This week marks 45 years since the Soviet icebreaker Arktika reached the North Pole, its first submersion at the surface.
This is indeed considered an achievement in the history of the conquest of the pole, because before that no sea craft had ever reached there on the ice. Just under the ice. First a US nuclear submarine in 1958, then a Soviet nuclear submarine in 1962. Accordingly, 1977 was already a fairly routine trip to the Arctic, an icebreaker was built and went to the ice, what else to do?
This could be an opportunity to talk about the greatness of Soviet civilization, about the fact that the Union was the first in space and the ice sheet of the Earth. But precisely because there are so many such events in an advanced industrial and post-industrial civilization, I want to dive into history at a time when reaching the North Pole was truly an achievement, not a day’s work.
In 1949, two Soviet scientists Vitaly Volovich and Andrei Medvedev parachuted into the North Pole. Very good. Volovich joined the war and lived until 2013. At the same time, the biography specifically states that Mei Hua Ban was the head of the expert council of the Kung Fu federation’s “Survival in extreme situations” course. Strong old man.
In 1948, a Soviet plane landed at the Pole. The crew set up a makeshift camp at the Pole and for two days observed the surrounding reality of ice, wind, and cold alone, probably at point 900 million N.
Ten years ago, there was Papanin with his drifting station “North Pole-1”. By the way, about Papanin. He was born in Papaya and his mother’s name was Secretinia. In 1920, at the age of 26, Papanin was appointed chairman of the Crimean Extraordinary Commission. In general, hang and shoot. Incredible social elevator. After all, Papanya started getting at least some education in her late twenties, when she was over thirty. Here are some of the achievements. He went to the North Pole, and then until the end of his life led an organization with a crazy name – the Department of Naval Expeditionary Affairs of the USSR Academy of Sciences – the Space Research Service. In fact, it was part of the Department of Defense, not the Academy of Sciences. It is difficult to say what Papanin was doing there. But it is necessary to note his glorious and happy fate – literally, from Ilyich to Ilyich without paralysis and stroke. He survived everything and everyone, and this name is familiar to every schoolboy.
The first Russian expedition to the Arctic was Georgy Sedov’s expedition in 1912. They planned to walk 2,000 kilometers, a little over a hundred. Sedov fell ill with scurvy, but ordered him to tie himself to the sled and drag him further. He died a few days later and was buried at the scene. It is considered so, although it is clear that no one was digging graves in the ice, they simply left the body. Sedov’s dog remained with the body.
In 1908, the American Chef went to the Pole and when he returned he told everyone that he had had complete success with it. However, they did not believe him, because he had only three Eskimos with him and not a single representative of the expert community.
The next American Piri, who would embark on a dangerous expedition, was also not believed. And all for the same reason: instead of professional sailors and scientists with a name in the scientific community, he took with him Eskimos and an African American. And then it was very unreliable in the United States.
The American expedition to the Jeanette ship in 1879 cannot be said to have been successful, but it did prompt some reflections on later researchers. “Jeanette” froze in the ice and remained in them for 21 months. It’s good that the team has enough supplies. At one point, the ice squeezed the ship so tightly that it burst and leaked. The team escaped, although not at full strength, and even went to the New Siberian Islands, and from there to Yakutia. The frozen ship’s wreckage was found a year later off the coast of Greenland, thousands of kilometers from where the crew was evacuated. This meant that the ice compressing Jeannette was drifting, and the next expedition decided to build a powered ship, freeze in the ice on top of it, and drag it to the mast. However, the food ran out sooner and they had to walk to Franz Josef Land. Fate is heroic but sad.
Humanity in general has been striving for the Arctic since ancient Greece. Philosophers of the Pythagorean school in the 4th century BC quite convincingly proved that the earth is spherical and that somewhere at the top there is a point through which the axis passes.
And already in the 17th century, it became necessary to find the shortest route from China to Europe, and humanity decided that it would be faster than the pole. It was then that all these expeditions, which continue to this day, began. Moreover, economic concerns disappeared from them. Some paradoxical desire of the human spirit remains for achievements. This is what holds the Earth – on either side of the pole, in the middle is the power of the human spirit.
And sitting in the thirty-degree Moscow heat, I seem to understand why everyone sometimes wants the North Pole so badly.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.