden the field, such as, in fact, the writing of a chronological, continuous official history had been. It was necessary to study

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subjects such as lesser-known expeditions in order to avoid the impression that Russian Arctic history consisted of a few spectacular expeditions such as Dezhnev’s and Bering’s and little else. In this respect Letopis’ Severa was extremely useful, since it offered a forum for such attempts. One of these concerned the Russian visits to Spitsbergen, trying to find documentary proof of such visits before Willem Barents’ discovery. In the 1957 issue of Letopis Severa, one P.A.Frumkin attempted to reinterpret an ancient letter in this sense. The letter in question was written in 1493 by the German geographer Hieronymus Münzer to the King of Portugal about the discovery by Muscovites of a large island, called Grulanda, of 300 miles length. Frumkin, who assumed that Gruland was actually Spitsbergen, proposed excavations on Spitsbergen to look for signs of early Russian habitation. Some years later V.A.Obruchev took up the first point and wrote a thrilling account of his search for evidence. Obruchev wondered how Münzer could have heard about the Russian discovery. In order to explain this, he began to collect biographical information about Münzer and the city where he lived, Nuremberg, until he found out that the well-known Gerasimov, who allegedly had brought the idea of the Northeast Passage to the West, had been in Nuremberg in 1491. Obruchev noted other possibilities as well, including the Hapsburg emissary Niklaus Poppel, who in 1486–9 had been to Muscovy. To Obruchev this proved the truth of the supposition that Gruland was Spitsbergen, and that it had been discovered by Russians in the fifteenth century. Obruchev’s account makes interesting, even exciting, reading, but his arguments are not very convincing. When the Dutch explorer Olivier Brunel spoke in 1583 of sailing to Greenland, he probably meant by this the area east of the Pechora river. Since Brunel took most of his geographical knowledge from the Russians, it would seem that the large island discovered in the fifteenth century could well be Novaya Zemlya (Horensma 1985). Finally, Obruchev too thought that only excavations could bring conclusive evidence (Obruchev 1964). Most attempts to widen the knowledge of Arctic exploration beyond Dezhnev and Bering followed the leads Vize had given, such as study of records, toponymy, and use of foreign sources (Popov and Troitsky 1972). For instance, M.B. Chernenko wrote in Letopis’ Severa about the first Russian to visit the Diomid Islands in the Bering Strait, using ancient editions and archive material. In the same issue of Letopis’ Severa a history of the mapping of Novaya Zemlya in the seventeenth century appeared, using various foreign maps of the islands. Later issues of Letopis’ Severa were to continue in this manner. For example, Chernenko’s article on Ivan Kobelev was followed up in 1971 with one by S.G. Fedorova (Chernenko 1957b; Fedorova 1971; Sidorov 1957). Apart from Letopis’ Severa, collections of articles would occasionally appear, such as Belov’s Russian Arctic Expeditions in the Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries (Belov 1963, 1964, 1965, 1975c). To take this 1964 colleclion as an example, it contained the article by T.D.Lavrentsova announcing the discovery of one of the accounts of Dezhnev’s voyage and Kushnarev’s article stating that, although much was known about the preparation and course of Bering’s expedition, the actual reason why the expedition was undertaken, its principal aim, remained somewhat vague. But there were also articles on later periods. B.A. Kremer wrote about the Payer expedition (1872–4) that discovered Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, adding the old story that its discovery had been predicted by H.G. Skilling in 1865, which had been

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made public by P.Kropotkin. There were articles on Kruzenshtern, the Toll expedition (1900–3), Sedov, and on the Spitsbergen archipelago. This last article was written by V.N.Pasetsky and went into the question of why Spitsbergen had become Norwegian instead of Russian. On the whole, however, one must conclude that these attempts to widen the field of Arctic studies produced little result. For example, the Spitsbergen research did not progress and neither did the study of the Pomory. Most interest remained with well-known themes like Bering and Dezhnev. ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPEDITIONS It would seem that by the end of the sixties activities in the field of Arctic history lost momentum. Documentary material had not proved Russian priority in the discovery of Spitsbergen, nor any significant Arctic exploration before the sixteenth century, although both phenomena were believed to be true. Disappointment about the result of documentary studies led to increased attention for archaeological sources. The Zaliv Simsa finds had proved Russian presence on the Taymyr Peninsula centuries before NordenskiOld’s Vega had passed it. Perhaps this could be repeated elsewhere. At the same time, popular admiration for the Pomory in the twentieth century inspired some people to repeat their voyages, or to look for traces of Pomory by following the ancient routes by boat, ski or even dogsled. In 1967 Dmitry Butorin and Mikhail Skorokhodov sailed to Mangazeya in a small karbas, the Shchel’ya. The wave of public interest generated by this voyage made the Soviet Geographical Society decide that the place should be excavated. The Leningrad Arctic Institute saw its chance, having already wanted for some time to start excavations. Already in 1946 an attempt had been made by V.N.Chernetsov, while plans in 1957 had been aborted. Excavations took place in 1968–9 and various publications appeared. Taking advantage of the public attention, Belov wrote Mangazeya, a novel, telling how the last voevoda of that town, Daniil Naumov, studied its history before moving his people to the Yenisey, where they became known under the name of Turukhansk (Belov 1969a). Although written as a novel, all the events were historical. Belov described how Naumov sailed by sea to Mangazeya, with special permission to use the officially prohibited Kara Sea Route. This kind of narrative gave Belov the opportunity to add various details on Pomory shipping and everyday life in Mangazeya. An official preliminary report on the excavation appeared in 1970. The chief archaeologist was O.V.Ovsyannikov, aided by about eight students of architecture from the Repin Institute. Then there were some physical geographers, several technical staff from the AANII, and S.S.Pokrovsky, who represented the museum of the Soviet Arctic Institute. The excavation of Mangazeya later became the subject of Ovsyannikov’s dissertation (Ovsyannikov 1973a). He also wrote several descriptions of similar towns, such as Sol’vychegodsk, Shenkursk and Kopor’e (Ovsyannikov 1973b, 1976, 1978). Excavating in the permafrost of the Arctic proved a very complicated affair, since digging was possible only for a short period and to a certain depth. On the other hand, Mangazeya was a unique case, being a city which had been deserted at a certain point of time, thus giving a sort of archaeological snapshot. Unfortunately, the site had suffered from erosion, since it

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had been located on a hilltop between two rivers and part of the remains had already disappeared in the stream. Very useful were the indications about the location and the measurements taken from written sources, which proved so exact that the identification of the various buildings was not difficult. Nevertheless some 5,000 square metres had to be searched, which meant hard work to all concerned. Three churches were found and one chapel, dedicated to Vassily Mangazeysky, the local saint. The main market hall, the gostinny dvor, had been almost destroyed and could not be found in 1968. During the next winter Belov studied the records carefully and learned that it had been destroyed in 1631, when for no less than eleven months the voevody Kokorev and Palytsyn had shot at each other with their cannons (Belov 1970:24). This protracted battle destroyed the market hall, but nevertheless many artefacts were found, such as skis, sledges, fishing gear and bones of animals. Apparently much food was imported by sea, but there were cattle, goats, chickens and pigs. Fish was people’s staple diet, and scurvy must have been an endemic disease (ibid.: 30). Intriguing was the presence of some objects with Dutch trademarks. Perhaps there really had been some truth in the stories about Dutch ships in Mangazeya? Such reporis had been the reason for the prohibition of the Kara Sea Route in 1619. More probably these objects had been traded at Arkhangel’sk and subsequently brought to Siberia. One important result of the excavation was that many parts of ships were found, which had been used to frame houses. With these parts it would be possible to reconstruct a koch. The Arctic Museum began the building of a model on a scale of 1/50, but so many new parts were found that this became something of a longterm project. The official publication of results took some time (Belov, Ovsyannikov and Starkov 1981). One of the things the excavations immediately proved was their great popularity. Several other expeditions of semi-professional type were to follow. The most substantial amateur expedition, however, concerned a topic from the twentieth century. In 1912 a Russian ship, the Gerkules, had attempted to sail the Northeast Passage via a northerly route. The attempt failed and the ship disappeared. From time to time traces of the ship or her crew had been encountered. In 1934 a pole with the inscription Gerkules, 1913 was found. Inspired by Belov, the weekly Vodnoy Transport began a campaign among its readers asking anyone who had heard any rumours to report them. In addition, amateur expeditions were helping in various ways: aqualung divers searched interesting spots in 1972, and in the next year three groups walked along the shores of the Taymyr Peninsula. These groups found various remains of planes from the war, food depots and other traces (Barr 1974b: 607–8). Amateur expeditions in support of historical research were also used in the Far East, where in 1976 and 1977 two yachts repeated Bering’s voyage of 1728–9. The aim of the voyage was to compare the original ship’s journal with modern maps and the actual landscape, thus ascertaining what Bering’s exact course had been, what he could have seen and what not. The voyage supported the work of A.A.Sopotsko, who had been studying the logbook of the Svety Gavril, Bering’s ship. This logbook, like those of many other ships, had been kept secret by the navy until the mid-nineteenth century, which added much to the confusion about Bering’s results and caused foreign expeditions to rediscover and rename points where the Russian expedition had been first (Sopotsko 1983:17). Sopotsko firmly

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believed that the logbook, as well as the voyages of 1976–7, proved that Bering had shown the strait to divide America and Asia. A doubt had been cast on this by the fact that Bering’s voyage had not ruled out the possibility of a land tongue connecting the continents farther to the north. To disprove this, Bering should have sailed to the Kolyma, but for such a voyage, which would have entailed a wintering, Bering had simply not been equipped (ibid.: 121). The repetition of Bering’s voyage at least showed that his voyage had explored the area of the strait. Sopotsko briefly considered the idea of ‘historical-geographical reconstmction’ from a theoreticai angle, referring to some of Belov’s theoretical work. Belov had written an article on the relation between history and geography (Belov 1975b). Just like Belov, Sopotsko considered that every sort of historical geography essentially led to a reconstruction of the geographical environment, to a description of the geographical situation as it was at a certain point in the past. This was done by careful study of historical documents, cartography, toponymy, archaeological data, landforms and data about ethnogenesis. Sopotsko considered the ‘historical model’ another method of approach. Although relatively novel, this method of repeating historical events proved conclusive in certain cases. By comparing historical data with the actual geographical situation, one might prove or disprove the truth of some statement, especially if the landscape had not changed much over time. The amateur expeditions had great propagandist effect, since they augmented the news value of historical events by giving a scientific justification for repeating Bering’s voyage 250 years after the event But before long the amateur expeditions were to drop the pretexts and go their own way. For example, Dmitry Shparo and some friends went off on skiing trips across the ice, even reaching the North Pole (Snegiryev 1985). A similar group of enthusiasts, inspired by D.M.Romanov’s articles on the Great Northern Expedition, repeated parts of that undertaking, but soon found that skiing trips and other sportive ventures left little time for historical research (Romanov 1982:96). Far more effective from a historical point of view was the work of V.A.Troitsky, a hydrographer stationed at one of the Taymyr stations, who searched the neighbouring coast by helicopter whenever his official work let him. In 1976 he visited the site on the Taymyr Peninsula where Khariton Laptev had wintered as part of the Great Northern Expedition (ibid.: 97). Troitsky published several articles on events taking place near or on Taymyr. Generally speaking, however, the amateur expeditions changed their interest to more sporting aims, like long-distance trips, which put human endurance to the test. Nevertheless some of the amateur expeditions had archaeological or historical aims and achieved interesting results. M.I.Belov himself studied the problem of Khatanga’s location. Nowadays Khatanga is an important river port, which can be reached by ships plying the Northern Sea Route. It is one of the small Arctic towns that boomed under the influence of Soviet Arctic shipping. But Belov found enough archive material to justify the assumption that modern-day Khatanga was founded from Mangazeya in 1626, as a tribute-gathering settlement. In August 1976 Belov and V.A. Troitsky, who was at the time chief engineer of Khatanga’s hydrological centre, made an archaeological reconnaissance of the place, finding among others a birchbark coffin of the type encountered at Mangazeya (Belov 1978:125). This proved at least the

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presence of an ancient Russian settlement. Belov called for systematic excavations of Khatanga. This would be a logical move in bringing the history of the Pomory one step further to the East. But so far nothing has come of it. In 1976 the 350th anniversary of Khatanga’s foundation was celebrated. On 21 August two subcommittees of the All-Union Geographical Society held a special scientific session in Khatanga, where Belov and Troitsky read articles on the history of the settlement (ibid.: 120–8). Other speakers included Mark I. Shevelov, the former head of Polar Aviation, closely concerned with the rise of Khatanga. The session called for the erection of a monument to commemorate its foundation (ibid.: 127). Nevertheless, there have been no excavations so far in Khatanga. For some reason, this line of research did not meet with approval. One group of amateur archaeologists decided to make their way to the Barents wintering site. The Behouden Huis, as the place was called by Barents and his men, had been visited on several occasions. It had been located by Elling Carlsen in 1871, and by M.Gundersen in 1874. Finally, in 1879 Charles Gardiner had more or less systematically searched the site. These expeditions had brought back various artifacts, which were sold or donated to the Dutch Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where a reconstruction of the Behouden Huis was made, allowing interested visitors to view the interior of the famous house (Nordenskiöld 1882: vol. I, 270). Nevertheless a thorough search of the area had not been made and things were still to be found there. From 1977 to 1982 an amateur group led by Dmitry Kravchenko went to Novaya Zemlya each year, where not only the remains of the shelter were found, but also traces of the ship. A search of the site proved worthwhile indeed, since it produced pieces of cloth and shoes, amulets, navigation instruments (one of which was mentioned in Gerrit de Veer’s account) and other everyday implements. They were taken to Arkhangel’sk where they are now kept in the local museum. The Kravchenko expedition attracted the attention of the Soviet press and thus became known too in the Netherlands, where the custodian of the Barents collection, Joost Braat, at once became interested. He went to see Kravchenko and obtained information about the excavations. Plans were then made for Kravchenko to visit the Netherlands, but this was forestalled by a press campaign. A number of articles appeared, such as Treasure Hunters’ in Sovetskaya Kultura and ‘Protect the Arctic from “Archaeologists”’ in Izvestiya. These articles attacked the amateur expeditions for their lack of scientific rigour. No learned articles published the results of the excavations and the excavated features were left in the open to disintegrate away. Kravchenko and his group were especially chided for historical errors, because they had tried to convince their readers that Barents’ expedition had been of a geographical nature, which was clearly not the case. Barents, like other West Europeans, had tried to sail the Mangazeya route in order to gain a foothold in the Russian North, but had lacked the necessary knowledge of ice navigation and therefore failed even to cross the Kara Sea (Starkov and Odintsov 1983). After that, Kravchenko was forbidden to meet foreigners. Thus ended the investigation of the Behouden Huis. The prohibition of amateur expeditions halted an interesting development, but did not stop official interest in archaeological proof of Pomory activities. The people involved in the excavations of Mangazeya, O.V.Ovsyannikov, and V.F. Starkov who had taken part as a student, began to pay attention to Spitsbergen.

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The various earlier proofs of Russian presence on Spitsbergen before 1596 had been, by all accounts, ambiguous. At the same time, the strategic situation had altered considerably after the emergence of a Soviet ocean-going navy and the rapid development of new generations of nuclear submarines. As of old, Spitsbergen dominated the shipping to the Kola Peninsula, which has the Soviet Union’s only ice-free harbour and is therefore vital to the ability to operate year round. But now its strategic value was augmented by the fact that it controlled the only open access to the Arctic Basin. It will be remembered that the Nautilus failed to pass through the Bering Strait in winter, during her first attempt to reach the North Pole. Similar conditions are found in the Canadian archipelago, which makes the seas around Spitsbergen the most likely route for submarines entering the Arctic. In view of the Soviet Bastion policy, this makes Spitsbergen more important than ever (see p. 110). Spitsbergen had become Norwegian with the Paris treaty of 1920, to which the Soviet Union had acceded in 1935 (see pp. 72–4). In the thirties Soviet coalmining on the archipelago had begun in earnest After the war the Soviet Union had attempted to make Norwegian sovereignty debatable, but failed. This actually made little difference to the Soviet colony on Spitsbergen, which behaved as if it were sovereign, using helicopters, radio and cars under Soviet registration, while their expeditions ignored Norwegian regulations. Meanwhile the economic and strategic importance of the islands began to increase. In 1975 Norwegian policy changed and Norwegian sovereignty was guarded in a stricter way (Ries 1980). The Soviet Union thus had every reason to increase its study of Spitsbergen, while excavations in Khatanga were postponed since study of Taymyr would not yield such politically useful material. In 1967, a member of a Soviet glaciological expedition, the geographer V.S. Koryakin, had noticed a Russian izba on the west coast of Nordenskiöld land. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many Pomory had wintered and hunted on Spitsbergen, which was not widely known. Between 1978 and 1980 a Soviet expedition from the Academy Institute of Archaeology went to study these Pomory buildings on Spitsbergen. The aim of this undertaking was to quantify the extent to which the Pomory had exploited the islands, seen as a chapter in the exploitation of the Arctic (Starkov 1982:72). In order to achieve this, eight of the larger sites were excavated and large stretches of the coast in the west and south were searched for stations, of which more than eighty were found. One of the excavation sites was the station of V.Ya.Chichagov’s expedition, which, inspired by M.V.Lomonosov, had tried to reach the Bering Strait by sailing due north from Spitsbergen. As part of this attempt, a depot had been built on Spitsbergen in 1764, which was closed again in 1766. The results of the expedition pointed in two directions. First, the Pomory settlements were of a regular and long-term nature. The Russians had lived on the islands all year round. So far, eighty settlements were known and new ones were being found each year. This would make it possible to interpret the Russian presence on the islands as what might well be called effective occupation, but this was not said explicitly. Another direction in which their research pointed concerned the very first presence of people on Spitsbergen. The structure that had been found by Koryakin in 1967 seemed very promising in this respect. Its site was in a rather wet place, which remained waterlogged for much of the year. Clearly nobody would choose such a place for building, unless geographical circumstances

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had been very different in those days. This pointed to very ancient settlement, and excavations in 1981 confirmed this, because an engraving was found with lettering typical of the sixteenth-seventeenth century, a date that fitted well with the dendrochronological dating of the wood, which pointed to 1553 and 1556. This would be well before 1596, the year of the Dutch discovery (Starkov 1983:113). More than that, it was even argued that this izba was not the oldest Russian settlement on Spitsbergen, since it was too small to have been used as a wintering place. This kind of hut should be considered as an outstation of a bigger settlement, which would have to be older than 1553. Also, the system of using outstations having developed over a certain period under local circumstances, it would seem that Russian settlement of the Spitsbergen archipelago must have begun a long time ago (ibid.). Here we clearly have an attempt to prove Russian priority in the discovery of Spitsbergen. While current political circumstances make it unlikely that anything will be changed in Spitsbergen’s political situation in the near future, these ideas, never contested, are making their way into Russian perception of these Arctic islands. An example of this is an article that appeared in Voprosy Istorii in 1983, which bluntly stated that so far no documents or material evidence have been found that demonstrate when Spitsbergen was first discovered (Pechurov 1983). Circumstantial evidence is felt to point to the early Middle Ages, while some of the first discoverers must have been Russian Pomory. The article then brings up the whole array of evidence. First it cites Badigin (although based on an exposed forgery) and points to the Starostin story (although Vize denounced it as a fake) the Münzer story (although Frumkin found the evidence in this case insufficient), without giving any thought to the doubts adhering to this evidence. Second, the article states that while others were only periodically interested, the Pomory lived on Spitsbergen for centuries and, contrary to the others, year round. This amounts to claiming effective occupation. Third, doubt is cast on foreign discoveries. For example, Svalbard was more likely to be identified with Jan Mayen, being closer to Iceland. The fact that Willem Barents sailed due north on his third voyage is allegedly the consequence of his having obtained information from the Russians. These assertions are nowhere contradicted. HISTORICAL MONUMENTS To Soviet scholars, the archaeological expeditions to Spitsbergen greatly clarified the question of the first Russian presence there. In this respect, archaeological studies had advanced Arctic history in a distinct way. In 1977 Belov had written about this: There is another history of the Arctic, in granite and rock cairns, in monumental headstones and wooden crosses. Over the whole North, on the tundra, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, on distant, ice-covered islands stand the silent witnesses of the self-sacrifice and courage of Man. This is a very important historical source. (Belov 1977c:3)

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Belov contrasted these with the ordinary, written sources and pointed out that there was no systematic description of monuments. While no official protection of Arctic monuments existed, all polar stations had been instructed to watch over them. In order to have some brief sort of listing, Belov wrote On the Track of Polar Expeditions (Belov 1977c). This described a large number of monuments, showed their place on the map, and gave a small drawing or photograph and a short description of what they commemorated. Being clearly a popular book, it did not give coordinates, measurements or information about the physical construction of any monument, but merely described its historical content without giving adequate references to the literature. Listing the monuments from east to west, the book became a short and easily readable history of polar exploration. A typical entry of the book would relate to Lieutenant Zhokhov’s grave on Taymyr Peninsula, giving a drawing of his grave and a short description of how this officer fell and died during the wintering of the Taymyr and Vaygach 1914–15 on Taymyr and how on his tombstone there had been engraved a poem, written by Zhokhov himself. Belov’s remark that G.Ya.Sedov’s body had never been recovered was interesting. Although his flag and some other equipment had been found by the 1929 expedition to Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, the grave itself was not located. Sedov tried to reach the North Pole in 1913, but died of exhaustion. The two sailors who accompanied him almost panicked when their commander died, and had great trouble to find their way back. Nevertheless, they managed to bury him on Ostrov Rudol’fa, but the exact location of the grave was and remains unknown, the retrieval of the flag notwithstanding (ibid.: 63). There seem to be few other books of the type Belov wrote about Arctic monuments, except for Vladimir Popov-Shtark’s Polar Finds (1940b), which actually is a sort of guide to the Arctic Museum where most of these finds are displayed. As a guide it is not as useful as a later guide, V.Strugatsky’s To the Poles of the Earth (1984), which closely follows the current lay-out of the museum in Leningrad. Strugatsky’s book is based on interviews with veterans of Arctic exploration, people who took part in the great expeditions of the thirties, such as the former boatswain of the Sibiryakov. However amusing, it does not contain much on Arctic monuments, unlike L.N.Stubakova’s Monuments of the History of the Kolyma and Chukotka (1971), which has both pictures and stories. Nor does this book have a claim to being very scientific; in fact, it adds more to the history of the Great Terror than to Arctic history, since it describes several monuments made for soldiers killed by ‘bandits’. Comparable, but concentrating even more on the history rather than the archaeology, is Pasetsky’s Finds that Tell Secrets (1964c), relating to the various expeditions whose stories are known because of the things they left behind, such as those of Andrée, Toll, George de Long and Franklin. Turning to archaeology for new material was, of course, a development that was initiated in the Stalin period: another important way of proving Russian priority and continuity in the Arctic without being dependent on Western sources, which in the Stalinist perception were biased against the Russians. To some extent the popularity of archaeology derived from the propaganda wave of the thirties and the large number of popular polar books that appeared since. In the first place, the impetus towards archaeological expeditions came not from the scientists but from the Soviet people as a whole, leading to some of the very few cases of officially tolerated private initiative in the Soviet Union. Although a halt has been called to

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these expeditions, polar archaeology still commands much popular interest, and the private organizations that have appeared under M.S.Gorbachev, Pamyat’ and Spasenie, have expressed interest in the protection of polar monuments. This popular interest in polar archaeology is a clear case of a development of the Stalinist period that still has much general support among the Soviet population. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY: A SUCCESS STORY Another way to overcome the deadlock of Soviet Arctic studies besides archaeology was found by V.M.Pasetsky. In 1964 a review of Belov’s official history, by A.A.Mavrodin and S.B.Okun’, had noted that less attention had been paid to the nineteenth century than to the earlier centuries. This period was taken up by one of Belov’s pupils, V.M.Pasetsky. In 1965, he began his study of what he then called ‘lesser-known polar travellers’. No more than two years later, his book about The Secret of the Century reached a completely different conclusion about these ‘lesserknown people’. He now claimed that it had been a Russian initiative that started the nineteenth-century search for a Northwest Passage! Moreover, he suggested that many attempts in those years, such as the Bellinsgauzen expedition to the Antarctic, were part of a well-coordinated plan. This dramatic change from a backwater period to one of the more important periods of Russian Arctic history was caused by the unexpected finding of the carefully bound correspondence of I.F.Kruzenshtern and N.P.Rumyantsev. The former was a famous navigator, the latter a high government official. Between them they discussed new plans for polar expeditions, Russian as well as British. This changed Pasetsky’s fate, who, already a prolific writer, now fully concentrated on the nineteenth century. Who was this Pasetsky? A former pupil of Belov, he had begun his career as a historian with a book on V.Rusanov in 1955, which in 1962 was revised and presented as a doctoral dissertation (Pasetsky 1962). Pasetsky had been the first to realize the foreign political importance of the expeditions of Rusanov, who had helped to safeguard Russian interest on Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen. After that, Pasetsky had edited and collected stories about the Antarctic and drifting stations (Pasetsky 1959, 1964a, 1966). Although he continued these interests, his main work now centred on the nineteenth century. For several years Pasetsky traced the ideas of leading Russian geographers and navigators, studying the important cross-fertilization between them and the Decembrists, while regularly publishing his new and popular books. Finally, in 1977, he presented his doctor’s dissertation, on the history of the Russian polar exploration in the first half of the nineteenth century (Pasetsky 1977a:38). Pointing to the various circumnavigations of the world by Russians in this century and the governmental policy in the Far East, Pasetsky was able to explain the various polar enterprises of the time, such as Bellinsgauzen’s to the Antarctic and Kotsebu’s to the Northwest Passage, as closely interconnected undertakings with a clear political background. Pasetsky proposed to call this activity, which he considered to be not unlike the Great Northern Expedition a century earlier, the Velikoe Polyarnoe Predpriyatie, the Great Polar Undertaking. This is a clear case of the tendency in Soviet literature to look for confirmation of the idea that Russia has always been the most important Arctic

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state. In this quest for continuity the nineteenth century was now changed from a somewhat quiet era to an important period (ibid.). Pasetsky also found out that the distinction between Arctic shipping and dogsled expeditions was highly arbitrary. He equally revised some of the cruder stories suggesting that Ber and Litke had opposed development of the Arctic (Pasetsky 1967b). This was possible because Pasetsky was less wedded to the idea of a Northern Sea Route than Belov and Pinkhenson had been. Pasetsky could look upon the whole of Arctic exploration as being his subject. In theoretical matters, Pasetsky kept to the same framework as his predecessors, but he was clearly influenced by his time. So far, Arctic exploration had been seen as a concomitant of economic development and Arctic history following the development of this Arctic expansion; in effect it had been a description of the history of the Northern Sea Route. Pasetsky widened his scope somewhat and looked at the development of Arctic resources with regard to their relation to foreign policy, maritime development and Russia’s political and economic power. This roused his interest in Arctic development in foreign countries as well as Russian. For example, he paid much attention to the fact that Russian interest in the Northwest Passage had caused the British to speed up their exploration. According to Pasetsky, Arctic exploration was closely related to foreign policy, since it meant enlargement of political influence and economic potential, especially where shipping was concerned. In this respect the early nineteenth century was an important period, when Russia was creating a navy, and held an important place in world politics and culture. In the first years of the nineteenth century Russia began to pay more attention to its possessions in Alaska, while at the same time exploring the Arctic passages. This led to Anglo-Russian rivalry, which came to an end after the convention of 1825. From that date, official Russian interest in Far East Arctic exploration quickly diminished, although this did not seem wise to many polar experts. Pasetsky’s career can be regarded as a success story, since here at last a professional historian managed to contribute to the idea of continuity on exploration by searching records. Pasetsky made much progress in proving continuity in Russian Arctic exploration, moving in one stroke Russia’s position in the first half of the nineteenth century from an insignificant backwater to one of the most important Arctic states, whose expeditions had inspired the British attempts at the Northwest Passage. Continuity was the idea behind Pasetsky’s concept of the Great Polar Undertaking, by combining and mixing several expeditions into one structured operation. This made Pasetsky a very popular writer, because he confirmed the old view with new material. Pasetsky should thus be seen as someone who remained in the official framework that had been installed after the war; he did not open new perspectives in Soviet Arctic history, although his inclusion of overland expeditions was certainly an improvement, which will have much influence. The fact that Pasetsky remained within the old framework is especially remarkable because of his position. At a time when historians generally are becoming increasingly interested in the influence of climate on history, Pasetsky has never attempted to study Arctic exploration from this point of view, even though he is officially employed by the main geophysical observatory and has worked to make climatological information from historical sources available to climatologists (Borisenko and Pasetsky 1983).

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VOLUME IV In 1969 the last part of Belov’s history of the Northern Sea Route, Volume IV, appeared. It covered the period 1932–45, which was presented as the decisive period during which the Northern Sea Route was turned into a magistral’, or one of the Soviet economy’s main transport connections. Volume IV was divided into two periods, 1932–41, when the first voyages were organized and geological reconnaissance of the area took place, and 1941–5, of course the period of the war, but also the period when the Northern Sea Route became part of the All-Union transport system (Belov 1969b:8). In the introduction, Belov discussed foreign literature on the Northem Sea Route and found it to be discrediting the success of the Soviet Union. The two main studies to appear in the West, those by Armstrong and Svendsen, had not been convinced of the economic usefulness of the Northern Sea Route. Belov answered this criticism by explaining that economic usefulness (ekonomicheskaya effektivnost’). was not the same as profitability (rentabel’ nost’) (ibid.: 10). The Northern Sea Route was a means to perform important government tasks, such as exporting timber from the Yenisey area, developing natural resources by mining (Noril’sk, the Kolyma area), using the passage as a short east-west connection and military use (by using the route fewer warships were needed; this alone probably saved more money than the Northern Sea Route cost). Another important task of the Northern Sea Route was aiding the development of the small ethnic groups of the North by its cultural impact (ibid.: 11). One of the more interesting remarks in the book was the suggestion that it should be regarded not as a history of the Northeast Passage but as a history of the exploitation of the northern parts of the Soviet Union. In this respect, the foreword rightly said that the book was unique, not only in history and geography but, in general, in polar literature. Actually, Belov here admitted that the title History of the Exploration and Exploitation of the Northern Sea Route had been too narrow. Indeed, the idea of a Northern Sea Route had been at odds with history from the beginning, since it had separated land from sea expeditions and put undue emphasis on almost forgotten or sometimes unimportant expeditions or even projects. It had also detached Soviet Arctic history from foreign exploration. This was a consequence of the political tasks that the book had to fulfil. The book actually served to strengthen historical claims to the Arctic, to describe the route’s development in the thirties as a victory for communism and to give a more or less official reinterpretation of the Arctic history of the Soviet Union. Apart from this aim, it was a monumental work, comprising a large quantity of source material, literature and illustrations. As such, the value of the book went beyond narrow political aims and became a sort of twentieth-century ‘Miller’ (see p. 90). Unfortunately for Belov, at the end of the sixties the situation in the Arctic had altered, with the Soviet Union becoming an important sea power whose freedom of movement was legally endangered by doctrines that led to ‘the erosion of the high seas’. If the Soviet Union still felt the Siberian seas to be national territory, then it did not want this to be overadvertised.

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GENERAL WORKS AND NEW LINES OF ENQUIRY AFTER BELOV After the appearance of Volume IV of Belov’s history, study of the Northern Sea Route’s history slackened somewhat There were occasional articles by Slavin and Belov on Lenin’s part in its development, but nothing new came forward. History became a chronicle as current developments were incorporated. The head of the newly reinstituted Administration of the Northern Sea Route, K.N. Chubakov, wrote about the attempts to make navigation year round. For example, The Northern Sea Route is a booklet of 64 pages, which reviews its history (Chubakov 1979a). Chubakov used the same framework as Belov, but went further in construing the history after 1945 around the attempts to make navigation year round. Thus much space is devoted to icebreakers and the winter operations near Kharasavey and Dudinka (ibid.: 23–6). Pinkhenson’s division into history before and after the Revolution gives no cue as to how history should be seen in modern times, since after the Revolution there could only have been rapid progress. So Chubakov could safely use winter navigation as a perspective. At the same time, using the Arctic shipping perspective excludes high-latitude expeditions, which is nevertheless an important subject in itself. Perhaps the reason for Chubakov’s continuation of the Arctic shipping perspective is his organizational background. The Administration of the Northern Sea Route was instituted in 1970, in what may be explained as a reaction to the Canadian laws that barred Arctic tankers from Canadian waters. But K.N.Chubakov seems to have wanted to develop his Administration into an organization comparable with the old glavk, the Glavnoe Upravlenie Severnogo Morskogo Puti; he has pleaded for a more centralized organization of Arctic shipping. Belov’s historical perspective must have served this purpose well, since it could be used to gain public support for further development of the Northern Sea Route. Chubakov’s line was taken up and elaborated in a book called The Artery of the SovietArctic, by A.I.Arikaynen (Arikaynen 1984). Although comparatively shoit (192 pages), it is a lucid account of the route’s history, although it gives no references and has virtually no bibliography. The book is centred on Arctic shipping and so avoids the problem of air exploration in Arctic history. The Krasin expedition is mentioned in the chapter that describes how the Northern Sea Route became a single magistral (main transport communication) and mentions 1928 as an important year because of the institution of PAK, the Governmental Arctic Commission (Pravitel’ stvennaya Arkticheskaya Kommissiya). Underlining the importance of establishing polar stations and the scientific approach to exploration, Arikaynen mentions the rescue of Nobile as being a consequence of this approach. Nansen is cited, without source: ‘the question arises: why did the Russians succeed? Their ingenuity (icebreaker in cooperation with a plane) and excellent organization of work made the impossible possible’ (ibid.: 71). This is the tail wagging the dog, because the usefulness of this combination (cleverly noted by Nansen) appeared for the first time in this rescue expedition. Here, as in Belov’s book, the division into periods before and after 1917 makes it difficult to see the continuity in plans for a Northern Sea Route (ibid.: 54). In fact, Arikaynen sticks carefully to Pinkhenson’s division, seeing the Northern Sea Route still as the product of an age-long history, from the Pomory to the Soviets.

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His book is different in that it puts greater emphasis on the importance of having a planned, governmental policy for Arctic exploration. This policy produced the more impressive changes in the Soviet Arctic and really provided the basis for Soviet claims to priority in the Northeast Passage (ibid.: 188). Foreign expeditions did have a certain part in its exploration too, but certainly not the main part (ibid.: 187). About Nordenskiölld’s expedition, Arikaynen brings up the same points as Belov, namely the participation of the Russian O.Nordkvist (here described as an Officer of the Guards, not as a zoologist) and the financial support by A. Sibiryakov. Much is made of the fact that Nordenskiöld himself saw little opportunity for immediate commercial use of the passage (ibid.: 39). This shows that Soviet Arctic literature at least partly takes an inflexible stand on the Northern Sea Route. Facts can be studied added or withdrawn, but the basic structure remains as it was developed in the Stalin period. Perhaps this was one of the reasons for the relative decline of Arctic historiography. Belov left the Arctic Institute and died, without having opened new perspectives, at least where the later period was concerned. An attempt to do so may be seen in the article that Belov had written on the delineation of history and geography. According to Belov, the influence of humans on the environment could be studied from two angles: the geographical, in which human activity was one factor amidst others, and the historical, which followed the development of human activity in social and economic respect. The history of discovery and exploration of the Arctic belonged to the historical angle, for it studied the influence of discovery and exploration on the economy and population of the Arctic (Belov 1975b). In fact, Belov here pleaded for the organization of a new institute in the Academy of Sciences, which would study geographical problems closely related to history. This all seems rather vague, while there are clearly a few problems that could have been taken up. In the first place, there was the study of political questions in the Arctic, such as the Spitsbergen treaty or the occupation of Wrangel. Another, perhaps more logical, course would have been historical climatology. As we have seen, V.N.Pasetsky took up this subject and is currently employed by the State Committee for Hydrometeorology. Nevertheless there has been no largescale attempt to study the influence of climate on the Northern Sea Route, although many oblique remarks on this subject have been made. The most logical field for further development had been indicated in Volume IV of Belov’s history, being the study of economic exploitation of the North. Articles on this subject still appear, but most of them are either on local topics or restrict themselves to a mere listing of events, without sufficient analysis (e.g. Deev 1979). An example of the better kind is the article by S.V.Slavin and I.A. Stoyanov, which deals with the development of the Northern Sea Route from the economic point of view. Thus it is stated that before the First World War trade by the Kara Route had no great significance, although it was beneficial to the Siberian economy (Slavin and Stoyanov 1985:70). Slavin and Stoyanov identified the functions the route was to fulfil and followed their development They were, in the sixties and seventies, to help the oil industry in West Siberia, to develop nickel and copper mining on Taymyr, to develop timber export from Siberia and Yakutiya, to stimulate the production of gold, tin and other precious metals, to back up the exploration of the Arctic islands and shelf, and to support polar stations (ibid.: 72–

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3). Unfortunately, this article contains very little new data to support the various statements, but perhaps this will improve in the future. NEW TOPICS The period after Stalin allowed a certain diversification of topics, partly because there were fewer restrictions, which stimulated the work of Z.M.Kanevsky amongst others. While the development of Arctic history as a field of research clearly declines, its popularity remains. Very popular are the books by Z.M.Kanevsky, which appear regularly in large editions of 100,000 copies and even more. Kanevsky worked in the Arctic as a meteorologist, but due to severe frostbite was unable to continue his work and so became a writer, his first book, Between Two Oceans, being a short history of the Northern Sea Route which connects two oceans (Kanevsky 1969). It dispenses with the need to describe the early history, since according to Kanevsky real exploration began with governmental expeditions after the Revolution (ibid.: 5). So the book describes the post-1917 history in a lively fashion with attention to lesser-known expeditions and stories about Vize, Samoylovich and Shmidt. Clearly, the main theme in his work is science, not Arctic shipping. His later books are variations on this theme, although excellent ones. Solving the Pole’s Riddles is about high-latitude expeditions, such as the Sadko, Severny Polyus-1, the Georgy Sedov and the post-war drifting stations (Kanevsky 1973b). Ice and Fates is a collection of various stories about Arctic exploration and researchers. The Cost of the Weather Forecast is a narrative about the importance of meteorology during the Second World War in the Soviet Arctic (Kanevsky 1976b). Since 1976 Kanevsky has written two biographies of Samoylovich and one of B.A.Kremer (Kanevsky 1977, 1982c, 1982b). The leader of the Krasin expedition, R.L.Samoylovich, who had lost his position in the purges of 1938, was duly rehabilitated and his book In the Ice of the Arctic reappeared in 1967 as To Nobile’s Rescue. Ten years later Z.M.Kanevsky wrote his biography, with many anecdotes and quotatins, but based on archive material. In 1982 a new version of this biography appeared. Boris Kremer was an accomplished meteorologist, who spent many years wintering in the Arctic, often under difficult circumstances. During the German attack, Kremer and 446 others were on various stations in the Arctic, from where they could not be evacuated so that they were forced to winter, sometimes on stations that had not been built for wintering (Kanevsky 1982b: 145). Kremer also wintered with the famous T.E.Krenkel’. Although Kremer, as an orphan, had never managed to get to university, he spent his winters immersed in study and became very knowledgeable about Arctic exploration, on which he published various articles. Shortly before retiring he graduated with a thesis on the history of Zemlya Frantsa-losifa, adding that he was proud to have finished university before his grandson (ibid.: 195). One of the new developments in the period after Stalin was the emergence of a polar literature that studied the Arctic of the Western hemisphere. The Interministerial (mezhduvedomstvennaya) Committee for Problems of the North ordered in 1957 the study of Western experience in the exploitation of the Arctic. This resulted in a series of scholarly books about the Western Arctic by G.A.

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Agranat and others, supported by a number of articles in Letopis’ Severa which, together with Problemy Severa, is after all a periodical published by the same committee. The articles cover topics such as foreign Arctic periodicals or shipping on the Northwest Passage (Agranat 1954, 1957a, b, c, 1960, 1962b, 1964, 1970; Agranat and Puzanova 1962; Agranat, Kupriyanov and Puzanova 1963; Arikaynen, Kossov and Shvemberger 1985; Bogorad 1957; Lappo 1957; Kupriyanov 1962a, b; Fadeev 1972, 1977; Shpaykher 1972; Puzanova 1975, 1979). Although most articles concern modern economic issues, a number of them follow the history of the Canadian and American North (Agranat 1962a, c, d, 1964, 1977). A popular subject was the Second World War in the Arctic (Belov 1962b; Berkul’ 1975, 1979; Chernenko 1945; Golovko 1960; Kanevsky 1976b; Mineev 1964, 1971; Rumyantsev 1963, 1975; Shevelev 1977; Sokolov 1955). The word ‘Arctic’ can be confusing in this respect, because books about the White Sea or the Barents Sea tend to be included, which relate the tragic but not very Arctic story of the wartime convoys to Murmansk and Arkhangel’sk. An example of this is Golovko’s book With the Red Fleet, which does give a few notes on the most important military undertaking in the Soviet Arctic, the German operation Wunderland (Golovko 1965). Admiral Golovko’s account is one of the few from the Soviet Navy about this major German attack. These events were also the subject of Belov’s book The Failure of Operation Wunderland (Belov 1962b). Then there are two articles by A.I.Mineev which give us the view of the head of Arctic Navigations in the Western Arctic. E.M.Suzyumov describes the battle between the Sibiryakov and the Admiral Scheer (Suzyumov 1979). N.M. Rumyantsev was the head of naval operations at the time. At this point it seems useful, for completeness, to point to some Western literature. Steensen wrote about the battle of the Sibiryakov, using German sources (Steensen 1957). A few useful remarks about the German side of Wunderland can be found in F.Kurowski’s Krieg unter Wasser (Kurowski 1979). An event generally uncommented on by Soviet literature was the 1940 passage of a German auxiliary cruiser, the Komet, to her operation area in the Pacific by way of the Northern Sea Route. Her logbook was published after the war (Eyssen 1960). A description of the voyage can be found in P.Herrmann’s book (Herrmann 1959). Kanevsky’s book about meteorology in the Arctic, which has already been mentioned, finds a Western counterpart in D.Liversidge’s The Third Front (Liversidge 1960). Contrary to Arctic history as a field of scholarship, popular literature on the Arctic about the period since 1917 is still very much blossoming with numerous books being written. Although on the wane, books on current polar expeditions still retained some of their previous attraction in the sixties and seventies. Life on an icefloe or in the Antarctic still held enough excitement to attract the Soviet reader. One of the foremost authors was A.F.Treshnikov, a polar specialist who headed a drifting station as well as an Antarctic expedition and wrote several articles and books about Antarctic exploration, the Arctic Institute and drifting stations. (Treshnikov 1955, 1956a, b, 1959, 1963, 1970a, b, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1980, 1985). One of his major works was A History of the Discovery and Exploration of the Antarctic Mainland which is a description of a number of Antarctic expeditions in chronological order (Treshnikov 1963). Except for its broad perspective it cannot compare with Belov’s history of discovery and exploration either in size or in quality of source material.

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According to Treshnikov the reason for the Soviet Union’s sudden decision in July 1951 to take part in Antarctic research was pressure from several influential groups, among which I.D.Papanin’s Department for Expeditions in the Academy of Sciences. Finally, Treshnikov was also something of an expert on Roald Amundsen (Treshnikov 1972, 1976; Amundsen 1972). Of course it was the drifting stations that were the most important subject in the literature about high-latitude expeditions. For a long time these remained a sensitive subject because of their importance to trans-Arctic flying. One of the first accounts to appear of drifting stations, and soon after translated into English, was written by A.F.Laktionov and V.V.Frolov, head of the Soviet Arctic Institute since 1950 (Laktionov and Frolov 1955, 1956). After that various books appeared, some describing the life on an icefloe, others paying more attention to their scientific work. Although important sources on high-latitude research in the Soviet Union, they contain little in the way of historical ideas. This short survey of new topics in Arctic literature since Stalin’s demise does not evince the reversal from the old Stalinist ideas, reorientation on Western literature and the opening of new perspectives, especially where climatological influences are concerned. Instead, one sees a careful continuation of the quest for continuity and priority. The case of the most successful Arctic historian since Stalin’s day, V.N.Pasetsky, illustrates this. At the same time, there are no indications that the general public disagrees with this. On the contrary, private expeditions, as a rule, adopt the very same attitude and strive to further Arctic archaeology. Unlike other spheres of Soviet society, the field of Arctic exploration history has seen no ‘dissidents’ on the topic of Arctic exploration history. Kanevsky, who comes closest to being one, confines himself to the rehabilitation of a famous, but unfortunate, explorer. In this respect, the influence of Stalinism shows itself to be generally accepted and non-controversial.

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Conclusion

Polar exploration has been profoundly influenced by the Stalin period. In the first place it became much more important than it had been previously. Before the Revolution, interest had arisen relatively late; at the turn of the century Russia began to take part actively, on more than a strictly scientific level and this only because it was forced to by other countries. Even after the Revolution polar exploration had remained of secondary importance. The Soviet view that immediately after the Revolution polar exploration rose to a new level has an ideological basis and dates from about 1938. The early research institutions, such as PLAVMORNIN, were in fact meant to resolve the urgent need for food in Soviet Russia by stimulating fisheries. Polar exploration after 1917 was merely a continuation of tsarist policy, without any long-distance expeditions. Any discontinuity in 1917 is therefore artificial. The turning point in Soviet exploration, as elsewhere, was the introduction of aircraft. Air routes gave a new value to the Arctic and caused a revision of all political and economic ideas about it. The occupation of Ostrov Vrangelya by Stefansson’s expedition left especially deep marks. The fact that the Canadians were apparently willing to sacrifice human lives for such islands as Ostrov Vrangelya deeply impressed the Russians. It now became clear that more exploration was the only way to safeguard the Soviet Arctic. The general public readily accepted this and polar expeditions soon enjoyed a popularity comparable with that of the first manned spaceflights. Men like Nobile and Amundsen became universal heroes. A great deal of literature about polar travel appeared and met a great demand. Until the thirties the position of the Soviet Union was in fact very unfavourable, as can be learned from the legal literature of those days. The almost explicit incorporation of the sector theory of the division of the Arctic in Soviet law, the most extreme kind of recognition of this theory in law in the world, closely followed and went beyond the British example in Antarctica. In 1926 the Soviet government assumed that the sector theory would be accepted universally and, besides, the Soviets could not do much more than introduce this law, since the country lacked the means, technically as well as financially, to join in the development of a new Arctic air route. Joining the Aeroarctic expedition of the Graf Zeppelin in 1932 was a substitute for this, regarded with the necessary distrust. The Krasin incident turned the tables, since it suddenly proved that icebreakers were still superior in exploration. Thanks to these ships, the Soviets even managed to save the survivors of one of those air expeditions which had previously caused such apprehension. This completely changed the Soviets’ attitude towards their

168 CONCLUSION

own exploration, since it could now be represented as equal or even superior to foreign efforts. The reason why polar exploration was viewed in a different light was the use that it could be put to in propaganda. It speaks for Stalin’s political astuteness that he saw the possibilities of giving a political charge to the first successful icebreaker expeditions and to existing non-political enthusiasm. The result was an impressive propaganda campaign. This is not to say that polar exploration was only show. Its basis was a very practical programme, inspired by concern about the Soviet Union’s sovereignty in the Arctic and the military situation in the Far East. Polar exploration had a very sensible background and development of the Soviet Union’s Arctic potential was a political necessity: otherwise the Norwegians and the Americans might have been tempted to annex some Soviet Arctic lands. However, Stalin managed to use these activities as propaganda: especially after 1934 polar literature grew rapidly and became an alternative for artistic literature. Soviet writers have been presented as ‘engineers of the human soul’, but like their technical counterparts they have proved unable to change reality. For political purposes polar literature was much more controllable than literary works, because the events of most polar travel, even if already known, could be represented in a controllable but still exciting way. Besides, Arctic literature’s underlying theme of man’s battle with Arctic nature fitted well into communist ideas. Also, the Soviet Union could boast of excellent results with limited means, which could be explained by pointing to a superior political system. The rescue of Nobile and his men in 1928 and the voyage of the Sibiryakov were the result of the consistent use of icebreakers in a climatologically favourable period, but they were tremendous successes. From the linking of these successes to communist doctrine, a type of propaganda resulted by which complicated ideas could be put across with much emotional appeal. People who would otherwise never have been accessible to communist ideas read with great attention about Soviet polar voyages. The political content of this kind of propaganda varied. Around 1934 it emphasized the new political system, which made the latest voyages in particular interesting. Nevertheless, much attention was paid to early Russian exploration, because its history showed how closely the polar regions were linked to Russia and the Russian past. This close relation was not so well known because the previous ruling class had never recognized the Arctic as the land of the future and Arctic exploration was neglected accordingly. At the same time, the progressive part of the Russian people had always been aware of the tremendous possibilities that awaited Russia in the Arctic. This newly developed past slowly became more important. It was felt that the Russian people had always been eager for polar exploration. Soon it was represented as an uninterrupted process: long-forgotten expeditions were again brought to light, and bygone periods searched carefully. An official history of the Northern Sea Route appeared, which traced a continuous development from the sixteenth century to the present. Therefore, in historical respect, Stalinist influence showed itself in the development of a Soviet Arctic history, even if the actual basis for such a history was weak. For example, the real purpose of the Great Northern Expedition is still very much disputed. That Dezhnev ever considered the possibility of a transit route cannot be proved beyond doubt. Undeniably, it is possible to put the results of these expeditions in an ideological framework afterwards. The occasional

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appearance of the idea of a passage is hardly surprising, since it occurred elsewhere as well. But the continuous presence of this idea in Russia lacks conclusive proof. Toll and Nordenskiöld could not fall back on a maritime tradition, but had to begin their work almost from the outset. Nevertheless, priority and continuity of the Russian presence in the Arctic have become generally accepted in Soviet literature since the thirties. Soviet literature has ever since been dominated by this curious consensus, which is the hallmark of Stalinist literature. Remarkably, since Stalin’s death this general line has never been abandoned. There is still a search for material and ideas to confirm this continuity. New perspectives, for example the influence of the climate, have not been opened. This conservatism is even more remarkable as in the end it began to hamper the development of Arctic historiography: even someone like Pasetsky, who clearly had the means and the knowledge to study the climate as a factor in the history of the Northern Sea Route, refrained from doing so. Study of climatological factors in history has become a generally accepted trend in the West, and V.Yu.Vize as early as the thirties made some overtures in that direction, but they were never followed up in the Soviet Union, for ideological reasons: climate can never be the decisive factor in Arctic history since it can be conquered by technological and scientific means, and by superior social organization. Equally other promising avenues into Arctic history have been cut off, eventually atrophying the work of M.I.Belov. Committed as he was to proving Russian priority and continuity in the Arctic, his energy in collecting material was never matched by the theoretical use made of it. This does not necessarily subtract from its value to science, but progress became very difficult Attempts to set up an institute for multi-disciplinary studies failed. All the same, Arctic history remained very popular in the Soviet Union and even stimulated several private archaeological expeditions. The government intervened and made an end to these initiatives. In fact, the only field in which Arctic historical research has been allowed to progress was the question of the Pomory at Spitsbergen, a case with clear political overtones. The remarkable thing is that ever since the thirties Arctic history has remained within the framework set up in the Stalinist period. The typical Stalinist opinion that there has been an age-long, continuous development of the Northeast Passage left its traces not only on a literary level. It is difficult to indicate whether this view first arose in the legal or historical field, but at any rate it remained at the root of various theories about the Soviet Arctic that appeared in the course of time. This was the case with V.Lakhtin’s ideas, but also with the historic waters doctrine. The latter theory proved so strong that even objections by the Soviet navy, for whom this doctrine had unpleasant implications, did not lead to its abandonment. On the one hand, this theory offered the Soviet Union important advantages, such as a clear distinction between the legal position of the North Pole and the South Pole (which offered protection against extension of the Antarctic Treaty over the North Pole) and the possibility of closing some important areas to international shipping. On the other hand, its position in international law was difflcult: at conferences on the Law of the Sea the question of historic waters was avoided, so that their validity remained uncertain. A more rational agreement, which would recognize the military needs of the Soviet Union without closing the passage to international traffic, as has been suggested in American literature, is clearly opposed by this tradition dating to the Stalinist

170 CONCLUSION

period, by the conviction that the Soviet Union has special rights in the Arctic because of its history of exploration and the successes achieved by socialism in the Arctic. In the seventies the historic waters doctrine clearly no longer satisfied the needs of the Soviet Union. It was, after all, a somewhat questionable interpretation of some of the small print, and it tended to obstruct the Soviet navy. Nevertheless, theorists were unwilling to part with it, offering various new suggestions, like Odnopozov’s use of straight base-lines or Barabolya’s historic straits; they strove to achieve the same results as the original Stalinist system. The historic waters doctrine currently still dominates Soviet legal thinking on this question, which indicates an unexpected conservatism, comparable with that found in historiography. Neither can it be said that later authors have been more free in their suggestions. Although the question of reconciling this doctrine with the Law of the Sea has moved somewhat to the fore, international lawyers in the Soviet Union are still asking for codification of the doctrine. In fact, little progress has been made here since Stalin’s day (see pp. 115–17). The difficulty of believing that the Soviet Union has special rights in the Arctic lies in the fact that these are considered to be based on facts, not propaganda: on a positive, historical accomplishment, the inheritance of a glorious past. This conviction is confirmed by various successes that the Soviet Union has achieved in polar exploration, such as opening the Northern Sea Route or the trans-Arctic flights. Russians have taken pride in their country’s Arctic history. In this case obviously a certain opinion was developed in Stalin’s day which still influences current thinking. As we have seen, the idea of a glorious past was developed steadily from 1928 onwards, was picked up by a tremendous propaganda wave in 1934, and even today dominates Soviet thinking. It is therefore possible in this case to indicate how during the Stalinist period a new image of polar history was born, which still influences current ideas. Knowledge of this image adds to our understanding of Soviet views on the Arctic. First, the belief in a glorious Arctic past is a generally shared conviction, proven or not. Many Arctic questions will be regarded from this point of view. For example, it becomes obvious that an adaptation of the Antarctic Treaty to the Arctic will succeed only if a way is found to take this historical aspect into account. A second conclusion, on another level, is that destalinization will cause considerable difficulties: since the positive self-perception of the Soviet Union is, to a considerable extent, linked to Stalinist ideas, destalinization to the Russians means giving up part of their national pride. Some part of these ideas, such as Russian priority in the exploration of the Northern Sea Route, rest on weak foundations. Giving up national pride is a painful sacrifice and it may well be asked if the political will to do so exists. Such sacrifices would almost certainly run into opposition from a large part of society. Conversely, ignoring the question will give defenders of Stalin the opportunity to use the polar expeditions in the thirties as a legitimation of part, if not all, of the excesses of the Stalin period. Ideas like superiority in polar exploration are so closely associated with everything that is good and positive about the Soviet Union that it is unlikely that these remnants of Stalinism will ever disappear completely: total destalinization of polar exploration would seem practically impossible, even if a certain degree of adjustment does appear feasible.

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The main question is, of course, to what extent this conclusion regarding the influence of Stalinism on polar exploration can be applied elsewhere. To what extent do national pride and self-respect in the Soviet Union rest on such ideas that have been developed in Stalin’s day? How did Stalin influence the image that Soviet citizens have of their own state? These questions require further research; but it is obvious that destalinization will be very painful, and one may well ask if it is possible at all in some reaches of society. Reasoning from our example of Arctic exploration, from this showpiece of the Soviet system, short-term destalinization does not seem likely. Since this reasoning concerns a showpiece, it seems justified to carry the argument further: as long as the current view of polar exploration persists, there will always be people who will defend Stalin by pointing to Arctic travel: ‘granted, the Kolyma camps were horrible, but Stalin did make the Northern Sea Route possible’. From there it is but a short way to justifying other excesses by pointing to the industrial build-up of those years. Another inhibiting factor may be the international political climate: developments in the Arctic may harden the current opinion on Arctic policy, instead of destalinizing it In this respect, it is remarkable that Belov’s plans for excavations in Khatanga in 1976 did not receive any support, while at the same time largescale excavations took place on Spitsbergen. Although the Soviet Union makes no territorial claims to this archipelago, this clearly indicates that the Soviet Union wants to underline her special position on these islands. For destalinization of Soviet polar history, not only civil courage but also a stable political climate is needed, exactly because the relation between foreign policy and history is a very close one in this case. So, Arctic history’s close connection to national selfrespect, and the Soviet Union’s legal position regarding the Arctic, make destalinization in this case a very difficult process.

172

Appendix

SOVIET ARCTIC POLICY SINCE MIKHAIL GORBACHEV’S MURMANSK SPEECH At the time when I was completing this book, Mr Gorbachev gave an important speech in Murmansk which in some respects proved a turning point in Soviet policy (Pravda 2 October 1987). On 2 October 1987, while visiting the Soviet Union’s northemmost city, Mr Gorbachev concerned himself with the political situation in the Arctic, just as in Vladivostok in 1986 he had spoken on the situation in the Pacific. Similarly, the policy of the ‘Common European Home’ was developed as part of a major new approach of Soviet Foreign Policy. In the words of a Soviet commentator: ‘The Murmansk initiatives are new political thinking applied to the problem of Nordic security and cooperation’ (Deryabin 1988). The Murmansk speech contained five proposals: a nuclear-free zone in norlhern Europe, a reduction of naval activities in northern waters, and cooperation in the fields of Arctic exploitation, scientific exploration and environmental protection. Speaking on security in the Arctic, Mr Gorbachev reverted to the old post-war spectre of a ‘polar strategy’, an airborne attack across the pole on the Soviet Union, first mentioned in 1947 (see Chapter 5). This threat, the cold breath of the Pentagon, should be averted by negotiations. However, all proposals in the speech were limited to northern Europe, while the main security problem on the northern flank was not even mentioned: the presence of strategic forces in the Murmansk area. Instead, Mr Gorbachev offered the abolition of nuclear testing on Novaya Zemlya and the closing of the Baltic Sea to foreign warships. The proposals included limiting naval activity in some Arctic Seas and clearly favoured the Soviet Union. The speech at Murmansk was of course widely publicized and in January 1988 was followed by a visit of Prime Minister N.Ryzhkov to Norway and Sweden, the first such visit in more than a decade (Pravda 14 and 16 January 1988). Moreover, in April a seminar was held for Finnish members of parliament and members of the Supreme Soviet (Izvestiya 27 April 1988). The most conspicuous omissions from Mr Gorbachev’s speech were the legal problems. So far the Soviet Union has never given a clear description of what it considers to be its rights and claims to the seas surrounding its northern coasts.

174 APPENDIX

Nothing was said on these vital issues, except perhaps that curious point about opening the Northern Sea Route to foreign shipping. A similar proposal was made in 1968 and was then considered to be a legal trick (see Chapter 7). Since the concept of the Northern Sea Route has important legal implications, Mr Gorbachev’s remark may well be seen as a safe guarding of legal titles. An article in International Affairs, appearing at the time of the Murmansk speech, described the point in somewhat closer detail: The Soviet Union has announced that it is prepared, depending on the progress in normalizing intemational relations, to open the Northern Sea Route to foreign ships, which would be escorted along the route by Soviet icebreakers’ (Anatolyev and Nadezhedin 1987). To make passages under this regimen would be tantamount to accepting Soviet sovereignty over large portions of thr. high seas. Although the Soviet Union may be interested to cooperate in other fields, there is no question whatsoever of negotiations or concessions of its legal claims in the Arctic. Yet, even if no change in the legal position was intended, Mr Gorbachev obviously meant to change Soviet policy in other respects. Here it should be noted that the main argument for this and other changes in current policy is clearly economic. Reduction of defence expenditure as well as better economic relations with other nations are urgently needed to strengthen Soviet economy. A special case in this respect is the production of hydrocarbons, the Soviet Union’s most important export item. Oil provides the foreign currency for importing new technological equipment For this reason, development of the prospective offshore oilfields of the Barents Sea are of great importance to the Soviet Union. On this question a group of Norwegian scholars has recently done excellent work. They state, first of all, that offshore activities in the Barents Sea can be seen as a continuation of oil drilling in the North Sea fields: climatic circumstances are comparable, although average temperatures are lower; technical difficulties are almost identical. While in the Norwegian part of the continental shelf there have already been a number of exploratory drillings, the Soviet Union seems to have met difficulties in technology as well as in management. The Norwegian specialists assume that a successful development of the Soviet offshore industry in the Barents Sea will be possible only in close cooperation with Western countries. Such technological cooperation, however, has its political price, as the Soviet Union noticed during the building of the Urengoy-Uzhgorod pipeline, when delivery of technological equipment was made dependent on political demands. Instead of cooperating with the United States, the Soviet Union might equally turn to the Scandinavian countries or Canada, who traditionally have a less outspoken policy towards the Soviet Union. Such cooperation would be less complicated politically. In fact, Mr Gorbachev’s speech contained some proposals along these lines to Canada and the Scandinavian nations (Bergesen, Moe and Østreng 1987). It would be an exaggeration to assume that Soviet policy in the Arctic is solely directed by practical, economic considerations. Another important issue, equally mentioned in the Murmansk speech, is environmental protection. In this respect the Arctic poses a special problem because of its importance to meteorological conditions. Or, as Mr Gorbachev put it in his speech, the Arctic is our ‘weather kitchen’. For this reason, pollution in the Arctic may pose a greater threat than elsewhere. Arctic haze, the greenhouse effect and the ozone hole give cause for great concern in the Soviet Union and it is therefore understandable that the Soviet

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Union should be interested in cooperation in scientific research. In this respect the Murmansk speech was indeed a turning point, and, for the first time, the Soviet Union was prepared to discuss and agree with such cooperation. ‘We suggest that in 1988 a conference should take place for Arctic-rim states in order to coordinate scientific research in the Arctic. There the issue of organizing a common Arctic Scientific Committee can be discussed’ as Mr Gorbachev put it in his Murmansk speech. In fact, the wish to organize an International Arctic Scientific Committee had already existed for some time, but had so far not been endorsed by the Soviet Union (Butkov 1988). The conference proposed in Murmansk took place in Leningrad in December 1988. A pre-conference meeting, gathering delegates from Arctic-rim states, took place only a few days earlier. This meeting was called to agree on a joint proposal for an ‘lnternational Arctic Scientific Committee’ (IASC) which would be ruled by a powerful ‘Polar Board’. Board membership was to be restricted to the ‘founding’ countries: Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Soviet Union, the United States and Canada. Other countries would join as members of the committee, but could not become members of the board. By the time of the conference in Leningrad, the proposal had been well prepared. Several countries had adapted their Arctic institutions to suit the needs of the new Polar Board. In August 1988 Canada had announced its plans to organize a ‘Canadian Polar Research Committee’ (Polar Record 1989:52, 60–1). In June of that same year the Soviet Union had instituted a ‘State Committee for Arctic Affairs’ (Gosudarstvennaya komissiya po delam Arktiki). This Soviet Committee to the Council of Ministers was led by Yu.D.Maslyunkov, a member of the Council of Ministers. His deputy, or rather First Vice-Chairman, was D.K.Zotov, a former viceminister from the Ministry of Merchant Shipping (Morskoy Flot) and as such well acquainted with Arctic shipping (Vernik 1988). In an interview Mr Zotov described the main task of his committee as the ‘realization of strategic interests of our country in the Arctic region in relation to scientific and economic matters’ (Izvestiya 26 June 1988). This was to be achieved by coordination of the work done by ministries and state committees in the Arctic. One of the committee’s most important concerns would be environmental protection, but equally important would be intemational cooperation in the Arctic, and Zotov said his committee intended to ‘coordinate the work of ministries and committees to further and realize scientific and technological cooperation on Arctic matters with the Arctic-rim states’ (ibid.). Zotov also mentioned the plans for organizing an international scientific committee with Norway and the other Arctic-rim countries. Such a committee should coordinate scientiflc research, but also help to establish joint ventures and cooperations for oil exploration on the Arctic shelf (Nedelya 5–11 September 1988). The State Committee for Arctic Affairs clearly bridged the gap between the Murmansk speech and the Arctic Scientific Committee, and would furnish the official link between the IASC and the Soviet government, just as similar official links were. forged in other countries. Denmark’s ‘Danish Polar Committee’ came into being in January 1989. It took over part of the Greenland administration, but its main task was to be one of international cooperation. After the institutional links in several countries had been adopted and the preconference meeting had been successfully concluded, the intemational conference

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met in Leningrad on 12 December 1988. Its importance was indicated by the size of the delegations: 285 Russians, 43 Norwegians, 22 Swedes and 11 Icelanders were present, in sharp contrast with representations from France (2), Germany (2), Great Britain (2) and the Netherlands (1) (Vitebsky 1989). The conference began with two plenary meetings and then divided into six sections: upper atmosphere and lower cosmos, Arctic ecosystems, oceanatmosphere heat exchange, environmental protection, geology and, finally, socio-economic and cultural questions. The Soviet delegation was headed by Yu. A.Israel, the head of the committee for hydrometeorology; A.F.Treshnikov, that ‘grand old man’ of Soviet Arctic Science; A.N.Chilingarov, famous for his work during the Kharasavey operation and now a deputy chairman to Yu.Israel’s committee; and B.A.Kroutskikh, head of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (ibid.). Apart from scientific discussions, the main task of the conference was clearly the establishment of the IASC. However, this proposal met some resistance. Four countries (the Federal Republic of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands) opposed the plan. As a result, the establishment of the IASC was postponed, while further negotiations took place on the status of the Polar Board. At the moment of writing, it would be imprudent to predict the outcome of such negotiations. However, a few other conclusions can be drawn. First, some important changes are about to take place. Soon the Soviet Arctic will cease to be the ‘secret empire’ that it was when I began to write this book, at a time when foreigners only rarely entered the Soviet parts of the Far North. Nevertheless, most things will inevitably remain the same. The Soviet Union’s legal position in the Arctic has not been altered or even clarified. During Prime Minister N. Ryzhkov’s visit to Norway in 1988 no progress was made on dividing the Arctic shelf. Nor are changes in Soviet Arctic historiography to be expected. Glasnost has been notoriously slow to reach Soviet historians, and it would seem that the traditional view of Arctic exploration will remain intact for some time to come.

Glossary

AANII Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of the State Committee on Hydrometeorology, in Leningrad; centre of Arctic Research in the Soviet Union AEROARCTIC International Organization for Study of the Arctic from the Air ASSR Autonomous republic; territorial subdivision of the Soviet Union Bukhta Bay CGADA Central Government Archives of the Soviet Union Chekist Member of Soviet secret police Dal’stroy NKVD organization for development of the Kolyma area Glavsevmorputi Idem Guba Bay GUSMP Chief Directorate for the Northern Sea Route Historic bay, Legal concept; see Chapter 5 for an explanation Historic waters, Historic sea, Koch Type of Russian ship in fifteenth to seventeenth centuries Lead A channel in an icefield Lodya Type of Russian ship in fifteenth to seventeenth centuries Massiv Field of exceptionally hard pack ice Mys Cape NKVD, GPU Russian Secret Police, also responsible for management of forced labour camps OSOAVIAKfflM Organization for the support of Defence, Aviation and Chemistry Ostrov, ostrova Island, islands Polynya Unfrozen patch of water in the midst of ice pack Pomor Inhabitant of the area around the White Sea in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries Proliv Bay Sever North Severny Polyus North Pole Skhery Skerries St Petersburg Leningrad, before 1924 UL, ULA Abbreviations indicating ice-strengthening of ships Zaliv Bay Zemlya Land

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Index

AANII 151,176 Academy of Sciences: Russian 13–14, 94; Soviet 77 Admiral Makarov 139, 142–6 Admiral Scheer 68, 163 Aeroarctic 30, 40-2, 43–5, 165, 176 Ahlmann, A. 45–8, 50, 59 ‘Aktivist O. A. Kh.’ 63–5, 109 Alaska 22, 25, 32, 40; and 1867 Convention of Washington 26, 28 Al’banov, Valery Ivanovich (1881-1919) 102 Aleksandrov, A. P. 118 Aleksandrovsk port 17, 18-19 Ambarchik 55–7, 68 Amderma 55, 131 Amguema 141, 142 Amosov manuscript 85, 87 Amundsen, Roald 20, 28, 29, 30, 33, 36, 67, 99; death of 35 Anadyr 55, 59, 60 Andrée, Salomon 20, 104 Anglo-Grumant Company 38 Antarctic 63; and Britain 25, 32; and Soviet Union 29, 76–79; and United States 71, 73–6 Antarctic Treaty (1959) 79, 169 archaeology 8, 83–6, 85, 88, 90, 150–61, 168, 170; see also AANII; Okladnikov, A.P. Archaeology, Academy Institute of 155

Arctic and Antarctic Research Listitute see AANII Arctic Institute 37, 67, 77–9, 79, 83, 88–1, 94,119,128,139,150-5 164; see also Ovsyannikov, O. V. Arctic Museum 150,157 Arikaynen, A. I. 161–6 Arkhangel’sk 7, 10, 15–16, 19, 39, 72 Arktika 127, 131, 132–6; see also Leonid Brezhnev 139 Arktikugol 38; see also mining Armstrong, T. E. 2, 55, 67-9, 94, 160 aviation xii, 3, 22, 26–8, 28, 33–6, 40–5, 99; airfields 21, 58, 70; airships 25, 30, 48–1; German 40; Keflavik Air Base 74; Soviet 29, 36, 56–8, 60-3, 64, 70, 99, 103–8,125,165–1; Thule Air Base 74; Trans-Arctic air route 20-2, 25,29–1, 40–5 Axel Heiberg Islands 23, 64 Ayon massiv 134, 138, 176 Badigin, Captain K. S. 85–88, 93, 100, 102, 156 Baltiisky Zavod 60 BAM railway 137; see also railways Barabolya, P. D. 111 Barents Sea 8,33,37,80,173 Barents, Willem 8, 10, 47, 154, 156

223

224 INDEX

Bastion theory, Soviet naval 107 Bear lsland 7-8, 48, 63, 72 Begichev, Nikifor (1874–1927) 103 Behouden Huis 10, 153–8 Bellinsgauzen, Faddey Faddyevich (1770– 1852) 76 Belov, M. I. 3, 43, 51, 84, 87, 88, 89–5, 94, 98-2, 162; and his writings 148, 149,150-7,156, 157,159–4,163,168 Ber.G. 12, 95, 158 Bering Straits 47, 65,120, 134, 140 Bering, Vitus (1681–1741) 84, 89, 91, 149– 4,151 Braat, Joost 154 Breitfuss, L. 29, 30, 67,98,102 Brontman, L. K. 62 Brunel, Olivier 149 Bruns,Walter 20, 36 Brusilov, G. L. (1884-1914) 16,99, 102 Bryanskles 138 Burton Island 108,111 Butler, W. 2, 109–13,111,113 Byrd, Richard Evelyn (1888–1957) 20–2, 26–8, 28–29, 75, 99 camps, penal xii–1, 53–7; and prisoners 69, 71, 125, 170 Canada see under territorial claims; sovereignty Chelyuskin 56, 58, 100–4; loss of 59 Chelyuskina, Mys 14, 15, 65, 83, 108,176 Chichagov, V.Ya. (1726–1809) 47, 84, 93, 155 Chief Directorate for the Northern Sea Route see GUSMP Chkalov, V.P. (1904–1938) 61, 99, 102 Chronicle of the North see Letopis’ Severa Chubakov, K.N. 161 Chukchis 24 Chukotka 33, 137, 140, 144 climatic conditions 49, 65, 85–9 container ships 121–6 contiguity see sector theory ‘creeping jurisdiction’ 113–17 ‘Crocker Land’ 26

Dal’stroy see NKVD Denby, Edwin 25–7 Detroit Arctic Air Expedition see under expeditions Dezhnev, Semen Ivanovich (1605–73) 12, 82, 84, 104; Soviet literature on 47, 59,88,89–3,148, 168 Dikson Island 59, 65, 68, 73, 140 Dobrovol’ny Flot 39 Dolgikh, V.Yu. 125 Dongen, Sjef van 35 drifting stations 61–3, 64, 70, 103–7, 107, 134,158,164 Dudinka 38, 54, 69, 120, 121–6, 125, 126– 30,129,132 Durdenevsky, V.N. 77–9, 79 D’yakonov, M.S. 46–48, 76, 81, 82, 83, 94, 97 Dzhurma 55–7 Eastwind 108,109 Edisto 108, 109 Efendiev, D.F. 114 expeditions 5–9, 10–16, 18, 36–8, 42–5; amateur 151–8; Detroit Arctic Air (1926–7) 28–29; First Kara (1920) 37–9, 67; Fram (1899–1902) 23; Great Northem (1733–43) 12, 84–7, 88, 104, 153, 168; high-altitude 53, 103–8; high-latitude 132–8, 162, 164; icebreaker (1911) 15; Italian 33–6; Krasin (1928) 4, 35–7, 37, 39–1, 44–7, 49, 56, 61, 99, 165; Macmillan (1925) 21, 26, 41; Murman Scientific (1897–1907) 17–18; North Pole (1937) 60–3, Northeast 55; Northern Scientific Industrial 36; Payer-Weyrecht (1873) 13, 42, 96, 150; Russian Polar 13–14; Tovaro-Obmen 37; Vil’kitsky 43, 67, 104; see also Amundsen, Roald;

INDEX 225

Barents, Willem 154; Kruzenshtern, P.P.; Litke F.P.; Peary, Robert Edwin; Nordenskiöld, A.E.; Sedov, G.Ya.; Shmidt, O.Yu.; Sovetsky Sever; Toll, Eduard; Wiggins, Captain Joseph; Wrangel, Ferdinand P.von exploration see expeditions Far East Shipping Company 117, 119, 122, 139, 140–4, 144 Fauchille, Paul 27 First World War 5, 16, 20, 30 fishing 5, 7–8, 9,10, 12, 15, 16–20, 36, 46, 92,165 Floating Sea Research Institute see PLAVMORNIN Fram 13,33; see also expeditions Franz- Joseph Land see Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa freighters, 117, 119, 127, 129, 135, 138–3, 142, 144–9 fur trade 10–11, 58, 92 gas, natural 114–18, 129–3; see also Urengoy-Uzhgorod gas pipeline Geographical Society, All-Union: Russian 13, 94; Soviet 76, 82, 121, 150, 153; its Conference (1947) 88 Georgy Sedov 85,102, 103,162 Gerasimov, Dmitry 46, 83, 86, 149 Gerkules 102,150 ‘Gillis Land’ 35 Gizhiga 126–30,131–5 Gizhigina 127 Glavnoe Upravlenie Severnogo Morskogo Puti see GUSMP Glavsevmorputi see GUSMP Golovko, Admiral Arseny Gregor’evich (1906–62) 163 Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich (1931–) 1– 2,157,171–6

Gorshkov, Admiral Sergey Georgievich (1910–) 116 Gorstroy project 69; see also Noril’sk GPU 54, 176; see also NKVD Graf Zeppelin 44, 165 Great Northern Expedition see under expeditions Greenland 73–5, 77 Gromov, B.V. 61 Gruber, Ruth 58–59 ‘Grulanda’ 149 Grumant see Spitsbergen GUSMP 53,56,58, 59, 60,64, 67,72, 117, 161,176; and Bureau for Economic Research 97– 1; see also SPETSSTROY Guzhenko, T.B. 133,139,143,147 Hakluyt, Richard (1553–1615) 65, 83, 91, 93 Herberstein, Sigmund von (1486–1566) 47, 58 high-altitude expeditions see under expeditions high-latitude expeditions see under expeditions ‘historic’: bays 77, 79–3,105,109, 110–15, 113–17; waters 115–19,168–3 Hughes, Secretary of State C. 26 hunting 8, 9, 11, 55 Hydrographical Directorate 36, 60, 96, 98; and hydrologers 65,140–4,152–7 IASC see Intemational Arctic Scientific Committee ice: barriers 69, 141; conditions 84, 86, 91, 125, 138, 139, 141; forecasting 37, 60, 71, 80,94,117; measurement 105; navigation 85,91,105,154; quays 130–5;

226 INDEX

reconnaissance 67,129; stamukha 134,139 icebreaker expedition see under expeditions icebreakers xii, 14, 73, 94,117, 118–3, 140, 147–1; American 110–14,118; Russian 23,96; Soviet 37–9,54, 64–6, 67–9,110–14, 115,120,123–8 , 126–32,167; see also named ships Igarka 38–39, 54, 69, 71, 116. 120 Institute for Marine Studies see PLAVMORNIN Institute for the Study of the North 36, 37; see also PLAVMORNIN Intemational Arctic Scientific Committee 174–8 Intemational Court (The Hague) 43,75 Inuits 21, 24, 43 Italia 33–6,37,40,99 Italian expedition see under expedition Jan Mayen Island 42, 64 Japan 51, 68 Kamensk-Uralsky 141,142–6,146 Kanevsky, Z.M. 162, 164 Kapitan Belousov 69,127 Kapitan Dranitsyn 128,142–6 Kapitan Khlebnikov 128 Kapitan Melekhov 127, 129 Kapitan Myshevsky 132,134 Kapitan Nikolaev 128 Kapitan Panfilov 129 Kapitan Sorokin 128, 129,141 Kapitan Voronin 127 Kara Expedition, First see under expeditions Kara Sea 9–12,19,36,58, 80,90,95, 108,115, 129–3,134–8,138,148 Kara Sea Route 13,14,18–19,38–39, 60, 95, 98,119,126,150–5,162; charting of 11 Kargopol’ 121 Karluk 21,23 Kharasavey 130–6 Khatanga 58,103,137,153,154,170 Khrebet Lomonosova 107

Knipovich, Nikolay Mikhaylovich (1862– 1939) 17–18 koch 86, 90–3,93,150,176 Kolya Myagotin 142,143,144,147 Kolyma: Peninsula 39,55,135–40; river 15,24,120,139 Komet 65,163 Komsomol’sk na Amure 119 Korovin, E.A. 31,79 Koryakin, V.S. 155 Kostritsyn, B.V. 78,79 Kozhevnikov, F.I.113 Krasin see under expeditions Krasinsky, G.D. 33 Krasny Oktyabr’ 24–6, 33 Kravchenko, D. 153–8; see also expeditions Krenkel’, E.T.61,101,162 Kropotkin, Peter 41,95 Kruzenshtern, P.P. 12, 13, 18,104,158 Kuznetsov, N.V. 70 Lakhtin, V.L. 31–5, 39–1, 41, 48–1, 62–4, 79, 81, 82, 109, 168 Laktionov, A.F. 96, 103–8 Laptev Sea 59, 70,108,115, 120 LASH ships 147–1 Law of the Sea 116,121,168; Second Conference (1958) 81, 111; Third Conference 114 Lebedev, A.I. 44–7, 89 Lena 117 Lena river 14, 70, 120,135–40 Lenin (icebreaker) 38, 62 Lenin (nuclear icebreaker) 118, 127, 128, 131,132,139,142–6 Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich (1870–1924) 63, 97– 2,160 Leningrad 138, 141 Leninsky Komsomol 107 Leonid Brezhnev 138, 140, 142–6; see also Arktika Lerner, Theodore 7–8 Letopis’ Severa 9, 149, 163 Levanevsky, Sigismund Aleksandrovich (1902–37) 59, 61,102

INDEX 227

Lindley, M.F. 27–9 literature, arctic 2–4, 44–7; Soviet 45–49, 57–59, 61–3, 65,88–105, 148–4, 157–9, 167; and Writers’ Union 57; see also Ahlmann, A.; Belov, M.I.; Dezhnev, Semen Ivanovich; Laktionov, A.F.; Pinegin, N.V.; Pinkhenson, D.M.; Vize, Vladimir Yulevich Litke 55,60 Litke, F.P, (1797–1882) 12,104,158 Litvinov, Maxim M. (1876–1951) 29 Lomonosov, M.V. (1711–65) 84,93 Longa, Proliv 139–3,142,176

nickel 68–69,125–9,129,162; platinum 125; silver 135; tin 135,146,120; uranium 4; see also Arktikugol Moffett, Rear Admiral W.A. 25 Molodtsov, S.V. 78–79 Monchegorsk 69,126 Münzer, Hieronymus 149,156 Murman Scientific Expedition see under expeditions Murmansk 59, 126–30, 131, 132–6 Murmansk biological station see PLAVMORNIN Murmansk Shipping Company 117, 120, 122,129,143, 144, 148

Macmillan expedition see under expeditions Magadan 55,56 Makarov, Admiral Stepan Ossipovich (1848–1904) 14,19,94 Maleyn, A.I.58 Malygin 37,38,43,44, 62 Mangazeya 10–11, 83, 90, 92, 150–5 Manhattan112, 123–8, 146 mare clausum doctrine 81–3 Matochkin Shar 9,12 Meighen, Arthur 22–4 Mercator projection 22, 92 Merchant Fleet: Ministiy of 117, 174; North East Administration of 137 meteorology 36, 44, 50, 65,103,162–8, 174; and stations 21,40,42, 61,102, 140–4 Michael I, Tsar (1596–1645) 9–11, 18, 80,92 Mikoyan 68 Miller, D.Hunter 28, 40–2 Miller, G.F. (1705–83) 88 minerals see mining mining: coal 5,7–9, 16, 38, 53, 55–7, 62, 68–69, 117, 125,146, 154; cobalt 125; copper 129,162; diamonds 135; gold 4, 5, 55,125,135,146,162;

Naezdnik xii,17,20 Nagursky, Yan (1883–1917) 29,99 Nansen, Fridtjof (1861–1930) 3, 8,13, 30, 67,102,161 NARKOMVODA 55 Nassau Straits see Yugorsky Shar Naumov, Daniil (voevod, Mangazeya) 150 Nautilus 105,117,154 Navarin 129,131–5 navigation 123–32; see also ice navigation; shipping Nechaev.B.N. 115 Nentsy 11 NIKEL enterprise 126 Nia Sagaydak 141–5, 144 Nizhneyansk 139 NKVD 55,57, 69,176; see also GPU Nobile, Umberto (1885–1978) 28,33–6, 38, 39,43,99,167 Nordenskidld, A.E. (1832–1901) 8–9, 12– 13,15,18,44–7, 65, 67, 82,95–9, 104,148, 162,168 Nordkvist, V.A. 148, 162 Norge 20, 28–29,33 Noril’sk 38, 54, 69, 100, 128; development of 125–9

228 INDEX

North Pole 2, 16, 22, 27, 28–29, 37, 61, 77, 103–8, 105 Northeast expedition see under expeditions Northeast Passage xii, 12–13, 14–16, 36, 37, 44–7, 47, 53, 67, 71, 82, 86, 93, 94–9, 104, 122,149, 151, 168 Northem Ice Sea 14, 20, 26 Northern Scientific Industrial Expedition see under expeditions Northem Sea Route xii, 37–9, 43, 47, 48– 7, 60, 64–6, 65–71, 80, 82–6, 88–1, 94– 99, 104–8, 110–15, 116–1, 121, 126, 135–41,147–1,159–6,168–4, 173; Administration of 113, 140–4, 161; see also GVSMP Northwest Passage 44, 105–10, 112, 117, 125, 158–3 Northwind 108–12, 110 Norway see under sovereignty; territorial claims note diplomatique (1916) 15–16, 20, 22 Novaya Zemlya 7, 9–12, 13, 14, 20, 42, 43, 91–4, 149, 153, 171, 177 Novosibirskaya Ostrova 13–14, 64, 108, 111,133,176 Ob’river 32,37,38,80,83, 115 Obnichev, V.A. (1863–1956) 149 Odnopozov, P.S. 115 oil 112,114–18, 123–8, 129–3, 146–50, 162, 173, 175 Okha 140,143,145,147 Okladnikov, A.P. 83 Organisation for the support of Defence, Aviation and Chemistry see OSOAVIAKHIM Orlova, N.S. 88,89–2 Osetrovo 137 Osipov, K. 84, 89 OSOAVIAKHIM 33,33,176 Ostrov Geral’d 26, 43 Ostrov Vrangelya 16,21–6,33, 43–5, 46, 165, 176 Ovsyannikov, O.V. 150–5, 154 PAK (govemmental commission for the Arctic) 41–3, 161

Pakhtosov, P.K. (1800–35) 18,104 Palamarchuk, P.G. 115–19 Papanin, Ivan Dmitrievich xii, 61–3, 64, 76, 100–4 Pasetsky, V.M. 157–3, 162, 164, 168 Pavel Ponomarev 129, 131–5 Payer-Weyrecht expedition see under expeditions Peary, Robert Edwin (1856–1920) 2, 26, 27, 50,95,96 Pechenga 126 Peter I (the Great) (1672–1725) 18, 65, 84, 104 Pevek 135–40, 138, 138–2, 140, 142–6 Pimenova, E.K. 44 Pinegin, N.V. 45, 96,101–5 Pinkhenson, D.M. 88, 89, 94–97, 98, 161 PLAVMORNIN 36, 41, 165 Point Barrow 20, 33 Poirier, P. 2, 21, 22, 27 polar stations 37, 42, 43, 51–4, 73,156, 161, 162 Polevoy, B.P. 148 Pollution Prevention Act, Arctic Waters (1970) 112–16 Poluostrov Yamal 130–4 Pomory 12, 82–9, 90–3,92, 93, 150, 153, 155–60, 168, 176 Ponomarev, Captain Pavel 118 Pmdhoe Bay 112 Rabochy 56,60; loss of64 radio stations 19, 28, 58, 63, 64–6, 73, 94, 98; use in disasters 35 railways 17, 54, 69–2,116,121–6, 125–9 see also BAM railway; Tayshet-Ust’Kut railway; Trans-Siberian Railway Repin Institute 150 Rikhter, Zinaida 44 ro-ro ships 122 Royal Canadian Mounted Police 24, 27 Rusanov 44 Rusanov, V.A. (1875–1913) 16, 87,94, 102, 158

INDEX 229

Russian Polar Expedition see under expeditions Sabanin, A.V. see ‘Aktivist O.A.Kh.’ Samburg 132 Samotlor 146–50 Samoylovich, R.L. (1881–1940) 35–7, 39– 1, 41, 44, 44, 49–2, 58, 76, 102, 162; death of 50 Sargo 105 Seadragon 105–10 Second World War 59, 67–9, 72–4, 75, 89, 109,162,163 sector theory: and America 25–8; and Antarctic 71–79; and Britain 27–9, 72–4; and Canada 22–4, 25, 44,112; and France 27; and Soviet Union 29, 31–5, 41–3, 62– 5, 77–81, 99, 165 Sedov 38, 42, 43–5, 62 Sedov, Lieutenant G.Ya. (1877–1914) 16, 45, 47, 50, 96–97,102–6,156–1; death of 42 Semen Chelyuskin 120,137,139 SEVEKSPEDITSIYA see Northern Scientific Industrial Expedition under expeditions Severmorput’ 147–1 Sevemaya Zemlya 35, 37, 40, 42, 43–5, 86, 87; discovered 15, 108, 177 Shchel’ya (karbas) 150 Shenandoah 25 Shepilov, Alkesandr 109 shipping 7, 9, 14, 36, 51–4, 57, 60, 64–6, 67–9, 70, 92–5,115,139–3, 143–51, 174; development of 16–20, 116–6; and international trade 37–39, 45, 94–7; tankers 146–50; see also navigation; timber Shmidt, O.Yu. (1891–1956) 42, 43, 58–59, 61, 64, 94 Siberia 24, 40, 88, 92–5, 94,104,135, 144, 147, 150, 162–7

Siberian seas 80–3, 90,108–13,115–19; East 24, 33, 55, 59, 108,115 Sibir’ 115, 127, 128, 132, 133–8,138, 143 Sibiryakov 47, 50, 53, 56, 67, 99, 157, 163, 167; sinking of 68 Sidorov, M.K. (1823–87) 60–3; Sigrist, S.V. 30, 39 Skate 107–11 Skorokhodov, Mikhail 150 Slavin, S.V. 67, 97–1, 116–1, 160, 162 Smedal, Gustav 43 Smolka, H.P. 54, 58–59 Smollet, H.P. see Smolka, H.P. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich (1918–) 56 Sopotsko, A.A. 152 sovereignty: and Canada 112–16; and Norway 154; and Russia 11–12, 15, 19–20, 21; and Soviet Union 4, 24–6, 30, 32, 39– 1, 43, 51, 77, 79–3, 105–14, 113, 173; and United States 72, 74, 113 Sovetsky Sever 33, 43 SPETSSTROY 70 Spitsbergen 5, 12, 14, 20, 22, 33–6, 39–1, 48–1, 62–4, 72–4, 83, 91, 150, 154–60, 168, 170; geological exploration of 16; Iegal status of 27 Stalin, losif Vissarionovich (1879–1953) 1– 2, 31, 33, 53,57–60, 67, 71, 99, 102–6, 121, 167–4 Starostin family 49, 92, 156 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur (1879–1962) 3, 21– 6, 58, 94, 100, 165 submarines, nuclear: 105–10; development of 118 Svalbard see Spitsbergen Svalbard Treaty 72–4 Svetlana 7–8 Sweden see under territorial claims Taymyr 21, 43, 53, 61, 103, 156; built 15

230 INDEX

Taymyr Peninsula 14, 92–5, 98,150, 151, 156 Tayshet-Ust’kut railway 120, 137; see also railways terra nullius 7, 20 territorial claims: American 21, 23–5, 25–8; British 23–6,32, 46, 159; Canadian 21–5, 26–8, 32, 165; Norwegian 23, 28, 32, 40–4, 62–5, 72– 4, 154; Russian 9–12, 15–16; Soviet 23–5, 26, 41–3,173; Swedish 7–9 Tiksi 70,120,135–40 timber 19, 38–39, 55, 67, 69, 122, 135, 147; carriers 137, 143–7; see also shipping Toll, Eduard (1858–1902) 13–14, 103, 168 see also expeditions Tovaro-Obmen expeditions see under expeditions trade, intemational see under shipping Trans-Siberian Railway 14, 19, 68, 70–2; building of 18–19; see also railways Treshnikov, A.F. (1914–) 65,164,175 Twentieth Party Congress 116, 117, 118 Twenty-sixth Party Congress 148 United States of America see under territorial claims; sovereignty Urengoy 141,142–6 Urengoy-Uzhgorod gas pipeline 130, 135, 173; see also gas, natural Urvantsev, N.N. 69 Ushakov, G.A. (1901–63) 43–5,99–3 Vaygach 21, 53, 103,156; built 15 Veer, Gerrit de 10, 46, 58, 86, 153 Vil’kitskogo, Proliv 70–2,108, 109, 117, 176 Vil’kitsky expedition see under expeditions Vttya Sitnitsa 135, 144

Vize, Vladimir Yulevich (1886–1954) 36–8, 44,168; and his writings 46–50, 58, 59–1, 65–8, 81, 82–6, 87–88, 90, 96–97,99,100 Vladivostok 15, 24, 53, 57, 138,142,147 Vladivostok 134, 138, 142 Volgoles 120 Vorkuta 69, 125 Voronin, Captain V.I. (1890–1952) 42, 57, 102 Vyshnepol’sky, S.A. 78, 79–3, 110 Wätsilä shipyard 69,119,128,146 waters: ‘internal’ 77, 79, 81, 108, 110–14; and ‘straight base-line’ 115; territorial 30, 32, 79, 81; see also ‘historic waters’ Whaling Convention, International 75 White Sea 12, 17, 32, 48, 82 Wiggins, Captain Joseph 13,18–19, 49,67, 135 Wilkins, Sir George Hubert (1888–1958) 28, 33, 105 Witsen, Nicolaas (1641–1717) 11, 86, 89, 90 Witte, Sergei Yu. (1849–1915) 13, 14, 16, 18–19 Wrangel, Ferdinand P.von (1796/7–1870) 21, 104 Wrangel Island see Ostrov Vrangelya Wunderland, Operation 73, 163 Yakutia 68–70,137 Yamal Peninsula see Poluostrov Yamal Yenisey 117 Yenisey river 17, 37, 38, 45, 80,115; charting of 18–19, 127, 128, 132; port built on 69 Yermak 5, 12–13, 18, 19; built 14, 68,139 Yugorsky Shar 9, 10 Zaliv Simsa 83–6, 2 Zelenny, Mys 139, 144, 176 Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa 14, 16, 36, 39–5, 47, 133, 177; discovery of 13, 150 Zeppelin airships 30, 36, 49