Arctic Russia

arctic heroes/arctic reality

tv100.ru has television footage of explorer Viktor Boyarsky, and a talk he gave at the museum of the Arctic and the Antarctic in St. Petersburg.  The large three-dimensional map of the roof of the world is quite striking.  Boyarsky is Director of the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg and head of the Victory in Arctic and Antarctic research.  He has worked under Chilingarov.

t.v.21.ru has some good footage, though quite short, on the retirement of the ice-breaker Lenin alongside the announcement that three more are expected soon.

Meanwhile, negotiations are taking place about what slice of the Arctic pie will belong to Arkhangelsk and the city’s role in building concrete pipes for the Shtokman project.

If there is a Soviet and post-Soviet approach, fundamentally the latter is more about the role of exploration in supporting the search for a ‘new energy order’ whereas during Soviet times exploration supported a kind of atomic geopolitics in the heroic mode.  This latter concept is still there, it just has other companions.