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Natalia Mikhalchenko. The hand that baptized Christ

The hand that baptized Christ

The biggest event of this summer for Russian Christians was the presence of the ark with the right hand of St. John the Baptist. Millions of believers worshiped the shrine. The Ark has long since returned to Montenegro to the Cetinje Monastery, and the memory of true Christians returns again and again to the meeting with the right hand who baptized Jesus Christ. Our newspaper did not ignore this great event. Now that passions have subsided, let's once again turn over the pages of the history of the shrine, and also remember little known facts from the history of Russia, related to it.

The incorrupt hand of John the Baptist was brought by the Evangelist Luke from Sebastia, where the body of the Prophet was buried by his disciples, to Antioch, and later to Chalchidon. In the 10th century, the right hand was transferred to Constantinople, where it remained for more than five centuries. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the shrine came into the possession of Muslims.

In 1484, upon the death of the conqueror of Constantinople, Mehmed II, his son Sultan Bayezid II, guided by political goals, donated the greatest shrine of Christianity to the Order of Malta. right hand Holy Prophet and Baptist of the Lord John. In 1799-1913, the shrine was owned by the Russian imperial family, after the Knights of Malta donated it to Emperor Paul the First. October 13, 1919 Count Pavel Ignatiev, Minister of Public Education Russian Empire, took them to Estonia, to the city of Revel. For some time she was there in the Orthodox cathedral, and then was secretly transported to Denmark, where the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna was in exile. After her death, her daughters, Grand Duchesses Ksenia and Olga Alexandrovna, handed over the shrine to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad to Metropolitan Anthony. For some time the shrine was in the Orthodox Cathedral of Berlin, but in 1932, shortly before the Nazis came to power in Germany, Bishop Tikhon handed over the shrine to King Alexander I Karageorgievich of Yugoslavia, who kept them in the chapel of the Royal Palace, and then in the church of the country palace on the island of Dedinji . In April 1941, with the beginning of the occupation of Yugoslavia by German troops, the 18-year-old King of Yugoslavia Peter II and the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Gabriel (Dozic), took the great shrines, including the right hand of John the Baptist, to the remote Montenegrin monastery of St. Basil of Ostrog, where they secretly were preserved. In 1951, employees arrived at the monastery special service, confiscated the shrines and transferred them to the State Repository of the Historical Museum of the city of Cetinje. In 1993, the right hand of St. John the Baptist was returned to the believers. Since that time, the shrine has been in the Cetinje Monastery.

The travel route of the right hand of John the Baptist across Russia initially did not include the city of Gatchina. But the parishioners of the house church of the Gatchina Palace insisted on changing the route, and after St. Petersburg the ark was transported to this small town south of Northern capital. It was not by chance that the church hierarchy listened to the opinions of these parishioners. Firstly, a parish in a house church is unusual. It consists exclusively of museum employees who free time are engaged in the restoration of the temple. Secondly, the ceremony of donating a Christian shrine to Emperor Paul the First took place right here, on his family estate, in Gatchina, beloved by this monarch. The gift was presented by the Knights of the Catholic Order of Malta - the sovereign Military Order of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, to whom the Russian Emperor granted political asylum.

In the fall of 1799, the solemn transfer of ancient Christian shrines to the Russian emperors for eternal possession took place. Paul the First timed the weddings of his two daughters, Elena and Alexandra, on October 12 and 19, 1799, to coincide with this event. Paul blessed both daughters with Maltese shrines, and he himself attended the wedding ceremonies in the full vestments of the Grand Master of the Order of Malta. This was not just a sign of gratitude to the donors, on the contrary, it was a conscious choice of the monarch, who considered it possible to combine in his person the incompatible titles of the Orthodox Tsar and the Supreme Leader of the Catholic Order.

And if today the worship of a Christian shrine in Orthodox Russian churches does not cause surprise, despite the fact that the shrine originally belonged to the knights of the Catholic order, then the adoption by the Orthodox Tsar Paul the First of the title of Grand Master of the Catholic Order of St. John of Jerusalem, widely known by its abbreviated name Order of Malta, became one of the most controversial events in Russian history. This happened on November 13, 1798. Emperor Paul I accepted this title after receiving a proclamation with a request to lead the order on October 27, 1798, instead of the still reigning Grand Master Fra Ferdinand von Gompesch, which was composed by the knights of the order. Paul granted political asylum to the Knights of Malta in Russia after their stronghold on the island of Malta fell to the Napoleonic army.

Remaining an Orthodox Tsar, he accepted the title of Grand Master of the Order of Malta and introduced its symbol - an eight-pointed white cross - into the coat of arms of the Russian Empire. The four ends of the cross symbolize Christian virtues, and the eight corners symbolize the good qualities of a Christian. White cross symbolizes the impeccability of knightly honor on the bloody field of war. The Maltese Cross also became the highest award for Russian nobles, who wore it above all other orders and insignia.

The Catholic Church also assessed the action of the Russian Tsar ambiguously. The proclamation of a married non-Catholic as the head of a Catholic monastic order was invalid, from the point of view of the Catholic bureaucracy, and was not recognized by the Holy See, which was then a necessary condition for legitimacy. However, Emperor Paul I was recognized by many knights and a number of governments in Europe. IN official history Of the Order of Malta he is regarded as the Grand Master de facto, but not de jure.

The Russian period in the history of the Order of Malta was short-lived and ended shortly after the death of Paul the First. On the night of March 12, 1801, the emperor was killed. Alexander I never tried to become Grand Master of the order. Both Grand Russian Priories (divisions of the order in Russia) established by Paul presented four candidates for the post of Grand Master to Pope Pius VII, and on February 9, 1803, the Italian Fra Tommasi became the new Grand Master. On January 20, 1817, Alexander I countersigned a resolution of the Council of Ministers, according to which the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem itself in Russia was declared non-existent. With this, the Sovereign Order of Malta ended its stay in Russia. Russian nobles stop wearing the Maltese cross above all other awards, and its image disappears forever from the Russian coat of arms.

The military order of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta traces its history to a hospital in Jerusalem, which was founded by several merchants from Amalfi, a city on south coast Italy, between 1023 and 1040, shortly before the Great Schism of 1054, which divided Christians into Catholics and Orthodox. The hospital consisted of two separate buildings - for men and women. During his reign, the Church of Mary the Latin was built, and the Day of Remembrance of John the Baptist was celebrated as the most solemn holiday. Therefore, the knights of the order later began to be called Johannites. Their main concern was the creation of hospices in many cities of Palestine. Those in need there were given bread, clothing, and shelter. After the capture of Jerusalem, the remnants of the crusaders initially found shelter in Cyprus (from 1291 to 1310), then the order settled in Rhodes for 214 years, where it turned into a small sovereign state, then the knights were given ownership of the island of Malta, where their headquarters were located until Napoleon drove them out of there. Then the knights found protection in the person of the Russian emperor.

But even 200 years later, traces of the Order of Malta in Russia can be found here and there. The most striking artistic symbol of that time was the Priory Palace in Gatchina, built by architect Nikolai Lvov from earthen bricks. The palace, like the history of the union of the Orthodox emperor with the Order of Malta, is fraught with many mysteries. It leaves a “fascinating” impression on anyone who sees it.

The author of the palace restoration project, Irina Lyubarova, tried to unravel the reason for such a strong emotional impression of the palace on the audience and proved that it was built using the proportions of the “golden” section. The palace is absolutely asymmetrical, but is perceived by the human eye as a very harmonious architectural ensemble. The high-rise dominant feature of the palace, the tower, corresponds to the overall width of the building. The tower focuses the tension growing from the surface of the lake near the walls of the palace to the buildings, courtyard, roofs, the ratios of neighboring elements are built according to the Fibonacci series. The philosophical component of the architectural ensemble, according to Irina Lyubarova, symbolizes the relationship between “Yes” and “No,” “towers” and “not towers,” presence and absence, heights and failures. The prior never visited his residence.

Thanks to the study of the history of the Order of Malta in Russia, the historian and famous literary critic and Pushkin scholar Mikhail Safonov put forward a new version of the reason for the duel of Alexander Sergeevich. The key to new version Safonov found in a lampoon well known to the entire literary community, which the poet received shortly before his death, and directly related to it. The scientist translated the French test differently than was customary and discovered that its author was well aware of the subtleties of Maltese terminology and practice catholic church, and besides, he was a Russian man, since he wrote a French text based on Russian tracing papers. These three factors narrowed the circle of potential authors of the libel, while excluding from it Heeckeren, who was previously considered to be the author of the lines that mortally insulted Pushkin. In addition, Safonov’s version diverts suspicions of infidelity, and as a consequence the cause of the duel, from the poet’s wife, the beautiful Natalie. In Safonov’s translation, Pushkin is called not the Master of the Order of Cuckolds, but the Master of the Order of Unfaithful Spouses. The researcher believes that the author of the libel could have meant the infidelity of the poet himself, and not his wife.

Besides artistic culture, religion and architecture, the story of the Knights of Malta is ingrained in the minds of reality TV fans. Revival of traditions pre-revolutionary Russia, when its citizens suddenly began to remember their princely and count origins, it also led to the appearance of a huge number of impostors, including self-proclaimed Knights of Malta. The Sovereign Military Order Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, now located in Rome, founded the “Committee on Fake Orders,” Peter Canisius von Canisius, Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Sovereign Order of Malta in Russia, told the Parliamentary Gazette. He named 8 self-proclaimed "Orders of St. John of Jerusalem", currently operating also in Russian Federation, in Ukraine, Estonia and Moldova. He noted that "these and other self-proclaimed 'Orders of St. John of Jerusalem' have common feature- they want to use history for their own purposes, good name, prestige and status of the subject international law Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta (Sovereign Order of Malta). Some of these structures sometimes change their names or their location and, thus, add even more confusion to the overall motley picture of self-proclaimed “orders”. The Sovereign Order of Malta is determined to take all measures to expose and stop the activities of the self-proclaimed "Grand Masters", "Grand Priors", "Priors" and their self-proclaimed "Orders of St. John" by all legal and appropriate means.

Natalia Mikhalchenko

The hand that baptized Christ

The biggest event of this summer for Russian Christians was the presence of the ark with the right hand of St. John the Baptist. Millions of believers worshiped the shrine. The Ark has long since returned to Montenegro to the Cetinje Monastery, and the memory of true Christians returns again and again to the meeting with the right hand who baptized Jesus Christ. Our newspaper did not ignore this great event. Now that passions have subsided, let's once again turn over the pages of the history of the shrine, and also remember the little-known facts from the history of Russia associated with it.

In 1484, upon the death of the conqueror of Constantinople, Mehmed II, his son Sultan Bayazid II, guided by political goals, donated to the Order of Malta the greatest shrine of Christianity - the right hand of the holy Prophet and Baptist of the Lord John. In 1799-1913, the shrine was owned by the Russian imperial family, after the Knights of Malta donated it to Emperor Paul the First. On October 13, 1919, Count Pavel Ignatiev, Minister of Public Education of the Russian Empire, took them to Estonia, to the city of Revel. For some time she was there in the Orthodox cathedral, and then was secretly transported to Denmark, where the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna was in exile. After her death, her daughters, Grand Duchesses Ksenia and Olga Alexandrovna, handed over the shrine to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, Metropolitan Anthony. For some time the shrine was in the Orthodox Cathedral of Berlin, but in 1932, shortly before the Nazis came to power in Germany, Bishop Tikhon handed over the shrine to King Alexander I Karageorgievich of Yugoslavia, who kept them in the chapel of the Royal Palace, and then in the church of the country palace on the island of Dedinji . In April 1941, with the beginning of the occupation of Yugoslavia by German troops, the 18-year-old King of Yugoslavia Peter II and the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Gabriel (Dozic), took the great shrines, including the right hand of John the Baptist, to the remote Montenegrin monastery of St. Basil of Ostrog, where they secretly were preserved. In 1951, special service officers arrived at the monastery, seized the shrines and transferred them to the State Repository of the Historical Museum of the city of Cetinje. In 1993, the right hand of St. John the Baptist was returned to the believers. Since that time, the shrine has been in the Cetinje Monastery.

The travel route of the right hand of John the Baptist across Russia initially did not include the city of Gatchina. But the parishioners of the house church of the Gatchina Palace insisted on changing the route, and after St. Petersburg the ark was transported to this small town south of the Northern capital. It was not by chance that the church hierarchy listened to the opinions of these parishioners. Firstly, a parish in a house church is unusual. It consists exclusively of museum workers who, in their free time, are engaged in the restoration of the temple. Secondly, the ceremony of donating a Christian shrine to Emperor Paul the First took place right here, on his family estate, in Gatchina, beloved by this monarch. The gift was presented by the Knights of the Catholic Order of Malta - the sovereign Military Order of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, to whom the Russian Emperor granted political asylum.

And if today the worship of a Christian shrine in Orthodox Russian churches does not cause surprise, despite the fact that the shrine originally belonged to the knights of the Catholic order, then the adoption by the Orthodox Tsar Paul the First of the title of Grand Master of the Catholic Order of St. John of Jerusalem, widely known under the abbreviated name of the Order of Malta, became one of the most controversial events in Russian history. This happened on November 13, 1798. Emperor Paul I accepted this title after receiving a proclamation with a request to lead the order on October 27, 1798, instead of the still reigning Grand Master Fra Ferdinand von Gompesch, which was composed by the knights of the order. Paul granted political asylum to the Knights of Malta in Russia after their stronghold on the island of Malta fell to the Napoleonic army.

Remaining an Orthodox Tsar, he accepted the title of Grand Master of the Order of Malta and introduced its symbol - an eight-pointed white cross - into the coat of arms of the Russian Empire. The four ends of the cross symbolize Christian virtues, and the eight corners symbolize the good qualities of a Christian. The white cross symbolizes the impeccability of knightly honor on the bloody field of war. The Maltese Cross also became the highest award for Russian nobles, who wore it above all other orders and insignia.

The Catholic Church also assessed the action of the Russian Tsar ambiguously. The proclamation of a married non-Catholic as the head of a Catholic monastic order was invalid, from the point of view of the Catholic bureaucracy, and was not recognized by the Holy See, which was then a necessary condition for legitimacy. However, Emperor Paul I was recognized by many knights and a number of governments in Europe. In the official history of the Order of Malta he is seen as the Grand Master de facto, but not de jure.

The military order of the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta traces its history to a hospital in Jerusalem, which was founded by several merchants from Amalfi, a city on the southern coast of Italy, between 1023 and 1040, shortly before the Great Schism of 1054, which divided Christians into Catholics and Orthodox. . The hospital consisted of two separate buildings - for men and women. During his reign, the Church of Mary the Latin was built, and the Day of Remembrance of John the Baptist was celebrated as the most solemn holiday. Therefore, the knights of the order later began to be called Johannites. Their main concern was the creation of hospices in many cities of Palestine. Those in need there were given bread, clothing, and shelter. After the capture of Jerusalem, the remnants of the crusaders initially found shelter in Cyprus (from 1291 to 1310), then the order settled in Rhodes for 214 years, where it turned into a small sovereign state, then the knights were given ownership of the island of Malta, where their headquarters until Napoleon kicked them out. Then the knights found protection in the person of the Russian emperor.

Thanks to the study of the history of the Order of Malta in Russia, the historian and famous literary critic and Pushkin scholar Mikhail Safonov put forward a new version of the reason for the duel of Alexander Sergeevich. Safonov found the key to the new version in a lampoon well known to the entire literary community, which the poet received shortly before his death, and which was directly related to it. The scientist translated the French test differently than was customary, and discovered that its author was well aware of the intricacies of Maltese terminology and the practice of the Catholic Church, and in addition, he was a Russian person, since he wrote the French text based on Russian tracings. These three factors narrowed the circle of potential authors of the libel, while excluding from it Heeckeren, who was previously considered to be the author of the lines that mortally insulted Pushkin. In addition, Safonov’s version diverts suspicions of infidelity, and as a consequence the cause of the duel, from the poet’s wife, the beautiful Natalie. In Safonov’s translation, Pushkin is called not the Master of the Order of Cuckolds, but the Master of the Order of Unfaithful Spouses. The researcher believes that the author of the libel could have meant the infidelity of the poet himself, and not his wife.

In addition to artistic culture, religion and architecture, the history of the Knights of Malta is ingrained in the minds of reality TV fans. The revival of the traditions of pre-revolutionary Russia, when its citizens suddenly began to remember their princely and count origins, led to the appearance of a huge number of impostors, including self-proclaimed Knights of Malta. The Sovereign Military Order Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, now located in Rome, founded the “Committee on Fake Orders,” Peter Canisius von Canisius, Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Sovereign Order of Malta in Russia, told the Parliamentary Gazette. He named 8 self-proclaimed "Orders of St. John of Jerusalem", currently operating also in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Estonia and Moldova. He noted that “these and other self-proclaimed “Orders of St. John of Jerusalem” have a common feature - they want to use for their own purposes the history, good name, prestige and status of a subject of international law of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta (Sovereign Order of Malta Some of these structures sometimes change their names or their location and thus add even more confusion to the overall motley picture of the self-proclaimed "orders". The Sovereign Order of Malta is determined to take all measures to expose and stop the activities of the self-proclaimed "Grand Masters", "Grand Priors", "Priors" and their self-styled "Orders of St. John" by all lawful and appropriate means.

Natalia Mikhalchenko

The Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic contains a photograph of the send-off of the icebreaking steamship "Alexander Sibiryakov" in Arkhangelsk on July 28, 1932 - the embankment is full of people. This was a time of concentration of state efforts in a new direction - the development of the Arctic. Newspaper editorials talked about the polar explorers; artists Lev Kantorovich and Fyodor Reshetnikov, photographer and cameraman Pyotr Novitsky, director and cameraman Mark Troyanovsky, journalist Vladimir Shneiderov, the future first presenter of the “Film Travelers Club,” were taken on board the Sibiryakov for the legendary voyage.

Reshetnikov, known to any schoolchild from the picture from the primer "Again deuce", patiently listened to two refusals of Schmidt's request to take him on the expedition. Only his persistence helped: before going to sea, Fyodor hung an entire wall in the Sibiryakov's wardroom with funny cartoons, near which members of the expedition, including Schmidt and the head of the scientific part of the expedition, Vladimir Wiese, stopped and laughed heartily. The works of Reshetnikov and Kantorovich, Troyanovsky’s films, and a dozen books by expedition participants make it possible to reconstruct the course of the expedition almost minute by minute and feel its atmosphere.

"Alexander Sibiryakov" became the first ship in the world to navigate the Northern Sea Route from Arkhangelsk to Far East for one navigation. Sailors have dreamed about this since the second half of the 19th century. In 1878–79, the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Nordenskiöld tried to make the crossing in one navigation on the ship Vega, but was forced to winter, a little short of reaching the Bering Strait. While he was collecting a botanical collection on one of the islands, the ice completely blocked the passage. The Russian Hydrographic Expedition of the Arctic Ocean (GESLO) in 1910–1915 on the icebreakers "Taimyr" and "Vaigach" tried to pass the route several times and returned, spent the winter, then again tried to get from Vladivostok to Arkhangelsk and finally reached it - in 1915 .

A Soviet expedition led by Otto Schmidt in 1932 was able to solve the problem.

Ice conditions

“The voyage was fraught with a certain risk, especially since the Alexander Sibiryakov was a rather weak ship,” says Sergei Frolov, head of the ice navigation laboratory of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of Roshydromet. “He had only one Steam engine- about two thousand Horse power. For comparison: modern nuclear icebreaker has a power of 75 thousand horsepower, the scientific expedition vessel "Akademik Treshnikov" - 16.8 thousand horsepower. There was very little data on ice conditions. What we now call hydrometeorological support was absent. The navigators had little experience in piloting ships in ice."

Ice reconnaissance air groups at that time consisted mainly of seaplanes, which were based on ships. The plane landed on the water, then it was lifted onto the deck by a crane. The seaplane, which was supposed to carry out ice reconnaissance during the voyage, suffered an accident, and we had to proceed based on our own observations from on board the ship.

In the 30s of the twentieth century, the first warming was planned - the edge of the ice moved north, it was “something similar to what is happening now,” says Sergei Frolov. But there was also interannual variability: the Sibiryakov passed the route in 1932, and the Chelyuskin in 1934 was crushed by ice and sank.

Propeller failure and drift

Approaching the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, the expedition members discovered that the Vilkitsky Strait was clogged with heavy ice. And to the north - open water. Thus, for the first time in the history of navigation, the Sibiryakov circled the archipelago from the north. The second round of the archipelago by a non-icebreaker took place only in 1995, 63 years later. "I took part in this expedition. On the ship "Kandalaksha" with the Japanese we went around Severnaya Zemlya from east to west within international program“Northern Sea Route,” says Sergei Frolov.

Ice conditions in the Chukchi Sea have become more difficult. “Ice was our enemy, and the harder the fight against it became, the more we hated it,” wrote Vladimir Wiese in the book “On the Sibiryakov - to the Pacific Ocean.” In the area of Kolyuchinskaya Bay, the expedition began to encounter piles of ice floes.

"It was a streak broken ice, explains Sergei Frolov. - Then the tactics of coastal navigation were used. It was believed that the further you go to the North, the heavier the ice. Then it turned out that sometimes the ice presses to the shore, and to the north there is a space with clean water. The Sibiryakov team had no information where the ice was."

They tried to sail the steamer at a slow speed, in which the impact of the propeller on the ice floe was not so strong. But when the machine was running at low speed, the ship did not move forward at all: the ice was very heavy. In the end, the propeller was finally broken on the ice. This happened on September 18, when the ship had traveled 3,500 miles, and there were about a hundred miles left to the Bering Strait.

Vladimir Wiese described the most dramatic moment of the campaign as follows: “There is a terrible crash - we have never heard anything like this - then an eerie silence sets in. It’s not a blade anymore, it’s the end of the propeller that has broken off, and we have lost the entire propeller, which now lies on the bottom of the sea.” Sibiryakov" ceased to be a ship and became a plaything of currents and winds. I sat down at the piano in the wardroom and began to play "Prince Igor".

"Every cloud has a silver lining"

The question of the direction of the drift became practically a matter of life and death for the crew. All changes in drift, wind and ice conditions were recorded every hour. No one has ever worked in this mode before. At that time, almost nothing was known about the prevailing currents in the Chukchi Sea.

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” I wrote in my diary that day,” Wiese writes. - Our drift will give interesting material to judge the regime of currents in the Chukchi Sea, which we, of course, would not have gotten without losing the propeller." Hydrobiologists also took advantage of new opportunities and lowered a special trap, which sometimes came with a rich catch. Hunters wandered the ice in search of the animal, but almost always They returned empty-handed. Only once did they catch a seal - it became the prey of a bear cub that was on the Sibiryakov.

At first the drift speed was about 0.6 miles per hour. Past steep cliffs Cape Heart-Stone, the steamer was already carrying at a speed of about 5 miles per hour. In three days, the Sibiryakov drifted 45 miles towards the Bering Strait. There were still 60 miles left to Cape Dezhnev, when the drift speed began to decrease, and from September 21 the steamer was dragged into reverse side. The Arctic grossly violated the calculations of the Siberians, who calculated that there were four days left to drift. We anchored, but this did not help for long: as soon as a larger ice floe fell on the anchor chain, the ship began to drift at the speed of the surrounding ice.

Icebreaking steamship "Alexander Sibiryakov"

The ship was built in English shipyards in 1909 under the name "Bellaventure" and was used for seal fishing. In 1915, it was acquired by the Ministry of Trade and Industry of the Russian Empire for winter voyages in the White Sea and renamed in honor of the entrepreneur and explorer of Siberia Alexander Sibiryakov. During the Great Patriotic War, the ship worked as a supply ship and was equipped with light weapons. On August 26, 1942, the ship caught fire and sank during a battle with the heavy German cruiser Admiral Scheer. The crew was partially killed, 13 people were taken prisoner, fireman Pavel Vavilov escaped on Belukha Island.

The site of the death of "Sibiryakov" was discovered only in 2014. A memorial plaque was attached to the hull of the icebreaking steamer in memory of the dead sailors

Continuation

Under sails and northern lights

On September 27, the pressure began to increase, a northwest wind blew and waterways began to form around the ship. There were no sails on the Sibiryakov, but there were large tarpaulins that served to cover the hold hatches. They were pulled, and the steamer moved along the waterways at the speed of half a knot. Everyone was in the most cheerful mood, and those who were “crazy” immediately turned into ardent optimists, Wiese wrote. "Sibiryakov" moved, albeit slowly, but independently.

It is this sailing trip that is depicted on the mural in the Arctic and Antarctic Museum. The artist Lev Kantorovich, who participated in the expedition, depicted in the engraving a ship with a homemade sailing rig surrounded by the northern lights. Sergey Frolov noted that the solution with sails was also possible because a significant part of the team was from Arkhangelsk. “And the Pomors have the ability to handle sails at the genetic level,” he says.

The weather changed on September 29, and the ship was quickly dragged south. The next day, the researchers saw Cape Dezhnev. "Here we go around the last ice floe and finally come to clean water, wrote Wiese. - We are free! We won! A mighty cheer erupts from the chests of the Siberian people and spreads across the expanse of the sea. They salute with rifle salvoes from the forecastle."

The first "northeast passage" in one navigation ended on October 1. At 15:10, the tug "Ussuriets" approached the ship.

The tug "Alexander Sibiryakov" moved for another month along Pacific Ocean to Yokohama, Japan, where it was repaired. When approaching Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka, Otto Schmidt received a government telegram: “Warm greetings and congratulations to the expedition members who successfully resolved the historical task of through navigation on Arctic Ocean in one navigation. Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Yanson."

After a two-week stay in Tokyo, the expedition members returned to Moscow and Leningrad via Vladivostok, and the ship, having received a new propeller, left Japan on January 1, 1933. Having circled Eurasia to the south, the ship arrived in Murmansk on March 7. "Sibiryakov" became the second ship to circumnavigate the entire continent. Nordenskiöld's Vega spent 672 days on this journey, Sibiryakov - 223.

The conclusions made by the expedition participants became a program for the development of the Arctic, implemented quite quickly. They were that the Northern Sea Route can be used for practical navigation along its entire length, but it is necessary to create and use special vessels that can actively fight ice. One icebreaker should be located in the Taimyr Peninsula area, and the other in the Chukchi Sea.

Air bases should be established for ice reconnaissance. Small aircraft should be on the lead ships of the caravans. Several fuel bases should be established on the Northern Sea Route. The ice regime should be studied in detail arctic seas. Navigation planning should be based on long-term ice forecasts.

Glavsevmorput

The Sibiryakov's voyage became the trigger for the development of the Northern Sea Route, says Sergei Frolov. “Things were heading that way, but it was Sibiryakov’s campaign that started the process,” says the scientist. According to him, this trip was very knowledge-intensive. “The Sibiryakov team collected primary data on currents, water and air temperatures, synoptic, geological, and hydrographic studies,” says Frolov.

An important result of the expedition was the creation of an interdepartmental structure for the development of the Arctic - the Main Northern Sea Route. From the moment of its creation, on December 17, 1932, the structure was headed by the head of the expedition on the Alexander Sibiryakov, Otto Schmidt.

“The development of knowledge of the Arctic and the need for cargo transportation at the time of Sibiryakov’s voyage reached peak values,” says Sergei Frolov. “The development of the Arctic met the geopolitical interests of the state: it was a new route on which our country could set its own rules and be a monopolist. There was and purely economic interest - there was something to transport, and military - it was necessary to defend our territories from the north."

The Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route was responsible for the economic development of the Arctic and ensuring navigation along the Northern Sea Route. The Main Northern Sea Route united everything: Agriculture, transport, industry, education, and at some stage there was an overabundance of functions. According to Frolov, this was logical, since arctic conditions close to the army: this constant danger, economic risks, sensitivity of northern nature to careless impacts.

The overabundance of functions of the Main Northern Sea Route led to their gradual transfer to other departments in post-war period and to the dissolution of the structure itself.

“Now it is impossible to recreate the Main Northern Sea Route,” says Sergei Frolov. - Principles of organization economic activity other. The leading shipping companies that worked on the route - Murmansk, Far Eastern - have now become private and decide for themselves what is more profitable for them to transport and where." According to the scientist, some of the experience of the Main Northern Sea Route can be used again. An element of this approach, he considers the re-creation of a unified administration of the Northern Sea Route, which is located in Moscow. Frolov also believes that it is necessary to significantly strengthen the hydrographic and hydrometeorological support of the route, since there is still a lot of unexplored information on it.

The expert does not agree with the thesis that is often heard now: “Russia is returning to the Arctic.” “Russia never left there,” he says. “At some point there was a slightly smaller presence, projects were closed, but the cycle of observations remained continuous.”

Natalia Mikhalchenko, Alina Imamova

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