| History | |
|---|---|
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Cargo ship |
| Displacement: | 3,100 tonnes (approx) |
Steamer Tovarishch Stalin (Comrade Stalin) was a Soviet freighter of about 3,100 tonnes displacement, active in the Arctic during the 1930s.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 30 December 1922 to 26 December 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk.
A cargo ship or freighter ship is a merchant ship that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year, handling the bulk of international trade. Cargo ships are usually specially designed for the task, often being equipped with cranes and other mechanisms to load and unload, and come in all sizes. Today, they are almost always built by welded steel, and with some exceptions generally have a life expectancy of 25 to 30 years before being scrapped.
The Arctic is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Alaska, Finland, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Northern Canada, Norway, Russia and Sweden. Land within the Arctic region has seasonally varying snow and ice cover, with predominantly treeless permafrost -containing tundra. Arctic seas contain seasonal sea ice in many places.
In 1933 Tovarishch Stalin, under Captain Sergeyev, took part in the first Soviet convoy to the mouth of the Lena River along with the steamers Pravda and Volodarskiy. The convoy leader, Captain M. A. Sorokin, was on board Volodarskiy. This convoy was led by the icebreaker Krasin (Captain Ya. P. Legzdin).
The Lena is the easternmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean. With a mean annual discharge of 588 cubic kilometers per year, it is the second largest of the Arctic rivers. It is the largest river whose catchment is entirely within the Russian territorial boundaries. Permafrost underlies most of the catchment, with 77% of the catchment containing continuous permafrost.
Steamer Pravda was a Soviet merchant freighter of about 3,100 tonnes displacement, which was active in the Soviet Arctic during the 1930s. This ship had been normally used for carrying timber. It was named after Soviet newspaper Pravda.
Steamer Volodarskiy was a Soviet freighter of about 3,100 tonnes displacement which was active in the Arctic during the 1930s. This ship had been normally used for carrying timber.
On the way back, severe ice conditions in the Vilkitsky Strait (between Severnaya Zemlya and Cape Chelyuskin), forced the three freighters to winter at Ostrov Samuila in the Komsomolskoy Pravdy Islands. A shore station was built and a full scientific programme maintained all winter by leader scientist Nikolay Urvantsev and his wife, Dr. Yelizaveta Ivanovna, the expedition's medical officer.
Vilkitsky Strait is a strait between the Taimyr Peninsula and Bolshevik Island in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. The strait connects the Kara and Laptev Seas. The length of the Vilkitsky Strait is 128 km, the width approx. 55 km and the depth between 32 m and 210 m. It is covered with drifting ice all year round. The strait was discovered in 1913 by a Russian hydrographic expedition led by Boris Vilkitsky and then named after him in 1918.
Severnaya Zemlya is a 37,000-square-kilometre (14,000-square-mile) archipelago in the Russian high Arctic. It lies off Siberia's Taymyr Peninsula, separated from the mainland by the Vilkitsky Strait. This archipelago separates two marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean, the Kara Sea in the west and the Laptev Sea in the east.
Cape Chelyuskin is the northernmost point of the Eurasian continent, and the northernmost point of mainland Russia. It is situated at the tip of the Taymyr Peninsula, south of Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The headland has a 17-metre-high (56 ft) light on a framework tower.
These ships were released in the following year by icebreaker Fyodor Litke after much effort to break a channel through the thick ice. Once freed, the freighters separated and Fyodor Litke escorted Tovarishch Stalin. Both headed west through the Vilkitsky Strait towards Arkhangelsk.
Arkhangelsk, also known in English as Archangel and Archangelsk, is a city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, in the north of European Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina River near its exit into the White Sea. The city spreads for over 40 kilometers (25 mi) along the banks of the river and numerous islands of its delta. Arkhangelsk was the chief seaport of medieval and early modern Russia until 1703. A 1,133-kilometer-long (704 mi) railway runs from Arkhangelsk to Moscow via Vologda and Yaroslavl, and air travel is served by the Talagi Airport and a smaller Vaskovo Airport. As of the 2010 Census, the city's population was 348,783, down from 356,051 recorded in the 2002 Census, and further down from 415,921 recorded in the 1989 Census.
