1.
Tsarskoye Selo
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Tsarskoye Selo was the town containing a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located 24 kilometers south from the center of Saint Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin, Tsarskoye Selo forms one of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments. During the Soviet times it was known as Detskoye Selo, in the 17th century, the estate belonged to a Swedish noble. Its original Finnish name is translated as a higher ground. Max Vasmer, on the hand, derives this toponym from the Finnish word for island, saari. By the 18th-century at the latest, it was called Tsarskoye Selo, in 1708, Peter the Great gave the estate to his wife, the future Empress Catherine I, as a present. She founded the Blagoveschensky church there in 1724, and changed the name of the settlement to Blagoveschenskoye and it was Catherine I who started to develop the place as a royal country residence. Her daughter, Empress Elizabeth and her architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli were largely responsible for the building of the Catherine Palace, later Empress Catherine II of Russia and her architect Charles Cameron extended the palace building that is now known as the Cameron Gallery. Currently, there are two palaces, the baroque Catherine Palace with the adjacent Catherine Park and the neoclassical Alexander Palace with the adjacent Alexander Park. The landscape Alexander Park has several Chinoiserie structures, notably the Chinese Village, by the end of the 18th century, Tsarskoye Selo became a popular place of summer residence among the nobility. The guards regiments were stationed to the south of Tsarskoye Selo, the five-domed neoclassical Ascension Cathedral, designed by Cameron, is the chief monument of that area. The Royal Forestry School, perhaps the first such school in Russia, was founded in Tsarskoye Selo in 1803, it was moved to Saint Petersburg in 1811, in 1808, Sophia and Tsarskoye Selo merged and became one town. In 1811, Alexander I opened the celebrated Lyceum next door to the Catherine Palace, among the first students of the Lyceum who graduated in 1817 were Aleksandr Pushkin and Alexander Gorchakov. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin also graduated from the Lyceum, the literary traditions of Tsarskoye Selo were continued in the 20th century by such notable poets as Anna Akhmatova and Innokenty Annensky. The town escaped the 19th century industrialization, although it was between Tsarskoye Selo and St. Petersburg that the first Russian railway was built in 1837 and it was also known for its powerful government radio station that was set up here in 1917. In the spring of 1917, Emperor Nicholas II was held under arrest in his favourite residence, the Alexander Palace. In 1918, Tsarskoye Selo was renamed by the Bolsheviks into Detskoye Selo and in 1937 it was renamed again to the town of Pushkin, thus commemorating the centenary of the poets death. On September 17,1941, the Germans occupied the town of Pushkin, destroying and plundering many historical monuments, buildings and other cultural artifacts, the Red Army liberated the town on January 24,1944
2.
Sea ice
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Sea ice arises as seawater freezes. Because ice is less dense water, it floats on the oceans surface. Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth’s surface and about 12% of the world’s oceans. Much of the sea ice is enclosed within the polar ice packs in the Earths polar regions, the Arctic ice pack of the Arctic Ocean. Polar packs undergo a significant yearly cycling in surface extent, a natural process upon which depends the Arctic ecology, due to the action of winds, currents and temperature fluctuations, sea ice is very dynamic, leading to a wide variety of ice types and features. Sea ice may be contrasted with icebergs, which are chunks of ice shelves or glaciers that calve into the ocean, depending on location, sea ice expanses may also incorporate icebergs. Sea ice does not simply grow and melt, during its lifespan, it is very dynamic. Due to the action of winds, currents, water temperature. Sea ice is classified according to whether or not it is able to drift, Sea ice can be classified according to whether or not it is attached to the shoreline. If attached, it is called landfast ice, or more often, alternatively, and unlike fast ice, drift ice occurs further offshore in very wide areas, and encompasses ice that is free to move with currents and winds. The physical boundary between fast ice and drift ice is the fast ice boundary, the drift ice zone may be further divided into a shear zone, a marginal ice zone and a central pack. Drift ice consists of floes, individual pieces of sea ice 20 metres or more across, the term pack ice is used either as a synonym to drift ice, or to designate drift ice zone in which the floes are densely packed. The overall sea ice cover is termed the ice canopy from the perspective of submarine navigation, another classification used by scientists to describe sea ice is based on age, that is, on its development stages. These stages are, new ice, nilas, young ice, first-year, new ice is a general term used for recently frozen sea water that does not yet make up solid ice. It may consist of ice, slush, or shuga. Other terms, such as ice and pancake ice, are used for ice crystal accumulations under the action of wind. Nilas designates a sea ice crust up to 10 centimetres in thickness and it bends without breaking around waves and swells. Nilas can be subdivided into dark nilas – up to 5 centimetres in thickness and very dark
3.
Georgy Sedov
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Georgy Yakovlevich Sedov was a Russian Arctic explorer. Born in the village of Krivaya Kosa of Taganrog district in a fishermans family, in 1898, Sedov finished navigation courses in Rostov-on-Don and acquired the rank of long voyage navigator. In 1901, he took a degree in Naval College. In 1902—1903, Sedov participated in an expedition in the Arctic Ocean. During the Russo-Japanese War he was in charge of a torpedo boat, in 1909, he led the expedition that would later describe the mouth of the Kolyma river. A year later Sedov explored the Krestovaya Bay on Novaya Zemlya, in 1912, he suggested a sleigh expedition for reaching the North Pole. The Tsarist government refused to finance this project, and the expedition was organized with the help from independent sources, on August 14,1912, Sedovs ship Svyatoy Muchenik Foka left Arkhangelsk and had to stay for the winter near Novaya Zemlya because of impassable ice. The expedition reached Franz Josef Land only in August 1913, however, on February 2,1914, Sedov and his accompanying seamen G. Linnik and A. Pustotniy set off for the North Pole with their draft dogs. Before reaching Rudolf Island, Sedov died at sea and was buried at Cape Auk on this island, on the way back, at Franz Josef Land, the Svyatoy Foka rescued two survivors of the Brusilov expedition, including Valerian Albanov. As part of the search for the Sedov expedition Jan Nagórski made the first airplane flights over the Arctic, gaining valuable experience for later aeronautical expeditions to the region. Two gulfs and a peak on Novaya Zemlya, a glacier and a cape on Franz Josef Land, an island in the Barents Sea, there was also a steam icebreaker Georgy Sedov. Jan Nagórski Professor Vize Artykuł w Bolshoy Sovetskoy Enciklopedii
4.
Novaya Zemlya
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Administratively, it is incorporated as Novaya Zemlya District, one of the twenty-one in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. Municipally, it is incorporated as Novaya Zemlya Urban Okrug and its population as of the 2010 Census was 2,429, of which 1,972 resided in Belushya Guba, an urban-type settlement that is the administrative center of Novaya Zemlya District. The population in 2002 was 2, 716 , the indigenous population consisted of about 50–300 Nenetses who subsisted mainly on fishing, trapping, reindeer herding, polar bear hunting and seal hunting. Natural resources include copper, lead, and zinc, Novaya Zemlya was a sensitive military area during the Cold War years and it is still used today. The Soviet Air Force maintained a presence at Rogachevo on the part of the island. It was used primarily for aircraft operations but also provided logistical support for the nearby nuclear test area. Novaya Zemlya is an extension of the Northern part of the Ural Mountains, and it is separated from the mainland by the Kara Strait. Novaya Zemlya consists of two islands, separated by the narrow Matochkin Strait, as well as a number of smaller islands. The two main islands are, Severny —which has an ice cap, the Severny Island ice cap. Yuzhny, which is largely unglaciated and has a tundra landscape, the coast of Novaya Zemlya is very indented, and it is the area with the largest number of fjords in the Russian Federation. Novaya Zemlya separates the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea, the total area is about 90,650 square kilometers. The highest mountain is located on the Northern island and is 1,547 meters high, the ecology of Novaya Zemlya is influenced by its severe climate, but the region nevertheless supports a diversity of biota. One of the most notable species present is the polar bear, the Russians knew of Novaya Zemlya from the 11th century, when hunters from Novgorod visited the area. For western Europeans, the search for the Northern Sea Route in the 16th century led to its exploration, the first visit from a west European was by Hugh Willoughby in 1553, and he met Russian ships from the already established hunting trade. Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya in 1594, during a later voyage by Fyodor Litke in 1821–1824, the west coast was mapped. Henry Hudson was another explorer who passed through Novaya Zemlya while searching for the Northeast Passage, the island was systematically surveyed by Pyotr Pakhtusov and Avgust Tsivolko in the early 1830s. The first permanent settlement was established in 1870 at Malye Karmakuly, later the administrative center was transferred to Belushya Guba, in 1935 to Lagernoe, but then returned to Belushya Guba. Small numbers of Nenets were resettled to Novaya Zemlya in the 1870s in a bid by Russia to keep out the Norwegians and this population, then numbering 298, was removed to the mainland in 1957 before nuclear testing began
5.
Franz Josef Land
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It consists of 191 islands, which cover an area of 16,134 square kilometers, stretching 375 kilometers from east to west and 234 kilometers from north to south. The islands are categorized in three groups, a western, central and eastern, separated by the British Channel and the Austrian Strait, the central group is further divided into a northern and southern section by the Markham Strait. The largest island is George Land, which measures 2,741 square kilometers, followed by Wilczek Land, Graham Bell Island, eighty-five percent of the archipelago is glaciated, with large unglaciated areas being located on the largest islands and many of the smallest islands. The islands have a coastline of 4,425 kilometers. Compared to other Arctic archipelagos, Franz Joseph Land has a high rate of 3.6 square kilometers per coastline kilometer. Cape Fligely on Rudolf Island is the northernmost point of the Eastern Hemisphere, the highest elevations are found in the eastern group, with the highest point located on Wilczek Land,670 meters above mean sea level. The archipelago was first spotted by the Norwegian sealers Nils Fredrik Rønnbeck and Johan Petter Aidijärvi in 1865, the first reported finding was in the 1873 Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition led by Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht, who named the area after Emperor Franz Joseph I. The islands, then under the name Fridtjof Nansen Land, were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1926, the Kingdom of Norway rejected the claim and several private expeditions were sent to the islands. With the Cold War, the islands became off limits for foreigners, the islands have been a nature sanctuary since 1994 and became part of the Russian Arctic National Park in 2012. There are two candidates for the discovery of Franz Josef Land, the first was the Norwegian sealing vessel Spidsbergen, with captain Nils Fredrik Rønnbeck and harpooner Johan Petter Aidijärvi. They sailed northeast from Svalbard in 1865 searching for suitable sealing sites, the account is believed to be factual, but an announcement of the discovery was never made, and their sighting therefore remained unknown to subsequent explorers. It was at the common to keep newly discovered areas secret, as their discovery was aimed at exploiting them for sealing and whaling. The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of 1872–74 was the first to announce the discovery of the islands, starting in July 1872, the vessel drifted from Novaya Zemlya to a new landmass, which they named in honor of Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria. The expedition contributed significantly to the mapping and exploration of the islands, the next expedition to spot the archipelago was the Dutch Expedition for the Exploration of the Barents Sea, on board the schooner Willem Barents. Constrained by the ice, they never reached land, benjamin Leigh Smiths expedition in 1880, aboard the barque Eira, followed a route from Spitsbergen to Franz Josef Land, landing on Bell Island in August. Leigh Smith explored the vicinity and set up a base at Eira Harbour and he returned the following year in the same vessel, landing at Grey Bay on George Land. The explorers were stopped by ice at Cape Flora, and Eira sank on 21 August and they built a cottage and stayed the winter, to be rescued by the British vessels Kara and Hope the following summer. These early expeditions concentrated their explorations on the southern and central parts of the archipelago, nansens Fram expedition was an 1893–1896 attempt by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen to reach the geographical North Pole by harnessing the natural east–west current of the Arctic Ocean
6.
Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
7.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
8.
Airship
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An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from large gas bags filled with a gas that is less dense than the surrounding air. In early dirigibles, the gas used was hydrogen, due to its high lifting capacity. Helium gas has almost the same lifting capacity and is not flammable, unlike hydrogen, significant amounts were first discovered in the United States and for a while helium was only used for airships by the United States. Most airships built since the 1960s have used helium, though some have used hot air, the envelope of an airship may form a single gas bag, or may contain a number of internal gas-filled cells. An airship also has engines, crew, and optionally also payload accommodation, the main types of airship are non-rigid, semi-rigid, and rigid. Non-rigid airships, often called blimps, rely on internal pressure to maintain the shape of the airship, semi-rigid airships maintain the envelope shape by internal pressure, but have some form of supporting structure, such as a fixed keel, attached to it. Rigid airships have a structural framework which maintains the shape and carries all structural loads. Rigid airships were first flown by Count Zeppelin and the vast majority of rigid airships built were manufactured by the firm he founded, as a result, rigid airships are called zeppelins. S. Navy helium-filled rigids, the USS Akron and USS Macon respectively, during the pioneer years of aeronautics, terms such as airship, air-ship, air ship and ship of the air meant any kind of navigable or dirigible flying machine. In 1919 Frederick Handley Page was reported as referring to ships of the air, in the 1930s, large intercontinental flying boats were also sometimes referred to as ships of the air or flying-ships. Nowadays the term airship is used only for powered, dirigible balloons, semirigid architecture is the more recent and the late appearance is caused by both advancements about deformable structures and exigiency of reducing weight and volume of the airships. They have a structure that ensure to keep the shape jointly with overpressure of the gas envelope. An aerostat is an aircraft which remain aloft using buoyancy or static lift, Airships are a type of aerostat. The term aerostat has also used to indicate a tethered or moored balloon as opposed to a free-floating balloon. A blimp is a non-rigid aerostat, in American usage it refers specifically to a non-rigid type of dirigible balloon or airship. In British usage it refers to any non-rigid aerostat, including balloons and other kite balloons, having a streamlined shape. The initials LZ, for Luftschiff Zeppelin, usually prefixed their crafts serial identifiers, streamlined Parsifal-shaped rigid airships are usually referred to as Zeppelin, because of the fame that this company has acquired due to the number of airships it produced
9.
LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin
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LZ127 Graf Zeppelin was a German-built and -operated, passenger-carrying, hydrogen-filled, rigid airship which operated commercially from 1928 to 1937. When it entered service in 1928, it became the first commercial passenger transatlantic flight service in the world. It was named after the German pioneer of airships, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, during its operating life, the airship made 590 flights covering more than 1.7 million kilometers. It was designed to be operated by a crew of 36 officers, the LZ127 was the longest rigid airship at the time of its completion and was only surpassed by the USS Akron in 1931. It was scrapped for fighter plane parts in 1940. S, the LZ-126 had been delivered at NAS Lakehurst, New Jersey, in October 1924, where it was commissioned as the USS Los Angeles. Construction began in 1926 with the aid of a government grant although the majority of the necessary 2 million Reichsmarks in funding would eventually be raised by public subscription, the LZ127 was completed and launched in September 1928. It was powered by five Maybach VL-2 12-cylinder 550 hp engines that could burn either Blau gas or gasoline. Although the Graf could achieve a top airspeed of 128 km/h at its power of 1,980 kW. Some flights were made using only Blau gas carried in the dozen power gas cells which enabled the airship to cruise for up to 100 hours, using gasoline alone it was able to cruise for 67 hours, and up to 118 hours using both. The Graf Zeppelin had a lift capacity of 87,000 kg with a usable payload of 15,000 kg on a 10,000 km flight. An ascending ladder located in the map room allowed access to a keel corridor inside the hull, the map room also had two large windows, one on each side, which permitted navigators to shoot the horizon and sky with a sextant. The passenger cabins were set by day with a sofa which converted to two beds, one above the other, at night, the crews quarters were located inside the hull and were reached by a catwalk. The galley was equipped with an electric oven with two compartments and hot plates on top for cooking. One luxury that was not provided on the Graf Zeppelin was heating, the main generating plant was inside the hull and consisted of two fuel-burning generators. Two small ram air turbines attached to the main gondola on swinging arms supplemented electrical power for the room, internal lighting, the galley. Batteries stored the electrical energy so that operation was independent of airspeed. The gondola also had a generator for emergency power. The Graf was outfitted with the most modern equipment then available
10.
Laptev Sea
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The Laptev Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands and its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with co-ordinates of 79°N and 139°E, and ends at the Anisiy Cape. The Kara Sea lies to the west, the East Siberian Sea to the east, the sea has a severe climate with temperatures below 0 °C over more than 9 months per year, low water salinity, scarcity of flora, fauna and human population, and low depths. It is frozen most of the time, though clear in August. The sea shores were inhabited for thousands of years by tribes of Yukaghirs and then Evens and Evenks. They were then settled by Yakuts and later by Russians, Russian explorations of the area started in the 17th century. They came from the south via several large rivers which empty into the sea, such as the prominent Lena River, the Khatanga, the Anabar, the Olenyok, the Omoloy, the sea contains several dozen islands, many of which contain well-preserved mammoth remains. Major human activities in the area are mining and navigation on the Northern Sea Route, the largest settlement and port is Tiksi. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Laptev Sea as follows, the eastern limit of Kara Sea. A line joining Cape Molotov to the Northern extremity of Kotelni Island, from the Northern extremity of Kotelni Island – through Kotelni Island to Cape Madvejyi. Then through Malyi Island, to Cape Vaguin on Great Liakhov Island, thence to Cape Sviatoy Nos on the main land. Using current geographic names and transcription this definition corresponds to the shown in the map. The seas border starts at Arctic Cape on Komsomolets Island at 81°13′N 95°15′E and connects to Cape Rosa Luxemburg, the next segment crosses Red Army Strait and leads to Cape Vorochilov on October Revolution Island and afterwards through that island to Cape Anuchin at 79°39′37″N 100°21′22″E. Next, the border crosses Shokalsky Strait to Cape Unslicht at 79°25′04″N 102°31′00″E on Bolshevik Island and it goes further through the island to Cape Yevgenov at 78°17′N 104°50′E. From there, the border goes through Vilkitsky Strait to Cape Pronchishchev at 77°32′57″N 105°54′4″E on the Tamyr peninsula, the southern boundary is the shore of the Asian mainland. Prominent features are the Khatanga Gulf and the delta of the Lena River, in the east, the polygon crosses the Dmitry Laptev Strait. It connects Cape Svyatoy Nos at 72. 7°N141. 2°E /72.7,141. 2 with Cape Vagin at 73°26′0″N 139°50′0″E in the very east of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. Next, the Laptev Sea border crosses Eterikan Strait to Little Lyakhovsky Island at 74. 0833°N140. 5833°E /74.0833,140. 5833 up to Cape Medvezhiy, finally, there is a segment through Kotelny Island to Cape Anisy, its northernmost headland 76°10′N 138°50′E
11.
Yermak (1898 icebreaker)
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Yermak was a Russian and later Soviet Union icebreaker, the first polar icebreaker in the world, having a strengthened hull shaped to ride over and crush pack ice. Yermak was built for the Imperial Russian Navy under the supervision of vice-admiral S. O. Makarov by the members of his commission, runeberg, admiral F. F. Wrangel, among others. It was built in Newcastle upon Tyne at its Low Walker yard and she was named after the famous Russian explorer of Siberia, Don Cossack ataman Yermak Timofeyevich. She was commissioned on 17 October 1898 and she arrived in Kronstadt on 4 March 1899 after breaking through ice and a formal reception was held to mark her arrival. Later in 1899 she reached 81°21N north of Spitsbergen and she had been constructed to break through heavy ice. Yermak had been used in the winter of 1899–1900 to set up the first radio link in Russia between Kotka and Gogland island. In 1900 she came to the aid of the cruiser Gromoboi which had grounded in the Baltic, between 1899–1911 Yermak sailed in heavy ice conditions for more than 1000 days. During World War I she assisted the Baltic Fleet during the Ice cruise when the fleet was evacuated from Helsinki to Kronstadt in February 1918, during World War II the Yermak was mobilised again and took part in the evacuation of Hanko naval base. She was armed with two 102 mm, two 76 mm, four 45 mm and four machine guns, Yermak served with different branches of the Russian and Soviet Navy and Merchant Marine up until 1964, becoming one of the longest-serving icebreakers in the world. An island in the Nordenskiöld Archipelago was named after her, a monument to the icebreaker Yermak was unveiled in Murmansk In November 1965 – this included mosaic panels and the original anchor on the pedestal. Another icebreaker with the name Yermak was built for the Soviet Union at the Wärtsilä Helsinki shipyard, Russia employs an icebreaker named Yermak in the Baltic Sea as late as 2010. Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet Alexander Stepanovich Popov History of icebreakers, by the US Coast Guard
