Red Arctic This page intentionally left blank Red • Arctic Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939 JOHN McCANNON New York Oxford Oxford University Press 1998 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1998 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCannon, John, 1967- Red Arctic: polar exploration and the myth of the north in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939/John McCannon. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-511436-1 1. Russia, Northern — History. 2. Arctic regions — Discovery and exploration- Soviet. 3. Soviet Union—Territorial expansion. 4. Soviet Union. Glavnoe upravlenie Severnogo morskogo puti. 5. Soviet Union—History—1925-1953. I. Title. DK501.5.M38 1997 947—dc21 97-13937 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Acknowledgments I n the course of writing this volume, I have received encourage- ment and expertise from too many individuals and institutions to list completely. At least a few, however, deserve to be singled out. Since this work grew directly out of my graduate research, my thanks go first to the members of my dissertation committee at the University of Chicago: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Richard Hellie, and Bernard Cohn. All three provided invaluable guidance and assistance in too many ways to say. If there is a Russian studies group in North America that is more congenial and high spirited (or simply rambunctious!) than the graduate students of the Russian and Soviet History Workshop at the University of Chicago, I would be surprised to hear it. 1 was privileged to belong to the workshop from 1989 to 1994, and I would like to thank all my fellow members for more than half a decade of continuing advice, support, and friendship. For sponsoring my archival research in Russia, my appreciation goes out to the University of Chicago, the Urals Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian State Humanities University (RGGU), and the European University in Moscow. I thank Veniamin Alekseev, Evgenii Logunov, Aleksei Kilin, Vladimir Shkcrin, Sergei and Nastya Dubinskii, Sigurd Ottovich Shmidt, Vasilii Spiri- clonov, Vadim Mokievskii, Valentina Mokievskaia, and Alexander Teniakshev for their hospitality and assistance. I am also indebted to the Mellon Foundation for supporting the final stage of my dissertation work in 1993-1994. Dozens of individuals have given me suggestions, alerted me to sources, or made helpful comments and criticisms about my work. Many of them are cited in the text itself, but I would like to thank especially Daniel Alexandrov and Mark Bassin for input, advice, and insight. Also important: are the many graduate stu- dents and faculty researchers I had the good fortune to work with in the Moscow archives in 1992. In addition, my thanks go out to the participants—audience and panelists alike — of the various conference sessions in which material from this book has been presented. Of special note here are Lynne Viola, Roberta Man- ning, E. A. Rees, Douglas Weiner, Richard Stites, and all the student and faculty members of the Midwest Russian History Colloquium. For their assistance in the preparation of the final manuscript, I wish to extend my appreciation to the li- brary staffs of Northeast Louisiana University and Norwich University, as well as to the reviewers and editors at Oxford University Press who worked on Red Arc- tic — especially Thomas LeBien, Jeff Soloway, and MaryBeth Branigan. Finally, this volume is dedicated to my parents, John and Jan McCannon, who have provided me with a lifetime of support and encouragement. Red Arctic is also dedicated to my wife, Pamela Jordan, whose criticisms and suggestions played a significant role in the shaping of the book and whose love and compan- ionship have made the writing of it (and all else I do) worthwhile. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Permission to quote from James Thurber's "The Greatest Man in the World," in The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze (New York: HarperCollins, 1935), has been granted by Rosemary Thurber of Thurber Literary Properties. The map of the Soviet Arctic appears courtesy of Addison Wesley Longman, Ltd. Credits for the remainder of the illustrations are cited as they appear. Portions of chapters 4 and 5 have appeared elsewhere. For permission to reprint sections of "To Storm the Arctic: Soviet Polar Exploration and Public Vi- sions of Nature in the USSR" and "Positive Heroes at the Pole: Celebrity Status, Socialist-Realist Ideals, and the Soviet Myth of the Arctic," I am grateful to the journals Ecumene and Russian Review, respectively. Contents A Note on Transliteration ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 3 Polar Exploration and Soviet Political Economy 5 The Arctic as Popular Culture 8 Defining the Arctic 9 ONE Footholds in the North: The Russians in the Arctic, 1500-1932 12 First Steps: Opening the North, 1500-1800 13 The Arctic in the Late Imperial Period, 1800-1917 16 Building the North: The Soviet Arctic, 1917-1932 19 TWO The Commissariat of Ice: The Rise of Glavsevmorput, 1932-1936 33 The Growing Giant: GUSMP's Central Apparatus, Wl-WS 36 Science, Economic Development, and the State 40 On the Periphery: Glavsevmorput in the Field 45 THREE Days of Glory: The Major Expeditions, 1932-1939 59 The Sibiriakov Voyage (1932) 60 The Cheliuskin Epic (1933—1934) 61 Chkalov, Gromov, and Levanevsky: The Arctic Flights (1936-1937) 68 "The Pole Is Ours!": SP-i and the North Pole Landing (1937-1938) 73 The Passing of an Era 78 FOUR From Victory To Victory: The Myth of the Arctic in Soviet Culture 81 Outlooks toward Nature: The Arctic as Adversary 82 viii CONTENTS Cosmographies: Perceptions of the USSR and the World 89 A Nation of Heroes: The Individual and the State 98 Laving the Great Dream 108 FIVE Between Rhetoric and Reality: Manufacturing the Arctic Myth 11 0 Engineering Human Souls: The Arctic Myth as State Policy 111 Crafting the Myth: The Media and the Arctic 117 Consuming the Myth: The Public Responds 134 Propaganda: Effects and Limitations 143 SIX Polestar Descending: Glavsevmorput In Decline, 1936-1939 145 Glavsevmorput in Crisis 146 Glavsevmorput and the Great Purges 149 A New Primacy in llic North: Dalstroi and the Demotion ofGUSMP 168 CONCLUSION Epilogue 174 Parting Thoughts 1 76 Notes 182 Select Bibliography 211 Index 226 Illustrations follow page 58 A Note on Transliteration I n its scholarly apparatus — in its notes and bibliography—Red Arctic adheres to a strict Library of Congress transliteration of the Cyrillic alphabet. In the text, however, I have devised a method of transliter- ation that is strictly my own. This system does not pretend to complete consis- tency but provides what I hope is maximum readability. First, I have eliminated all "hard" and "soft" diacritical marks (except when I first introduce a Russian term in a parenthetical gloss). I have chosen to render terms and surnames end- ing in -skii and -kii as -sky and -ky (hence, "Gorky" rather than "Gor'kii"). Al- though feminine endings remain as -aia, rather than -aya, I have opted to elimi- nate the double i from feminine endings such as those found in "Sofiia" (instead, "Sofia") or Mariia ("Maria"). One notable exception is the title of the newspaper Izvestiia, which I have allowed to stand as is. The consonant cluster "ks" will typ- ically appear as "x" ("Alexei," not "Aleksei"). Names and words beginning in letters rendered technically as E-, It;-, and la- arc generally transliterated as Ye-, Yu-, and Yd- (therefore, "Yanson" instead of "lanson"; "Yezhov" rather than "Ezhov"). The Russian version of "Simon" has been rendered as "Semyon," although the corresponding surname remains "Se- menov" (however, "Fedor" and "Fedorov" rather than "Fyodor" and "Fyodorov"). Finally, to avoid having him sound more German than Russian, 1 have chosen to retain a strict transliteration of Otto Shmidt's surname rather than anglicizing it to "Schmidt." ix