The Presidential Library provided a trip to the North Pole in the footsteps of the expedition of Georgy Sedov

The grand opening of the multimedia exhibition "In the Footsteps of Georgy Sedov's Expeditions to the North Pole" took place on February 25, 2022 at 12:00 as part of the traditional annual conference "The Arctic Day at the Presidential Library" in the building on Senate Square, 3. The exhibition was organized jointly with the editors of Rossiyskaya Gazeta and the Northern Maritime Museum (Arkhangelsk).

The year 2022 is marked by two memorable dates associated with the name of the polar explorer: on May 5, it will be 145 years since the birth of Georgy Sedov, and on August 27, 110 years since the departure of the Sedov expedition on the ship "Svyatoy Foka" from Arkhangelsk to the North Pole.

March 22, 1912 is considered to be the day the expedition began. On this day in St. Petersburg, Georgy Yakovlevich began preparing the expedition, submitting a corresponding report to the Main Hydrographic Department. He announced his intention to go to the North Pole and outlined the plan of the expedition he planned.

For the first time, the exhibition at the Presidential Library presented unique evidence of the expedition: color photographic slides by Nikolai Pinegin, an artist and writer who took part in the polar journey. The photographs, which are now stored in the Northern Maritime Museum of Arkhangelsk, were made in the St. Petersburg photo studio of Shpakovskaya-Smirnitskaya in 1915 specifically for further demonstration in cinematographs. In total, the Pinegin collection includes 80 photo-transparencies. In the spring of 2022, the photographs will be published in a book that the Northern Maritime Museum has timed to coincide with the anniversary of Georgy Sedov.

Visitors to the multimedia exhibition were able to follow the route of the expedition and see how the northern territories have changed over 110 years. Modern photographs taken by Rossiyskaya Gazeta correspondents will help with this. Journalists, together with representatives of the Northern Maritime Museum, traveled in the footsteps of Sedov and his comrades (the expedition was preparing for departure and departed from Arkhangelsk), as well as to places associated with the work of Georgy Yakovlevich on Novaya Zemlya. Photo reports allow comparing historical and modern pictures of the corners of Arkhangelsk and the territories of Novaya Zemlya.

Director of the Northern Maritime Museum Yevgeny Tenetov and director of the North-Western Branch of Rossiyskaya Gazeta Anzhelika Gurskaya attended the opening of the exhibition. They presented exhibits to visitors and tell about the journey in the footsteps of Sedov's expedition.

The historical documents related to Sedov's expedition are available on the Presidential Library's portal thanks to the virtual tour of the exhibition Pushing the Frames of the World Within the Globe. The exposition dedicated to the discoveries of Russian explorers of the Arctic and Antarctic includes maps and little-known photographs from the collections of the Emperor Peter the Great Central Naval Museum. Among them are everyday sketches from the trip, photographic portraits of Georgy Sedov and Nikolai Pinegin and others.

The Presidential Library’s collections contain rare publications authored by Nikolai Pinegin: In the icy expanses: Georgy Sedov’s expedition to the North Pole (1933), Polar Explorer’s Notes (1936) and others.

The exhibition “In the Footsteps of Georgy Sedov’s Expeditions to the North Pole” is available until March 31, 2022.

To visit the exposition please pre-register by phone (812) 334-25-14 or send an e-mail to: excursion@prlib.ru.