Saga of the Sedov

One of the many little-known facts about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is that some 25% of its territory lies north of the Arctic Circle. The Soviet Arctic (some of which is south of the Circle) is the Soviet Union's pioneerland, a vast (2,316,600 sq. mi.), cold, potentially rich region, bigger than the West that lay before the pioneering U. S. 100 years ago. Since 1932 the U. S. S. R. has systematically explored its northland, not only for its resources (nickel, copper, lumber, coal, reindeer, fish, fur), but in an ambitious effort eventually to open for year-round navigation the narrow passage of ice-choked water, now navigable only in summer, which fringes the tundras just south of the Arctic Pack. If that Northeast Passage were open. Russia would have an all-Russian sea route from its European frontier to the Pacific, 3,000 miles shorter than the 9,000-mile Odessa-Vladivostok route, and would fulfill a dream of Peter the Great's to make a place for Russia on the seas. Last week Moscow hailed 15 heroes who had got into a lot of trouble helping to bring fulfillment of that dream nearer.

In the summer of 1937, the Soviet icebreaker Sedov was doing exploration work in the Kara Sea and making a hydrological survey of the Laptev Sea, two links of the Northeast Passage (see map). In October, most of her work done, she was sent to the rescue of two other icebreakers, the Sadko and Malygin, icebound in the floes of the Laptev. Winter set in early that year, and on Oct. 23 the Sedov was fast in the ice too. Professor Rudolph Lazarevich Samoilovich. leader of the expedition, ordered the 217 men and women aboard the three ships to settle down to a winter of scientific observation.

By March 2, 1938, the Sedov had drifted 3DEG north. 21DEG east. On that day the drift of the ice floes shifted and the three ships began to move northwestward toward the North Pole. Meanwhile Joseph Stalin had sent an air expedition to rescue the crews. The fliers reached the ships on April 2, promptly arrested Professor Samoilovich for bungling, thereby giving him the distinction of being arrested closer to the North Pole than any other man in history.

On Aug. 28 the icebreaker Yermak reached the ships, towed the Sadko and Malygin to clear water. The Sedov, her screw damaged, was left in the ice. Aboard her were 14 men picked for stamina from the four ships, under Constantine Badigin. who had been elected captain of the Sedov. The new icebreaker J. Stalin tried to reach the Sedov, but another winter set in and she had to give up. At this point Joseph Stalin decided to turn the Arctic fiasco into an asset. He purged the Glavnoye Upravlenya, Severnovo Morskovo Puty (Central Administration of the Northern Sea Route--Glavsevmorput' for short), kicked its chief. Professor Otto Schmidt, upstairs into a vice-presidency of the Academy of Sciences, named 46-year-old Ivan Papanin (who had made himself famous by drifting from the North Pole almost to central Greenland on an ice pan) to be head of Glavsevmorput'. Then the Soviet press started whooping up the drift of the Sedov as a national adventure story. Its goals: to drift closer to the North Pole than Nansen's celebrated Fram (1893-96); if possible, to reach the Pole (where Ivan Papanin planted the Red Flag in 1937).

Northward drifted the Sedov. On Oct. 23, 1938, the crew celebrated the ship's first year in the ice floe, received a radio message from Comrades Stalin and Molotov saying: "We are confident that with the Bolshevik firmness characteristic of Soviet people you will overcome all difficulties and return victorious. We warmly shake your hands." Answered the crew: "No hardships, danger or privation will daunt us." Hardships, danger and privation there were plenty. Food was cached in tents across the ice, in case they had to abandon ship suddenly. One mild morning, when the temperature was only --15DEG F., the ice began grinding harder than usual. Men at the hydrographic tent fired a warning shot and the Sedov's crew went scampering across the ice toward the tent. As they arrived an ice heap bore down on the tent, burying it. The men escaped, but they had to work five hours digging out food cases and barrels of fuel oil, sledging them to a new depot.

Through the long Arctic night the 15 men busied themselves testing the water beneath the ice cap (they found it rich in flora), measuring the speed of their drift against the wind velocity (they verified Nansen's conclusion that speed of drift depends on wind), charting the geography of the Arctic (they determined the northwestern shore of the Laptev Sea. exploded a 125-year-old myth about the existence of Sannikov Land). On Jan. 30, they saw the sun again, like a flame over the southern horizon.

On Feb. 17, 1939, the Sedov arrived at Lat. 85DEG, 56', 42" N.; Long. 120DEG, 13', 20" E.--just 1.2 miles closer to the North Pole than Nansen got. The crew lined up on the bridge and fired a salute. Wirelessed Captain Badigin: "For several hours the crew looked out over a region never before visited by a ship in the history of humanity." Three days later the Sedov drifted across the 86th parallel, northernmost point of its journey.

All spring the crew worked to repair the steering gear and by June the Sedov's movements could be partly controlled. July 11 was the first clear summer day, with the temperature 2DEG. That evening some of the men went canoeing.

By Aug. 23 summer was ending, the temperature was down to --6.5DEG. During June and July the Sedov had drifted slowly northwestward, averaging 1.6 miles a day because of the lack of wind. Many times it had crossed its own path. All summer the crew had seen only two white bears and some seagulls and finches. One of the bears they shot, roasted, ate.

In the fall its drift was west by south, carrying it away from the Pole. On Oct. 23 was celebrated the second anniversary of the drift, with 37 kinfolk of the crew sending them words of cheer over the radio. On Nov. 7, 22nd anniversary of the October Revolution, the 15 men. carrying red banners and rifles, marched by torchlight to a mound of ice, and before this makeshift tribune lustily cheered the Land of the Soviets, the Communist Party and Comrade Joseph Stalin.

On Dec. 3 a loud rattling noise was heard near the Sedov. A fissure appeared in the ice. The ice field was split and hummocks began to pile up. The Sedov was drifting southward now. In Moscow, Comrade Stalin thought it was high time to get the 15 heroes home and so he ordered Glavsevmorput's Papinin to go to their aid in the J. Stalin. The J. Stalin left Murmansk Dec. 15. fought gales and ice fields until Jan. 5, when it sighted the Sedov. It took ten days for the J. Stalin to buck her way through the ice to the Sedov. Then the two crews had to heat the Sedov's hull, dynamite the ice to break up an ice cup weighing several thousand tons. The last of the cup was finally torn off on the way to Barentsburg.

From Barentsburg to Murmansk the J. Stalin and her tow sailed a narrow corridor between two cyclones. On Jan. 29, just 959 days after she had set sail in 1937, the scarred and battered Sedov was eased to dockside in Murmansk. Four days later her 15 heroes climbed down from a train in the Moscow station, to be named "Heroes of the Soviet Union," given the Order of Lenin and 25,000 rubles. Secretary Alexander Scherkaboff of the Moscow Communist Party greeted them with these words:

"Your heroic achievement is worthy to be compared to the exploits of the glorious Red Army which has been victorious in the East and the West and is now defending Leningrad and our Soviet Fatherland."

Said Captain Badigin (who was just about to dine with Comrade Stalin): "We of the Sedov never lost heart, because we knew not only the U. S. S. R. but Stalin himself was watching and protecting us."

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