Icebreaker "Chelyuskin": history and fate. A tragedy turned triumph. "Chelyuskin" died because of Otto Schmidt's mistake? Like Chelyuskin in the ice

More than 70 years have passed since the heroic epic of saving the Chelyuskinites. A lot of time passed after rumors appeared about the death of a large number of prisoners on the second ship, allegedly sailing simultaneously with the Chelyuskin, and who were transported to develop mines for the extraction of tin and non-ferrous metals in Chukotka. Much is known about the former, but so little about the latter that the question of a hoax arises.

Failure of the expedition.

In August 2004, another expedition to search for the sunken Chelyuskin ended in failure. The head of the expedition, director of the Russian Underwater Museum Alexey Mikhailov, said that the reason for the failure was the falsification of data about the location of the sinking of the ship. How could it happen that the organizers of the expedition did not have the coordinates of the crash site when the Schmidt ice camp, which went down in history, was organized in this area, which allowed the rescued people, including children, to survive on the ice floe for many weeks in the conditions of the polar winter? How could it happen that the question of the need to check the version of the sinking of a second ship of identical design in the same area was never raised? After all, rescue pilots repeatedly reached the winter camp against their will. It is difficult to imagine that this was possible without knowing its coordinates. Note that, as a result of drift, the coordinates of the ice camp could change, but not the coordinates of the bottom where the sunken ship rests. What does it mean that the coordinates were falsified? This means that from the first day, the information about the location of the disaster, recorded in the ship’s log, was classified, and all information that was repeatedly published in the press about the place of death of the Chelyuskin was false. Under normal circumstances this may seem impossible - there must have been good reasons for this. Is there at least one argument why, after 70 years, it is necessary to hide the site of the sinking of a ship that was performing scientific tasks? And why do geographers and physicists who take on research tasks become accomplices in such an unjust cause? The task of any scientific expedition is to search for the truth and expand knowledge of the problem. Mentally returning to the times of Chelyuskin’s voyage, one can imagine that Otto Yulievich Schmidt, the scientific director of the expedition, set himself the most interesting scientific task of studying the Northern Sea Route and could not refuse the imposed conditions for the expedition. This could not be a question of the scientific future, but a question of life. Driven by an attempt to answer these and other questions as best I could, I began to scrupulously familiarize myself with published documents and memoirs about these events. But these researches took me noticeably away from the original plan.

A little history and the official version of the tragedy.

In February 1934, the steamship Chelyuskin sank, crushed by ice in the Chukchi Sea. One person died, and 104 crew members landed on the ocean ice. Some of the cargo and food were removed from the ship. Such a colony of people on the ice of the Arctic Ocean is unheard of. How did it happen? The Soviet government implemented the traditional Russian idea of ​​developing the eastern and northern regions of the country. It started in the 16th century by Ermak Timofeevich. It was scientifically formulated by Mikhailo Lomonosov. But the idea was implemented with the greatest intensity during Soviet times. In 1928, by resolution of the Council of People's Commissars, the Arctic Government Commission was established. It was headed by the former commander-in-chief of the country's Armed Forces S.S. Kamenev. The commission included scientists and pilots. The commission supervised the creation of naval and aviation bases and weather stations on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and regulated the navigation of ships. The first practical result of the commission’s work was the rescue of the Nobile expedition, which suffered an accident on the airship “Italy”. Thanks to her efforts, the Soviet steamship Stavropol and the American schooner Nanuk, which had wintered in the ocean ice, were saved.
To ensure the delivery of goods to the easternmost areas of the coast via the Northern Sea Route, it was necessary to try to travel the entire route from Europe to Chukotka in one short summer navigation. The icebreaker Sibiryakov was the first to do this in 1932. But the icebreakers had insufficient cargo transportation capabilities. For cargo transportation corresponding to the tasks of the development of the North, ships with a larger commercial load, adapted to navigation in the conditions of the North, were needed. This led the Soviet leadership to the idea of ​​using the Chelyuskin steamship to develop the Northern Sea Route. It was built in 1933 in Denmark at the shipyards of the famous shipbuilding company "Burmeister and Wain", B&W, Copenhagen by order of Soviet foreign trade organizations. The steamship with a displacement of 7500 tons was first called “Lena” and was launched on June 3, 1933. It made its first trip to Leningrad, where it arrived on June 5 and received a new name - “Chelyuskin” in memory of the Russian navigator and explorer of the north S.I. Chelyuskin. The steamer immediately began to be prepared for a long voyage in the northern seas. On July 16, 1933, with 800 tons of cargo, 3,500 tons of coal and more than a hundred crew members and expedition members on board, Chelyuskin left the Leningrad port and headed west, to its birthplace - Copenhagen. At the shipyard, shipbuilders eliminated some of the defects within six days. Then proceed to Murmansk, where the Sh-2 amphibious aircraft was loaded. And on August 2, 1933, “Chelyuskin” left Murmansk on its historic voyage. The voyage was successful all the way to Novaya Zemlya. Then "Chelyuskin" entered the Kara Sea, which immediately showed both its bad character and the defenselessness of "Chelyuskin" in front of real polar ice. Serious hull deformation and a leak appeared on August 13, 1933. The question arose about going back, but it was decided to continue the journey. An important event occurred in the Kara Sea - Dorothea Ivanovna (maiden name Dorfman) and surveyor Vasily Gavrilovich Vasilyev, who were heading to Wrangel Island for the winter, had a daughter. The birth record was made by V.I. Voronin in the ship's logbook "Chelyuskin". It read: "August 31. 5:30 am. The Vasiliev couple had a child, a girl. Countable latitude 75°46"51" north, longitude 91°06" east, sea depth 52 meters." The girl was named Karina. Heavy ice began to appear in the East Siberian Sea.On September 9 and 10, the Chelyuskin received dents on the starboard and port sides, one of the frames burst, and the ship's leak intensified. The experience of Far Eastern captains who sailed the northern seas said that September 15-20 is the latest date for entering the Bering Strait. Swimming in the Arctic in the fall is difficult. In winter - impossible. The ship froze in the ice and began to drift. On November 4, 1934, thanks to a successful drift, the Chelyuskin entered the Bering Strait. There were only a few miles left to clear water. But no effort by the team could save the situation. Movement to the south became impossible. In the strait, ice began to move in the opposite direction, and “Chelyuskin” again found itself in the Chukchi Sea. The fate of the ship depended entirely on the ice conditions. The ship, trapped by ice, could not move independently. Fate was not merciful. All this preceded the famous radiogram from O. Yu. Schmidt, which began with the words: “On February 13 at 15:30, 155 miles from Cape Severny and 144 miles from Cape Wellen, the Chelyuskin sank, crushed by compression of the ice...” When people found themselves on the ice, a government commission was formed to rescue the Chelyuskinites. Her actions were constantly reported in the press. Many experts did not believe in the possibility of salvation. Some Western newspapers wrote that people on the ice were doomed, and raising hopes of salvation in them was inhumane, it would only worsen their suffering. There were no icebreakers that could sail in the winter conditions of the Arctic Ocean at that time. The only hope was in aviation. The government commission sent three groups of aircraft to rescue. Note that, except for two “Fleisters” and one “Junkers”, the rest of the aircraft were domestic. The results of the crews’ work are as follows: Anatoly Lyapidevsky made one flight and took out 12 people, Vasily Molokov for nine flights - 39 people, Kamanin for nine flights - 34 people, Mikhail Vodopyanov made three flights and took out 10 people, Mauritius Slepnev for one flight - five people , Ivan Doronin and Mikhail Babushkin each made one flight and took out two people each. For two months, from February 13 to April 13, 1934, 104 people fought for life, carried out heroic work to establish an organized life on the ice of the ocean and build an airfield, which was constantly breaking up, covered with cracks and hummocks, and covered with snow... Save the human collective in such under extreme conditions - a great feat. The history of Arctic exploration knows cases when people in such conditions not only lost the ability to collectively fight for life, but even committed serious crimes against their comrades for the sake of personal salvation. The soul of the camp was Otto Yulievich Schmidt. Radio communication with the mainland was provided by the famous polar radio operator Ernst Krenkel. It may seem strange to today's readers, but there, on the ice floe, Schmidt published a wall newspaper and gave lectures on philosophy, which was reported daily in the entire central Soviet press. The entire world community, aviation experts and polar explorers gave Chelyuskin's epic the highest rating. In connection with the successful completion of the epic, the highest degree of distinction was established - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. It was assigned to pilots A. Lyapidevsky, M. Slepnev, V. Molokov, N. Kamanin, M. Vodopyanov, I. Doronin. At the same time, they were all awarded the Order of Lenin. Subsequently, “Golden Star” No. 1 was awarded to Lyapidevsky. All flight mechanics who completed the flight, including two American ones, were awarded. All members of the expedition who were on the ice floe, except for children, were awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Lie or truth?

I note that none of the versions excludes the other. The official version seems to not know about the existence of other options, he lives independently. The second version gloomily complements the first and gives a broad, inhuman interpretation of the implementation of the expedition’s goals. The task is to try to create a true picture from the information available today. If possible, disassemble these two decks and throw away the fake cards.
Within the official version, perhaps only two questions arise: about the number of people and the coordinates of the death of the ship.
When sailing from Murmansk, according to I. Kuksin, there were 111 people on the ship, including one child - the daughter of the new head of the winter quarters on Wrangel Island. This number included 52 crew members of the steamship, 29 members of the expedition and 29 staff members of the Wrangel Island research station. On August 31, 1933, a girl was born on the ship. There were 112 people on Chelyuskin. The above number of 113 people is more accurate. Before the start of the drift in mid-September, 8 people on dogs were sent to the mainland. After this, 105 people were supposed to remain on the ship. One person died when the ship sank into the depths of the sea on February 13, 1934.
The given data, up to 1 person, coincides with the number of people according to the decree on rewarding participants in the Schmidt camp. The reason for the discrepancy could not be determined.
Of particular interest is the question of the coordinates of the death of Chelyuskin. It would seem that they were certainly entered into the ship's log, reported to the mainland to ensure the search and rescue of people from the ice floe, and should have been known to every aircraft crew involved in the rescue of polar explorers.
However, as noted above, in August 2004, another expedition to search for “Chelyuskin” with the help of the scientific vessel “Akademik Lavrentyev” ended in failure. The study used data from a 1934 navigator's log. Then the expedition leader, Otto Schmidt, reported the exact coordinates in a radiogram. All coordinates known in the archives left by the expeditions of 1974 and 1979 were checked. The head of the expedition, director of the Russian Underwater Museum, Alexei Mikhailov, said that the reason for the failure was the falsification of data about the location of the ship's sinking.
I made an attempt to find this data in the foreign press of the period of salvation of the Chelyuskinites. The Los Angeles Times newspaper dated April 12, 1934 gave the following coordinates: 68o 20" north latitude and 173o 04" west latitude. longitude The navigation charts of the Far Eastern Shipping Company indicate that the Chelyuskin sank at coordinates 68 degrees 17 minutes north. latitude and 172 degrees 50 minutes z. longitude This point lies 40 miles from Cape Vankarem, on which the village of the same name is located.
In September 1989, the sunken Chelyuskin was found by Sergei Melnikov on the hydrographic vessel Dmitry Laptev. He published the updated coordinates of the death of the Chelyuskin, verified as a result of the dive to the ship. In connection with the statement about the falsification of coordinates after the end of Mikhailov’s expedition, he wrote: “I will allow myself to object and cite the exact coordinates of the Chelyuskin settlement at the disposal of the USSR Academy of Sciences, obtained by me as a result of a week-long search on the hydrographic vessel “Dmitry Laptev” using systems Magnavox satellite orientation and Mars military system: 68° 18′ 05″ 688 north latitude and 172° 49′ 40″ 857 west longitude. With numbers like these, don’t drop anchors there! These are coordinates accurate to one meter.”
Taking into account the differences in estimates of the coordinates of the sunken Chelyuskin, I attempted to clarify the controversial issues with Sergei Melnikov, who claimed that he dived to the sunken steamer and took photographs in the immediate vicinity of it at a depth of 50 meters. When asked about the significance of the discrepancies in coordinates and the presence of falsification of the initial data, S. Melnikov replied that “... the discrepancy is insignificant. Half a nautical mile. Due to the fact that in those days coordinates were taken using a manual sextant, and I used a satellite system, this is a normal mistake.”
The search was carried out “using maps of the General Staff, which do not show other sunken ships in the area. And they found it half a mile from where it was marked on the map. Therefore, we can say with almost 100% confidence that this is “Chelyuskin”. Echolocation also speaks about this - the object is 102 meters long and 11 meters high. Apparently, the steamer is slightly tilted to the left side and is practically not immersed in silt or bottom sediments.”
The insufficient validity of Mikhailov’s statement about data falsification was confirmed by a participant in the Chelyuskin-70 expedition, the head of the apparatus of the Federation Council Commission on Youth Affairs and Sports, Doctor of Sociological Sciences Alexander Shchegortsov.
Since I have taken upon myself the task of conducting an independent investigation, when analyzing the factual side of the case I will proceed from the “presumption of innocence”, i.e. I will assume that all the basic information presented by E. Belimov in “The Secret of the Chelyuskin Expedition” reflects real facts known to the author and is not burdened with conscious literary fiction.
What is the difference between fiction and history? Fiction tells what could have been. History is only what happened. At turning points of eras, people are more willing to spend time reading historical publications that tell “what happened.” Therefore, it is not surprising that such a problematic article, which makes public the statements of expedition members on a very pressing issue, was republished by many publications and Internet sites.
When it comes to comparing different versions, there can always be a danger that the versions refer to different objects and their inconsistencies are not mutually exclusive. In this case, there are two unique and isolated events, considered in both versions, information about which cannot be dual. This is the only, first and last, campaign of “Chelyuskin”, for which there cannot be different dates. And the only case of a girl being born in the Kara Sea: there cannot be different dates of birth and different parents. Therefore, we will first turn to comparing information on these issues.
E. Belimov writes: “So, let’s go back to the distant past of December 5, 1933. At about 9 or 10 in the morning, Elizaveta Borisovna (Karina's future mother, according to Belimov) was brought to the pier and helped to board the Chelyuskin. The departure began almost immediately. Steamboats were humming, rockets were bursting in the black sky, music was playing somewhere, everything was solemn and a little sad. Following the Chelyuskin, the Tansy floats, all in lights, like a fairy-tale city.”
According to the official version, the ship left Murmansk on August 2, 1933. Already on August 13, 1933, a serious deformation of the hull and a leak appeared in the Kara Sea. On November 7, 1934, the leader of the expedition, O. Schmidt, while in the Bering Strait, sent a congratulatory radiogram to the Soviet government. After this, the ship was no longer able to sail independently and drifted in the ice in a northerly direction until the day of its death. One can additionally cite a whole series of time milestones showing that “Chelyuskin” could not begin sailing from Murmansk on December 5, 1933. In accordance with this, it can be firmly stated that the dating of the “Chelyuskin” expedition in the work of E. Belimov is erroneous.
In the Kara Sea, a girl was born on the Chelyuskin, named Karina after her place of birth. Most sources in this regard refer to the following entry in the ship's log: “August 31 at 5 o’clock. 30 m. The Vasiliev couple had a child, a girl. Countable latitude 75°46"51" north, longitude 91°06" east, sea depth 52 meters." The work of E. Belimov states: "And only once did the twin ships moor to each other. This happened on January 4, 1934 year, on Karina's birthday. The head of the convoy, Kandyba, wished to see his newborn daughter in person. Elizaveta Borisovna occupied luxury cabin No. 6, the same as that of the captain and head of the expedition. Karina was born in the farthest corner of the Kara Sea.
There were some 70 km left to Cape Chelyuskin, and beyond it another sea began - the East Siberian Sea. The mother, based on her birthplace in the Kara Sea, suggested naming her daughter Karina. Captain Voronin immediately wrote a birth certificate on the ship’s form, indicating the exact coordinates - northern latitude and eastern longitude - signed and attached the ship’s seal.”
A comparison of these records reveals two fundamental differences. In the first version, the girl was born on August 31, 1934. According to the second, on January 4, 1934, the Chelyuskin approached Cape Chelyuskin on the border of the Kara Sea on September 1, 1933. In January 1934, the Chelyuskin steamer was already trapped in ice near the Bering Strait and in no way could he independently approach another ship, moreover, in the Kara Sea. This makes the only possible version about Karina’s birth on August 31, 1933. In the first version, the Vasilievs are indicated as the girl’s parents.
The group of winterers included surveyor V.G. Vasiliev. and his wife Vasilyeva D.I. In E. Belimov’s version, the parents are named Kandyba (without indicating the first and patronymic) and Elizaveta Borisovna (without indicating the last name). It should also be noted that in the second version, in the quoted entry about the girl’s birth, there is no mention of parents at all. Many memoirs talk about Karina’s birth in the Vasiliev family. Ilya Kuksin writes about this in especially detail, as about his teacher’s family. According to documentary data and memories, there is no place for another child with other parents to appear on the ship. Participants in the voyage with the surname Kandyba or with the name Elizaveta Borisovna could not be found either in the studied documents or in the memoirs. All this clearly allows us to conclude that E. Belimov’s version of Karina’s birth is unsubstantiated.
The question of the number of winterers on a drifting ice floe, taking into account the voyage of two ships, is a very serious one. This issue has not been addressed in any of the publications known to me. After the death of "Chelyuskin" there were 104 people on the ice. These included 52 members of the Chelyuskin team, 23 members of the expedition of O. Yu. Schmidt and 29 participants of the intended wintering on the island. Wrangel, including 2 children. At the same time, the regular number of crew members of the steamship should be somewhat larger, since on the eve of wintering in September 1933, several crew members were sent to land for health reasons. This is exactly the number of people - 104 people - that were taken to the ground by the pilots of the rescue expedition.
E. Belimov hints that the number of people transported to the ground could have been greater, taking into account the significant number of aircraft involved in the rescue. Therefore, we considered it necessary to so scrupulously provide the data on the number of flights and the number of people transported by each pilot. Among the rescued winterers there is no place even for the mythical Kandyba and his wife Elizaveta Borisovna. At the same time, to escort a second ship similar to the Chelyuskin, a team of the same size was needed. We're not even talking about protecting prisoners. What is their fate in the presence of a second steamer, sunk on orders carried out personally by Kandyba?
Let us assume that in order to destroy all witnesses to the transportation of prisoners and their drowning, a decision, difficult to implement by one person, was made to destroy, along with the prisoners, all the guards and members of the ship’s crew. But even the implementation of such a decision does not eliminate dangerous witnesses. The Northern Sea Route in those years was no longer an ice desert. The months-long voyage was accompanied by repeated meetings with other ships, and the periodic participation of icebreakers in guiding the expedition. At Cape Chelyuskin the expedition was visited by a large group of Chukchi.
Belimov himself describes repeated contacts between the Chelyuskin and Pizhma teams, both before the death of Chelyuskin and after. Therefore, in order to destroy the witnesses, it would be necessary to take equally radical measures in relation to all people who were or could have witnessed the voyage of the second ship, that is, to all participants in the expedition. From this point of view, sending O.Yu. Schmidt, an old intellectual, a man with an impeccable reputation in the scientific world, for treatment in the USA immediately after evacuation from the ice floe. After all, it is well known that the holders of secrets in no case had the opportunity to travel abroad, especially without reliable escort. But that's not all.
According to E. Belimov, the Danish government allegedly sent notes protesting against the use of steamships made in Copenhagen for navigation in ice. Why weren’t other demarches followed when the death of one of them was reported and the disappearance of the other? I was unable to find confirmation of the existence of such interstate notes, which contradict the logic of international relations, since the customers of the ships and their manufacturers were trading companies, and not the USSR and the Kingdom of Denmark.
In 1932, the NKVD created a Special Expedition of the People's Commissariat of Water. She served the Gulag, transporting people and goods from Vladivostok and Vanino to Kolyma and the mouth of the Lena. The flotilla consisted of a dozen ships. In one navigation they did not have time to go to Lena and back, they spent the winter in the ice. Documents relating to the activities of the Special Expedition are kept in the closed funds of the NKVD. It is quite possible that there is information about a sunken steamer there. But they are unlikely to have anything to do with Chelyuskin’s epic.
The famous English researcher Robert Conquest devoted many years to studying the processes of violence against his own people in the USSR. Some works are devoted to death camps in the Arctic and the transport of prisoners. He compiled a complete list of ships used to transport prisoners. There is not a single Arctic voyage in 1933 on this list. The name of the ship "Pizhma" is also missing.
I looked through a set of the Los Angeles Times newspaper down to the advertisements for the period from February 1 to June 30, 1934.
The search made it possible to discover photographs of the death of the Chelyuskin, the coordinates of the sunken ship, a number of reports about the drifting ice camp, the stages of preparation and rescue of the Chelyuskinites, the participation of the Americans in this, the transportation and treatment of Otto Schmidt in the USA. Not a single newspaper report was found about other SOS signals from the Soviet Arctic or the location of surviving prisoners. Such reports were not found in foreign studies about the Soviet Arctic.
Let us dwell on some less significant details of E. Belimov’s story, which do not fit well with reality. After the death of “Chelyuskin,” according to Belimov, “Pizhma” turns out to be a new home for women and children: “On the evening of February 14, snowmobiles rolled up to the starboard side of “Pizhma,” first one, and then the other. The doors swung open, and children of all ages fell out like peas.” And this despite the fact that there were only two girls on the ship, one of whom was less than 2 years old, and the second a few months old.
A documentary essay, the form of which “The Secret of the Chelyuskin Expedition” claims to be, requires accuracy in identifying the characters. Belimov does not have a single person with a first name, patronymic and last name. The main character of the essay, unwinding the whole intrigue of the ghost ship, remains Yakov Samoilovich without a surname - a short, stocky man, with a round head, as is the case with mathematicians.
One could assume that the author does not want to reveal his identity, but the essay was written in the 90s, and the author and his main character are in Israel. Therefore, there are no objective grounds for fear. At the same time, information about Yakov Samoilovich’s connection with Karina would be quite enough to reveal incognito. In contrast, the captain of the Pizhma has only a surname - Chechkin, but without a name and patronymic. An attempt to find such a captain in the Northern Fleet, who sailed ships in the 1930s, did not yield results.
Frank “literaryism” is manifested in the detailed presentation of conversations about “Chelyuskin’s” campaign against the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the leaders of the NKVD. In some episodes, the nature of the presentation of the material in “The Secret of the Chelyuskin Expedition” is similar to cases of making counterfeit dollars with the manufacturer’s own portrait. Unfortunately, no attempts to establish contact with E. Belimov in the years since the publication of his work have been successful. My appeals to the editor of Chronograph, Sergei Shram, who was considered the first publisher of the material, remained unanswered.

Eyewitness testimony

Chelyuskinets Ibragim Fakidov calls Belimov’s version a fiction. A graduate of the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, whose dean was Academician Ioffe, remained after graduation to work at the institute as a research assistant. In 1933, I. Fakidov was invited to join the scientific expedition to the Chelyuskin. The Chelyuskinites, quick to give nicknames, nicknamed the young physicist Faraday as a sign of respect.
In 2000, I. G. Fakidov was indignant: “This is some kind of colossal misunderstanding! After all, if everything were true, I, being on the Chelyuskin, could not help but find out about it. I had close contact with everyone on the ship: I was a great friend of the captain and the head of the expedition, I knew every researcher and every sailor. Two ships got into trouble, and they are being crushed to death by ice, and they don’t know each other - some kind of nonsense!” Ekaterinburg professor Ibragim Gafurovich Fakidov, an outstanding physicist who headed the laboratory of electrical phenomena at the Sverdlovsk Institute of Metal Physics, died on March 5, 2004.
Since it was not possible to find any facts or information confirming the presence of a second steamship sailing as part of the same expedition with the Chelyuskin, I decided to contact the Burmeister and Wein company. Moreover, “Pizhma” was not listed in the registration books of the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping. In February 2005, I was able to obtain extremely important information from the museum of this shipbuilding company. The shipyard where Chelyuskin was built went bankrupt in 1966. Many technical materials were destroyed, but the main information was transferred to the museum. According to these data, in 1933, only one steamship was built for the Soviet Union, intended for navigation in the ice conditions of the seas of the Arctic Ocean. The company did not build any other steamships for these sailing conditions either in 1933 or later (this is the first publication of this information).
Several interesting features were associated with the awarding of the Chelyuskinites. They were awarded not as members of the expedition for completing some tasks and scientific research, but as participants in the Schmidt camp, “for the exceptional courage, organization and discipline shown by a detachment of polar explorers in the ice of the Arctic Ocean at the time and after the death of the steamer Chelyuskin, which ensured preservation of people’s lives, safety of scientific materials and property of the expedition, creating the necessary conditions for providing them with assistance and rescue.” Moreover, everyone - from the leader of the expedition and the captain of the sunken ship to the carpenters and cleaners - was awarded the same way - the Order of the Red Star.
Likewise, all the pilots initially included in the rescue group were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, including Sigismund Levanevsky, who, due to the plane crash, did not directly participate in the rescue of the Chelyuskinites. They did the same with the aircraft mechanics, awarding them all the Order of Lenin.
In connection with the awarding of S. Levanevsky, it was suggested that he deliberately made a kind of forced landing in order to prevent the American mechanic Clyde Armstead from seeing the ship with the prisoners. In this case, it becomes difficult to explain the participation of the second American mechanic William Levari in the flights almost at the same time together with Slepnev.
Many people involved in the problems surrounding Chelyuskin after the publication of E.I.’s work. Belimov, we would like to clarify serious issues in communication with the author. I also made persistent attempts to find an opportunity to find out the relationship between literary fiction and fact directly from the author. Unfortunately, I can report that no one will be able to find out the opinion of E.I. Belimov. According to his old colleagues, he died in Israel about three years ago.
The verification of all the main provisions of E. Belimov’s work, or the Israeli version, as some call it, has been completed. Facts and publications were reviewed and witnesses' recollections were heard. Apparently, in combination with all the other data analyzed above, this allows us to put an end to the investigation of the “secrets” of the Chelyuskin expedition for today. In accordance with all the information known today, it can be argued that “Tansy” is a literary fiction.

Unofficial version.

In 1997, the first public mention of the secrets associated with the Chelyuskin expedition, known to me, appeared in the Izvestia newspaper. The author of the publication, Anatoly Stefanovich Prokopenko, a historian-archivist, in the past headed the famous Special Archive (now the Center for the Storage of Historical and Documentary Collections) - a huge top-secret repository of captured documents from twenty European countries.
In 1990, Prokopenko presented to the CPSU Central Committee irrefutable documentary evidence of the execution of Polish officers near Katyn. After the Special Archive, he was appointed deputy chairman of the Committee on Archives of the Government of the Russian Federation, and was a consultant to the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression under the President of the Russian Federation. The newspaper literally said the following: “From the collection of the famous polar pilot Molokov, you can find out why Stalin refused foreign help in rescuing the crew of the icebreaker Chelyuskin.” And because, by the will of fate, a grave barge with prisoners was frozen into the ice nearby.”
The version about the presence of a second ship in the Chelyuskin expedition was described in detail by Eduard Ivanovich Belimov in his work “The Mystery of the Chelyuskin Expedition.” He presented his version of events in the form of a story from the son of a man who survived the death of the second steamship Pizhma, led by Chelyuskin. This man also became a close friend of Karina, who was born on Chelyuskin. Such a source of information makes you take every word and every detail of the story very seriously. The Industrial Vedomosti newspaper published this version in full in issue No. 2 in February 2005. Therefore, I will not retell its contents in detail.
In addition, an almost identical version appeared in the Versty newspaper on behalf of Israeli citizen Joseph Zaks, whose publication was then referred to by St. Petersburg journalists. He claimed that in the winter of 1934, in the Chukchi Sea, on the instructions of Stalin, the ship "Pizhma", which allegedly accompanied the legendary "Chelyuskin", was blown up and scuttled. According to Sachs, on board this ship, or rather, in the holds, there were 2,000 prisoners who were taken to work in the mines of Chukotka under the escort of NKVD officers. Among the prisoners on the Pizhma there was a large group of cool shortwave radio amateurs. After the explosions on the Pizhma, they got to a spare set of radio transmitters, and their call signs were heard at American aviation bases. True, the pilots managed to save a few. Later, all those rescued, including Joseph Sachs’s father, allegedly adopted a different citizenship. It seems that Yakov Samoilovich, according to Belimov, exactly corresponds to Joseph Sachs, quoted by the St. Petersburgers.
At the same time, the correspondent of the Trud newspaper in Kazan on July 18, 2001 referred to the story of the famous Kazan radio amateur V.T. Guryanov that his mentor, a polar aviation pilot, intercepted a radio session of American pilots based in Alaska in 1934. The story was like a legend. It was about rescuing the Russians in the area of ​​the Chelyuskin's death, but not the crew members, not the participants of Otto Schmidt's scientific expedition, but some mysterious political prisoners who found themselves in the area of ​​the famous Chelyuskin drift. After getting acquainted with Belimov’s version, it became clear to him what it was about.
On August 30, 2001, the Russian television channel TV-6 in the Segodnya program showed a story about the Pizhma, which went to sea along with the Chelyuskin and on which there were 2,000 prisoners and guards. Unlike the previously published version of Belimov, in the television version the guards took their families with them. When "Chelyuskin" was captured by ice and the operation to rescue it began, it was decided to blow up "Pizhma". The families of the guards were transported on sleighs to the Chelyuskin, and 2,000 prisoners went to the bottom along with the ship.

On the occasion of the anniversary of the rescue of the Chelyuskin expedition, I am posting my article published in our magazine "Picturesque Russia"

Once upon a time, every Soviet schoolchild knew about the expedition of the Chelyuskin steamship. 80 years separate us from Chelyuskin’s epic. Few remember this story. And the majority, living in another country, know little at all about this dramatic and heroic event. Although once upon a time films were made about the heroes of the Chelyuskinites and songs were composed that were sung throughout the country. This is an amazing epic of courage and dedication.

Since the 30s. last century, the Soviet Union began extensive work on the development of the Northern Sea Route as a transport route. The Soviet government implemented the traditional Russian idea of ​​developing the eastern and northern regions of the country. It started back in the 16th century. Ermak Timofeevich. It was scientifically formulated by Mikhail Lomonosov. But only in Soviet times was this idea able to come true. In 1928, by resolution of the Council of People's Commissars, the Arctic Government Commission was established. It was headed by the former commander-in-chief of the country's Armed Forces S.S. Kamenev. The commission included scientists and pilots. The commission supervised the creation of naval and aviation bases and weather stations on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and regulated the navigation of ships. The first practical result of the commission’s work was the rescue of the Nobile expedition, which suffered an accident on the airship “Italy”. Thanks to her efforts, the Soviet steamship Stavropol and the American schooner Nanuk, which had wintered in the ocean ice, were saved.

Expedition on the steamship "Chelyuskin"

The Soviet government was tasked with ensuring reliable navigation of merchant ships from Leningrad and Murmansk to Vladivostok along the northern sea route in one navigation, during the summer-autumn period.

In 1932, the icebreaker Sibiryakov was able to complete this task. The head of the expedition was Professor Otto Yulievich Schmidt, and the captain of the icebreaker was Vladimir Ivanovich Voronin. Immediately after the end of the expedition, the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (Glavsevmorput) was created, which was tasked with mastering this route, providing it with technical equipment, building settlements and much more. O.Yu. was appointed head of the Main Northern Sea Route. Schmidt.

On the slipway in Copenhagen

In 1933, the transport ship Chelyuskin was sent along the Northern Sea Route. “Chelyuskin” was supposed to travel from Leningrad to its home port of Vladivostok in one navigation. It was assumed that the ship would be accompanied by icebreakers. But that did not happen.

The expedition on the Chelyuskin was headed by O.Yu. Schmidt, and V.I. was appointed captain. Voronin. There were 111 people on board - the ship's crew, scientists, journalists, a shift of winterers and builders for Wrangel Island. On February 13, 1934, crushed by ice in the Chukchi Sea, the ship sank. One person died, and 104 crew members landed on the ocean ice. Some of the cargo and food were removed from the ship. The rescue of the Chelyuskin crew became one of the most exciting and heroic pages of the Soviet era.

The Chelyuskin expedition was supposed to prove the suitability of the Northern Sea Route for supplying everything necessary to Siberia and the Far East. “Chelyuskin” was named in honor of Semyon Ivanovich Chelyuskin (1700-1764), a member of the Great Northern Expedition, who discovered the northernmost point of continental Eurasia (now Cape Chelyuskin). The ship was built at the shipyards of Burmeister and Wein (B&W, Copenhagen) in Denmark, commissioned by the Soviet Union. The steamship was intended to sail between the mouth of the Lena (hence the original name of the ship “Lena”) and Vladivostok. In accordance with the technical data, the ship was the most modern cargo-passenger ship for that time. In accordance with Lloyd's classifications, she was classified as an icebreaker class steamship. The ship had a displacement of 7,500 tons.

Scheme of Schmidt's expedition routes

On July 16, 1933, “Chelyuskin” sailed from Leningrad to Murmansk, stopping at the docks in Copenhagen on the way to eliminate defects identified during the first voyage.

In Murmansk, the team was completed - those who did not show their best side were brought ashore. We loaded on board additional cargo that we did not have time to take in Leningrad. Preparing for a polar expedition is a separate topic. This is what the deputy head of the expedition, Ivan Kopusov, who was responsible for supplies, wrote: “It’s no joke: the amplitude is from a primus needle to a theodolite! All this came for “Chelyuskin” from all over our great country. We received cargo from Siberia, Ukraine, Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Omsk, Moscow. We sent representatives to all parts of the Union to speed up the execution of orders and their progress along the railways. All people’s commissariats participated in the preparation of the expedition.”

The expedition also took food issues seriously. To supply the crew with fresh meat, they took with them 26 live cows and 4 small piglets, which then turned into healthy hogs and helped diversify the ship's menu. On August 2, 1933, Chelyuskin left the port of Murmansk for Vladivostok, while working out a scheme for delivering cargo along the Northern Sea Route during one summer navigation.

The passage in the open sea showed the shortcomings of the Chelyuskin’s special shape - it rocked, like a real icebreaker, strongly and rapidly. At the very first encounters with ice in the Kara Sea, the ship was damaged in the bow. The fact is that it was overloaded (carrying coal for the icebreaker Krasin), and the reinforced ice belt was below the waterline, so the steamer encountered ice floes with a less protected upper part of the hull. To install additional wooden fastenings, it was necessary to unload the bow hold from coal.

How this was done was described by the head of the expedition, Otto Schmidt: “This operation had to be done quickly, and here for the first time in this voyage we used the same method of general rush operations, which already on the Sibiryakov and in previous expeditions turned out to be not only necessary for a quick end work, but also an excellent means of team building. All participants in the expedition, both scientists and builders, sailors and business executives, carried coal, breaking into teams, between which the competition took place brightly and with great enthusiasm.”

The voyage was successful all the way to Novaya Zemlya. Then the “Chelyuskin” entered the Kara Sea, which immediately showed its “bad” character and the “Chelyuskin’s” defenselessness in front of real polar ice. Serious deformation of the hull and a leak appeared on August 13, 1933. The question of returning back arose, but the decision was made to continue the journey.

An important event occurred in the Kara Sea - Dorothea Ivanovna (maiden name Dorfman) and surveyor Vasily Gavrilovich Vasilyev, who were heading to Wrangel Island for the winter, had a daughter. The birth record was made by V.I. Voronin in the ship's log "Chelyuskin". It read: “August 31st. 5 o'clock 30 m. The Vasiliev couple had a child, a girl. Countable latitude 75°46'51" north, longitude 91°06' east, sea depth 52 meters." The girl was named Karina.

“The fate of this girl is curious, who was born at 75° latitude and in the first year of her life suffered a shipwreck, life on ice, a flight to Uelen and a solemn return to Moscow, where she was caressed by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and Maxim Gorky,” Otto Schmidt later wrote .

The fate of Karina Vasilievna Vasilyeva is really interesting. She now lives in St. Petersburg and her passport actually says her birthplace is the Kara Sea. “My birth happened before Chelyuskin was captured by the ice,” recalls Karina Vasilievna. - But I was born on board a ship. Then a difficult ice situation developed. When a strong compression occurred, the side tore apart, and the expedition landed on the ice. Through a huge hole it was possible to go out onto the ice. The first 3 days were very harsh, as everyone lived in rag tents at temperatures below 30 degrees below zero. Then the barracks were ready. It was insulated with snow and ice. We made a stove out of a barrel. Mom and I were placed near the stove. Water was heated from ice. They bathed me in it. We lived on the ice floe for 21 days.”

The Laptev and East Siberian seas "Chelyuskin" passed relatively freely. But the Chukchi Sea was occupied by ice. Pyotr Buyko, who was to become the head of the polar station on Wrangel Island, recalls: “The ship fought, it fought, moving towards the east. Vladimir Ivanovich Voronin sat longer and longer in a barrel on Mars, nicknamed the “crow’s nest,” from the height of the foremast, looking with binoculars for the blue strings of mines along which “Chelyuskin” was making his way. More and more often, the road was blocked by heavy, bull-like ice of a different, stronger type than in the seas they had traversed. But Vladimir Ivanovich did not give up, and “Chelyuskin” pushed away the jelly sludge with its cheekbones and crashed into the ice fields with its stem, like a wedge. Schmidt does not leave the bridge, his hands are in the pockets of his seal coat, and from under his cap his eyes vigilantly search the horizon. He is outwardly calm. But he is also worried about the pace of progress.”
Heavy ice began to appear in the East Siberian Sea. On September 9 and 10, the Chelyuskin received dents on the starboard and port sides, one of the frames burst, and the ship’s leak intensified. The experience of Far Eastern captains who sailed the northern seas said that September 15-20 is the latest date for entering the Bering Strait. Swimming in the Arctic in the fall is difficult. In winter - impossible. The ship froze in the ice and began to drift.

Last photo - the death of "Chelyuskin"

On November 4, 1934, thanks to a successful drift, the Chelyuskin entered the Bering Strait. There were only a few miles left to clear water. But no effort by the team could save the situation. Movement to the south became impossible. In the strait, ice began to move in the opposite direction, and “Chelyuskin” again found itself in the Chukchi Sea. The fate of the ship depended entirely on the ice conditions. Otto Schmidt recalled: “At noon, the ice wall on the left in front of the steamer moved and rolled towards us. The ice rolled over each other like the scallops of sea waves. The height of the shaft reached eight meters above the sea.” The ship, trapped by ice, could not move independently. Fate was not merciful.

All this preceded the famous radiogram from O.Yu. Schmidt: “Polar Sea, February 14. On February 13 at 15:30, 155 miles from Cape Severny and 144 miles from Cape Wells, the Chelyuskin sank, crushed by compression of the ice. Already the last night was alarming due to frequent compression and strong hummocking of the ice. On February 13, at 13:30, a sudden strong pressure tore the left side over a long distance from the bow hold to the engine room. At the same time, the steam pipes burst, which made it impossible to run drainage equipment, which, however, was useless due to the size of the leak. Two hours later it was all over. During these two hours, the long-prepared emergency supply of food, tents, sleeping bags, an airplane and a radio were unloaded onto the ice in an organized manner, without a single sign of panic. Unloading continued until the bow of the ship was already submerged under water. The leaders of the crew and expedition were the last to leave the ship, a few seconds before complete immersion. While trying to get off the ship, the caretaker Mogilevich died. He was crushed by a log and carried into the water. Head of the expedition Schmidt."

Boris Mogilevich became the only one killed during the entire Chelyuskin expedition.

Rescue of Chelyuskinites

104 people, led by O.Yu., were captured by the ice. Schmidt. Among the ice captives were two very young children - Alla Buiko, born in 1932, and the previously mentioned Karina Vasilyeva. To save people, a government commission was created under the leadership of Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V.V. Kuibysheva. On her instructions, on the Chukotka Peninsula, rescue issues were dealt with by an emergency “troika” headed by the head of the station at Cape Severny (now Cape Schmidt) G.G. Petrov. They were tasked with mobilizing dog and reindeer sleds and alerting the planes that were in Chukotka at that moment. The animals were needed to transport fuel from the bases at Cape Severny and the Uelen polar station to the Vankarem point closest to Schmidt’s camp. Airplanes were intended to save people.

Photo of Otto Schmidt on an ice floe in the camp

The rescue of the Chelyuskinites is a truly glorious page in the history of polar aviation. Her actions were constantly reported in the press. Many experts did not believe in the possibility of salvation. Some Western newspapers wrote that people on the ice were doomed, and raising hopes of salvation in them was inhumane, it would only worsen their suffering. There were no icebreakers that could sail in the winter conditions of the Arctic Ocean at that time. The only hope was in aviation. The government commission sent three groups of aircraft to rescue. Apart from two “Fleisters” and one “Junkers”, the rest of the aircraft were domestic.

The first landing at the expedition camp on March 5, 1934 was made by the crew of Anatoly Lyapidevsky on an ANT-4 aircraft. Before that, he made 28 missions, but only the 29th was successful. It was not easy to find a drifting ice floe with people in the fog. Lyapidevsky managed to land in 40-degree frost on an area measuring 150 by 400 meters. It was a real feat.

Pilots M.V. Vodopyanov, I.V. Doronin, N.P. Kamanin, S.A. Levanevsky, A.V. Lyapidevsky, V.S. Molokov and M.T. Slepnev, who took part in this operation, rightfully became the first Heroes of the Soviet Union. In those years, and even at a later time, the whole country knew their names. However, not everyone, especially now, knows that the pilots seconded to carry out the extremely dangerous mission of evacuating the O.Yu. Schmidt, there were significantly more than seven. Only a third of them were awarded the title of Hero.
However, there were few available means of air evacuation: on Cape Severny there was a damaged N-4 aircraft with pilot Kukanov, and on Uelen there were two ANT-4 aircraft with pilots Lyapidevsky and Chernyavsky and one U-2 with pilot Konkin. The technical condition of the last three cars was also cause for concern. At the proposal of the government commission, additional air transport was allocated for the operation. It was decided to transfer part of it as far north as possible by water, so that the planes could then go “under their own power” to the area of ​​rescue operations.

In accordance with this plan, two light aircraft "Sh-2" on the steamer "Stalingrad" were supposed to begin sailing from Petropavlovsk; five R-5 aircraft and two U-2 vehicles, which were to be flown by a group of pilots from the reconnaissance regiment of the Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army (OKDVA), led by Kamanin, were intended to be transported by the Smolensk steamer from Vladivostok; From there, but by the steamer "Soviet", it was planned to relocate the planes of the pilots Bolotov and Svyatogorov. From the very beginning, the remaining aircraft faced difficult flights: three aircraft (two PS-3 and one R-5), at the controls of which the pilots Galyshev, Doronin and Vodopyanov were supposed to be, had to overcome a distance of almost 6000 km over unexplored mountain ranges and tundra, departing from Khabarovsk. Finally, the reserve group of pilots (Levanevsky and Slepnev) was required to get into the rescue area from US territory, namely from Alaska. As a result, in addition to the four aircraft available in the disaster zone, sixteen more aircraft were brought in to evacuate the Chelyuskinites.

Lyapidevsky took out 10 women and two children, and the second time his engine failed and he joined the Chelyuskinites. The mass evacuation began 13 days later and lasted two weeks. The pilots made 24 flights in difficult weather conditions. All of them then became the first Heroes of the Soviet Union - Anatoly Lyapidevsky, Mavriky Slepnev, Vasily Molokov, Nikolai Kamanin, Mikhail Vodopyanov and Ivan Doronin (the Gold Star medal appeared later), they were then awarded the Order of Lenin. The rest were presented with orders and medals.

Upon returning home, all participants in the ice epic basked in the glory. Streets and geographical features were named in their honor. They say that in the list of Soviet names, among Dazdravperma and Vladilen, a new one has appeared - “Otyushminald” - “Otto Yulievich Schmidt on the ice floe.”

Political information in the Chelyuskin camp, drawing by P. Reshetnikov

All participants in the ice drift, as well as G.A. Ushakova and G.G. Petrov, were awarded the Order of the Red Star and a six-month salary. The same orders, but without conferring the title of Hero, were also awarded to members of their crews, including American mechanics. The recipients of the country's highest award then became L.V. Petrov, M.A. Rukovsky, W. Lavery, P.A. Pelyutov, I.G. Devyatnikov, M.P. Shelyganov, G.V. Gribakin, K. Armstedt, V.A. Alexandrov, M.L. Ratushkin, A.K. Razin and Ya.G. Savin. In addition, all of the named aviators, unlike the Chelyuskinites, received bonuses in the amount of an annual salary. The authorities noted other pilots who participated in the rescue operation and also risked their lives more modestly.

The same resolution of the USSR Central Executive Committee, in accordance with which G.A. was awarded. Ushakov and G.G. Petrov, the Order of the Red Star and a six-month salary were awarded to V.L. Galyshev, B.A. Pivenshtein, B.V. Bastanzhiev and I.M. Demirov. These pilots, who for various reasons were stopped literally a step away from the ice camp, did no less than, for example, Levanevsky, who also did not break through to the Chelyuskinites and did not take a single person off the ice, but, nevertheless, became a Hero (according to the official According to the unofficial version, it is believed that Sigismund Aleksandrovich received the high rank for transferring Ushakov to Vankarem, for the fact that he gave a radiogram to I.V. Stalin on time, where he expressed his readiness to carry out further tasks of the government). The rest of the pilots, who were involved in the rescue operation but, not of their own free will, were unable to take an effective part in it, were much less fortunate. They were simply forgotten...

80 years have passed since the names of the Chelyuskin heroes became a legend and a symbol of human feat and dedication. And this is one of the few cases when the state and the entire Russian, then Soviet, people empathized with the drama of the pioneers of the North. This is a rare case when everyone felt not like expendable material of history, which, sadly, is very specific to Russian history, but part of one state and people, about whom they think and for the sake of whose salvation they strain all their strength. Perhaps this is the most important lesson of the feat of the Chelyuskinites and the rescue expedition.

The article was written specifically for the magazine "Picturesque Russia"

Photo from the Schmidt family archive

February 13, 2012 will mark 78 years since the news of the terrible shipwreck of the steamship spread around the world. Chelyuskin", which would later be called Soviet. The story of the courageous hero ship will be told in schools, and children will come up with a game “ Chelyuskinets" It would seem that the details of the epic have long been known to everyone, but the history of our country is rewritten depending on the political situation and we no longer believe that this or that event did not have a double bottom. This is what happened with the ship." Chelyuskin».

Over the past decades, the disaster in the Chukchi Sea has been shrouded in legend. The most daring of which is that the steamer " Chelyuskin“He went to the Arctic not alone, but accompanied by a double ship. According to legend, the icebreaker " Chelyuskin"covered a large ship, which carried several thousand prisoners who were taken to the mines for deadly hard labor. The myth about is gaining new details and details. What exactly is the Chelyuskin epic - a carefully hidden secret of the Gulag or a political action, which was based on the great desire of the authorities to save the citizens of the country who remained hostage.

"Chelyuskin" beginning

The Arctic was a tasty morsel for many countries, but in 1923 the Soviet government announced that all lands located in the Soviet sector of the Arctic belonged to the USSR. Despite this, Norway has long laid claim to the land of Franz Joseph. The Northern Sea Route was the shortest route between the Eastern and Western borders of the USSR. According to the leader’s plan, caravans were to move along the Northern Sea Route to the Far East, but this route had to be cut through the ice and equipped with weather and radio stations, ports and populated areas.

In 1933, for the first time in one navigation along the Northern Sea Route, “ Sibiryakov“, but the USSR had few such ships, and even those were foreign - bought for foreign currency. In addition, the ice cutters could carry very little cargo on board. Enthusiastic polar explorers tried to prove to the whole world that simple ships could pass through the ice, which, by the way, were also built abroad and bought for a lot of money, and this at a time when the country was starving.

In the People's Commissariat of Water Resources' plan for 1933, the expedition from Leningrad to Vladivostok was not included. Professor Otto Schmidt tried to prove the need for a through passage along the Northern Sea Route. Two months later the ship was ready, it was called " Lena" and then renamed to " Chelyuskin" was built by order of the Soviet government in Denmark. It was for river and sea transport. Moreover, the ship did not make a single test voyage.

The captain of the ship Chelyuskin“Vladimir Voronin, a sea captain with extensive experience, was appointed. Arriving at the home port on July 11, 1933, Voronin inspected the ship. What the captain saw greatly upset him: “ ...The hull set is weak. The width of the icebreaker "Chelyuskin" is large. The cheekbone will be heavily impacted, which will affect the strength of the hull. "Chelyuskin" is an unsuitable ship for this voyage..." He was not the first person to be alarmed by the steamer. It turns out that the ship was not accepted by the People's Commissariat of Water Transport. Later they preferred to forget about one more fact. When the Chelyuskin was being built in Denmark, the whole process was observed by Peter Visais, who went on this ship as captain, and Vladimir Voronin agreed to go to the Arctic only as a passenger.

In the Leningrad port the ship was clearly overloaded. Part of the expedition consisted of surveyors who were going to Wrangel Island for the winter and most of the cargo, including logs for building houses. Chelyuskin"carried for them. It was assumed that the ship would be accompanied by an icebreaker " Krasin", and the ice cutter " Fedor Lipke" will meet " Chelyuskin"in the Chukchi Sea and will lead further. For them, Chelyuskin also carried 3,000 tons of coal. In addition, 500 tons of fresh water, cows and pigs were loaded onto the ship, as a result of which the ship sank 80 cm below the waterline. Otto Schmidt knew about this, but the development of the Arctic was of great importance.

On July 16, 1933, a large meeting took place on the Lieutenant Schmidt embankment. Leningraders saw off the miracle of Danish shipbuilding. Contingent on " Chelyuskin"The selection was international and diverse. The backbone was a close-knit team of Siberian residents - cameramen, journalists, artists, carpenters. Also on " Chelyuskine“There were also several women. The members of the expedition knew that they were going to a non-tourist destination. As soon as they left the port, the ship immediately discovered a problem - the bearings overheated. Four days later the ship arrived in Copenhagen, where it was repaired on site.

At this time, Captain Visais, for unknown reasons, left the port and did not return to his duties, and Vladimir Voronin, without waiting for a replacement, was forced to lead the voyage. Across the Barents Sea " Chelyuskin"went to the Kara Sea, where the most difficult thing was - ice. During the voyage, the weak steamer did not obey the rudder. The team frequently inspected the hull from the inside, and damaged areas were reinforced with wooden wedges.

On August 14, 1933, off Cape Severny, a leak formed in the hold of the Chelyuskin. Walking ahead and making way " Krasin"turned around and came to the rescue. The leak was eliminated. On the same day, Otto Schmidt received a government telegram, and, without reading it, put it in his pocket, and told radio operator Krenkel that we would not respond for now. If he had acted, then, as written in the telegram, the future fate of the Chelyuskin steamship would have looked different. He will reveal his cards, but it will be too late to retreat.

"Chelyuskin" authentic photos of the ship

On September 1, 1933, Otto Schmidt gathered everyone in the wardroom. The team became silent. The head of the expedition spoke about the telegram he received, which said that part of the ship’s crew and the expedition should transfer to the icebreaker “ Krasin", and the steamer " Chelyuskin"was ordered to return to Murmansk for repairs. Schmidt asked the team about their readiness to move on, to which they agreed.

« Chelyuskin“Safely completed ¾ of the journey in four months, crossing the Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea. During this time, the team had to unload onto the ice more than once. The steamer was on the verge of collapse, but the danger receded and " Chelyuskin" walked on. When the Bering Strait was two miles away, the icebreaker " Krasin"left with broken propellers for repairs. This was the same His Majesty case, but “ Chelyuskin" bad luck. The steamer was unexpectedly frozen and carried north along the Chukchi Sea. In the cabins they talked about wintering, and the captain knew that the ship would not survive. There was an ice cutter nearby" Fedor Lipke“, but Otto Schmidt refused his help, thereby missing a second chance to get closer to the ship. The ship's hull Chelyuskin"was firmly embedded in a multi-meter thick layer of ice, and for another four months it drifted across the expanses of the Chukchi Sea, until February 13, 1934 came.

death of "Chelyuskin"

Steamboat « Chelyuskin» drifted calmly in the Chukchi Sea. The team did not sleep, as the ice broke during the night and the hull creaked from compression, which subsequently formed a crack. By morning, it had assumed monstrous proportions, even ice began to penetrate inside. Suddenly the captain was called from the navigation bridge, and he saw a huge high ice shaft. The hummocks were moving straight towards the ship. For " Chelyuskina“The critical moment came, and the captain gave the order for evacuation. There was no room for panic. Each was responsible for their own area of ​​work. The steamer went under the water in jerks, as if writhing in death throes. Boxes of canned food, cutlery, coal briquettes, sheets of plywood, bales of fur clothing, tents, sacks of flour and sugar fell into the snow. Soon the ship went under the ice. It was getting dark quickly, the crew Chelyuskina“I urgently set up tents for women and children, carpenters built a barracks, cooks sorted out provisions and set up a galley. Ernest Krenkel fussed with the radio station by the light of a flashlight. Finally he heard the familiar call signs, and the first radiogram about the death of the ship immediately flew to Moscow. Chelyuskin».

Chelyuskin epic

On February 14, 1934, the XVII Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party of Belarus ended its work in Moscow, at which many voted against Stalin. It will be called a congress of the executed, because most of those who challenged the leader will end their lives in the basements of the Lubyanka. But then Stalin needed support. 103 people on the ice floe came in handy more than ever. The great schemer came up with a brilliant move. Everyone instantly forgot about the true causes and prerequisites of the tragedy, and one issue remained on the agenda - salvation Chelyuskinites. A government commission headed by Kuibyshev was immediately created. The whole world should have known that the USSR spared neither effort nor money to care for its citizens.

Press coverage of the life of the Schmidt camp can easily be called the forerunner of modern reality shows. The whole world watched how 103 people survived in the Far North. And in reality, none of the Chelyuskinites felt doomed. People rallied into one continuous family that helped each other physically and mentally. Schmidt lectured in a tent.

In Moscow they realized that aviation would be the only salvation for people, but an airfield was needed. A suitable ice floe was found several kilometers from the camp. Every day the Chelyuskinites came to clear the ice. This work was extremely difficult. People worked in three shifts. In addition, the Chelyuskinites had to find new ice floes with an area of ​​40,000 square meters 13 times. m., since the wind often broke the ice floes.

the long-awaited salvation of the Chelyuskinites

After three weeks of drifting, Lebedevsky’s plane landed on the ice floe and found the Chelyuskinites’ shelter only after 28 attempts. It is difficult to describe the joy they experienced. Women and children were taken out first. A few days later, seven pilots, in difficult conditions, along an unexplored air route, made flight after flight, because only 2-3 people could take on board. While they were sending one after another Chelyuskinets, Otto Yulievich Schmidt caught a serious cold and fell ill with tuberculosis. Pneumonia could lead to the death of the great scientist, so Kuibyshev ordered him to immediately arrive in Moscow, and Bobrov was appointed head of the expedition.

The rescued Chelyuskinites traveled several thousand kilometers from the Far East to Moscow. At every station people came running to greet national heroes. On June 19, 1934, they were met by Moscow on Red Square. A rally and festive demonstration took place in their honor. For the first time, seven pilots were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and all Chelyuskinites received the Order of the Red Star.

The risky voyage on a steamship unsuitable for Arctic ice did a lot in the development of the Northern Sea Route. Following the ship " Chelyuskin“Dozens of ships passed through, and the coastline was soon overgrown with ports and scientific stations. In addition, the Chelyuskinites became the last citizens of a huge country whose lives were so taken care of by the Soviet government. After the murder of Kirov, repressions began that killed hundreds of thousands of “political” people, millions were carried away by the war, and human life will no longer be above the interests of the state, although “ Chelyuskin"brought considerable political dividends to the Soviet government.

On April 13, 1934, the last crew member of the sunken steamship Chelyuskin was delivered to the mainland. The operation to rescue one hundred and four people drifting on an ice floe took Soviet aviators two months. Through the ice, fog and arctic cold, the pilots made their way to the people. Photos and facts about the famous operation, after which boys all over the country began to play Chelyuskinites, are in our selection.

The Chelyuskin steamship was built at the Burmeister and Wein shipyards in Copenhagen by order of the Soviet Union. The ship's hull was reinforced, and there was a special room in case of forced wintering, when the engines would have to be stopped. The Chelyuskin's displacement was 7,000 tons, power - 2,400 horsepower, speed - up to 12 ½ knots per hour. On board was a small Sh-2 amphibious aircraft for air reconnaissance, which could take off from open water or from a large ice floe.

On July 16, 1933, the steamship Chelyuskin set off from Leningrad to Vladivostok across the Arctic Ocean. The purpose of the cargo ship expedition was to prove the suitability of the Northern Sea Route for supplying Siberia and the Far East. The leaders of the expedition were the head of the expedition, Otto Yulievich Schmidt, and captain Vladimir Ivanovich Voronin. There were 112 people on board the ship: 53 crew, 29 expedition members, 18 winterers from Wrangel Island and 12 builders. Supplies on board were: 2995 tons of coal, 500 tons of water, food for 18 months and three years of supplies for Wrangel Island.

The passage in the open sea showed the shortcomings of the Chelyuskin’s special shape - it rocked violently, like a real icebreaker. In addition, during the first encounters with ice in the Kara Sea, the steamer was damaged - the Chelyuskin was overloaded with coal for the icebreaker Krasin, and the reinforced ice belt was below the waterline, so the steamer encountered ice floes with a less protected upper part of the hull.

The Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea "Chelyuskin" passed relatively freely. But the Chukchi Sea was occupied by ice. Aerial reconnaissance showed that it is impossible to approach Wrangel Island, it is surrounded by thick ice. A reduced crew was sent by plane to the island to replace winter workers at the polar station.

"Chelyuskin" was trapped in the ice. Several times, while drifting, he passed by Cape Heart-Stone. Finally, on November 3, the ship entered the Bering Strait. The ship's crew communicated via radio with the command of the ice cutter "Fedor Litke", who was trying to get through to the "Chelyuskin". But, having sailed several steamships before, the Litke received serious damage to the plating, so that it could not even cross the young ice.

Realizing that there was nowhere to wait for help, the crew of the Chelyuskin began to prepare for the winter while drifting on the open sea. It was necessary to change the heating system to save fuel. We had to get fresh water.

After almost three months of drift, the movement of ice began - what the Chelyuskinites feared most. On February 13 at 15:30, 155 miles from Cape Severny and 144 miles from Cape Wells, the Chelyuskin sank, crushed by compression of the ice.

The ship was rapidly sinking. In two hours, a prepared emergency supply of food, tents, sleeping bags, an airplane and a radio were unloaded onto the ice. Unloading continued until the bow of the ship was already submerged under water. The leaders of the crew and expedition were the last to leave the ship, a few seconds before complete immersion. That day, before he could get off the ice, the caretaker Boris Mogilevich died. He became the only Chelyuskinite to die.

Organization and discipline not only ensured the safety of the lives of people on the drifting ice, but also created the conditions under which they could be helped.

On March 5, 1934, the crew of Anatoly Lyapidevsky made the first landing at the expedition camp on the ANT-4 plane. Before that, he made 28 missions, but only the 29th was successful. Weather conditions, including heavy fog, made it difficult to find the Chelyuskinites. Lyapidevsky managed to land in 40-degree frost on an area measuring 150 by 400 meters. That was incredible!

On that flight, the aviator took out 10 women and two children, and the second time his engine failed, and he had to join the Chelyuskinites. The mass evacuation began 13 days later and lasted two weeks. The pilots made 24 flights in difficult weather conditions. All of them then became the first Heroes of the Soviet Union - Anatoly Lyapidevsky, Mavriky Slepnev, Vasily Molokov, Nikolai Kamanin, Mikhail Vodopyanov and Ivan Doronin. The rest were presented with orders and medals.

It is worth noting that on the deserted shore of Vankarem, an airfield was prepared for the arrival of Soviet pilots, ready to receive aircraft of any design. The well-established work of radio operators on the Arctic Ocean coast made it possible from the very beginning to have daily two-way radio communications. And the residents of the Chukotka coast, involved in providing assistance, selflessly carried out tasks in the cold, cold and blizzard to create bases, arrange landing sites, and also clear airfields of snow.

Starting from April 7, the weather cleared up, which made it possible to carry out decisive operations to save people. The arriving Soviet pilots took out first five people on April 7, then 22 people on April 10 and 35 people on April 11.

By April 13, the aviators completed the transfer of the Chelyuskinites to the mainland and delivered Schmidt, who was sick at that time, to the city of Nome in Alaska.

On April 13, exactly two months after the death of the ship, the last six “Chelyuskinites” were taken to the mainland, led by the acting head of the expedition A.I. Bobrov and captain V.I. Voronin.

On February 13, 1934, a tragedy occurred in the Chukchi Sea - the huge cargo ship Chelyuskin completely sank within two hours. The death of the “Soviet Titanic” threatened to become a grandiose defeat for the USSR in the Arctic, but turned out to be a triumph.

In March 1933, a ship built by order of the Soviet foreign trade organization was launched in Copenhagen, originally named “Lena”, because it was assumed that it would be used to transport goods from the mouth of the Lena to Vladivostok. The ship had a reinforced hull for navigation in ice and, therefore, was classified as an icebreaker-type vessel. It was this circumstance that made it possible to make the decision to use it on a voyage from Murmansk to Vladivostok across the seas of the Arctic Ocean in one navigation.

This was already the second attempt to overcome the Northern Sea Route in one season. The first, generally successful, except for the last leg of the journey, when the ship was trapped by ice in the Chukchi Sea, was already carried out by the icebreaking steamer Alexander Sibiryakov in 1932. But there were few ships like the Sibiryakov, and they couldn’t take very much cargo.

So, “Lena” was renamed “Chelyuskin” in honor of the 18th century Russian explorer of the North Semyon Chelyuskin, and was loaded to capacity with construction materials for the station on the island. Wrangel, coal for herself and the accompanying icebreakers, food and other things, so that the ship’s draft was 80 cm below the waterline, and was solemnly sent from Leningrad to Murmansk. The leader of the expedition, Otto Schmidt, wanted to show with this voyage the possibility of regular passage of merchant and cargo ships along the Northern Sea Route, so on the ship there were not only professional sailors, but also builders, scientists, an artist, two cameramen and other workers, including ten women, one of They are pregnant, and even have a child – a one and a half year old girl. A total of 112 people. Plus cows and pigs, as well as 500 tons of fresh water.

The first difficulties began almost immediately. Even during the passage from Leningrad to Murmansk, defects of the ship were discovered - it was necessary to go to the docks of Copenhagen for repairs. The captain of the ship, P. Bezais, did everything to give up control of the Chelyuskin, and as a result, contrary to his wishes, these functions were forced to be taken on by the hereditary Pomor, the experienced captain Vladimir Voronin, who initially went on the expedition as a passenger. He agreed to command the ship only to Murmansk, but fate decreed otherwise.

The Chelyuskin encountered the first serious ice already in the Kara Sea. Even during the first inspection of the vessel, V. Voronin wrote: “The hull frame is weak. The width of "Chelyuskin" is large. The cheekbone will be heavily impacted, which will affect the strength of the hull. “Chelyuskin is an unsuitable vessel for this voyage.” And now the first impressions of the experienced captain have been fully confirmed. Leaks arose in the holds, which, however, were promptly eliminated, but the Chelyuskin could not cope with multi-year ice on its own - the icebreaker Krasin was called to help. However, “Krasin” was significantly narrower than “Chelyuskin”, so even following it, along a strip of clear water, “Chelyuskin” had to experience the pressure of the surrounding ice and crush it with its hull, which naturally affected the strength of the structure.

By September 1, “Chelyuskin” reached Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of mainland Eurasia. Here 8 people left the ship. But the team received an addition: on August 30, Doroteya Vasilyeva, the wife of the head of the polar station on Wrangel Island, gave birth to a girl. She was named after her place of birth: Kara Sea, which means Karina. There were 105 people left on the ship.

It seemed that, despite everything, the campaign was close to a successful completion. The ship has already covered three quarters of the journey, having crossed the Barents and Kara Seas, the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea. However, in the Chukchi Sea, “Chelyuskin” was caught in ice and he was forced to drift with it for about five months until he was washed out to the Bering Strait. And here, when there were less than two miles left to the strait, a disaster happened. A large crack passed along the left side of the ship, as a result of which water began to penetrate into the holds. It was no longer possible to eliminate the leak as they had done before - the ice was rapidly crushing the ship.

During the forced drift, O.Yu. Schmidt received an order to transfer to the Krasin and finish the campaign, but chose not to carry it out, just as he decided not to accept the help of the Litka ice cutter in the hope that the Chelyuskin would cope with the task on its own. “Chelyuskin” could not cope, and on February 13, 1934, the huge ship, in front of the eyes of its inhabitants, who, almost in full force, with the exception of the caretaker B. Mogilevich, crushed by the cargo moving from the list, urgently evacuated to the ice, went under water, emitting a grinding and crackling sound a huge structure tearing apart.

People managed to save most of the property important for life, and immediately began to pitch tents, build houses from logs, equip a galley - in a word, organize life on the ice, which, with the light hand of radio operator E. Krenkel, henceforth began to be called “Schmidt’s camp” - exactly that he began to sign his radiograms to the mainland, because “Chelyuskin” no longer existed. Several people expressed a desire to walk to the shore, leaving the camp, but Schmidt simply threatened to shoot them. This was the end of the incident.

The people on the ice floe showed miracles of restraint, calm and organization. They lived as if no catastrophe had happened: in the mornings they still gathered for exercise, engaged in socially useful work, listened to lectures, held meetings, and took walks with their children. All this became possible thanks to the outstanding organizational skills and faith in the success of the expedition leader O.Yu. Schmidt. It was he, of course, together with the country's leadership, who managed to turn his failure into triumph.

Despite the ridicule of the Western press, reproaches for the stupidity of the enterprise, haste in action and confidence in an imminent unfavorable outcome - one Danish newspaper even published Schmidt’s obituary, the entire Soviet people, on the contrary, not only followed the fate of the “Chelyuskinites” with bated breath, but also unconditionally believed to their salvation.

And salvation finally came - from heaven. Anatoly Lyapidevsky on his ANT-4 flew to the area of ​​the Chelyuskin crash 28 times until he discovered the camp on March 5. He took all ten women and two children off the ice. Then six more pilots joined him: Vasily Molokov, Nikolai Kamanin, Mikhail Vodopyanov, Mavriky Slepnev, Ivan Doronin, Mikhail Babushkin and Sigismund Levanevsky. And the people on the ice floe tirelessly built landing strips for airplanes, they were constantly broken, and they cleared them again. The pilots made 23 flights, delivering people to the Chukotka camp of Vankarem, and O. Schmidt, who fell ill with pneumonia while still on the ice floe, by decision of the Government, was sent to the city of Nome in Alaska for treatment. Seven pilots became the first “Heroes of the Soviet Union” in history, including Levanevsky, although he did not save anyone and he himself needed help. All members of the expedition, 103 people, except children, and the rescue headquarters of the “Chelyuskinites” were awarded the Order of the Red Star.

The train with the participants of the expedition on the Chelyuskin made a long journey from Vladivostok to Moscow, stopping at every station, until on June 19, 1934, the Chelyuskinites were met by Moscow. The solemnity of the meeting and the enthusiasm that reigned on the streets are well known from the chronicles: open cars with heroes were literally littered with flowers, welcome leaflets fell from the sky like rain. The country has shown the whole world that it never leaves its people in trouble. And the experience of the “Schmidt camp” and its rescue was very useful three years later - to the four “Papaninites” who landed on the ice floe with the help of aviation and spent 9 long months on it.