PAPANIN: NORTH POLE-1

Ivan Dmitrievich Papanin (1894 – 1966),
Russian Navy, Arctic explorer

Ivan Papanin was born in Sevastopol (currently Ukraine) to a family of a sailor. In 1914 he was conscripted into the Russian Navy. He took part in the Russian Civil War on the Soviet side. In Stalinist Russia a massive campaign to explore and develop its Northern territories was initiated during the 1930’s.
In 1931 Papanin took part in the expedition on the icebreaker Malygin to Franz Josef Land. In 1932-1933 he was the leader of a polar expedition in the Tikhaya Bay in Franz Josef Land. In 1934-1935 he was the head of a polar station on the Cape Chelyuskin.
In 1937-1938 he was the leader of the famous expedition called North Pole-1. Four researchers: Ivan Papanin, Ernest Krenkel, Evgeny Fedorov and Petr Shirshov landed on the drifting Arctic ice floes in an airplane. Additional planes brought equipment and supplies, which they deposited and then departed. For 234 days, the Papanin four-man team carried out a wide range of scientific observations while floating near the polar zone. At the end, they were picked up by the icebreaker Krasin. It was the first expedition of its kind. All the members of the expedition received the Hero of the Soviet Union, an award, that was extremely rare before World War II.

In 1939-1946 Papanin succeeded Otto Schmidt, the famous Arctic explorer and scholar. as the head of the Glavsevmorput', a controversial establishment that oversaw all commercial operations on the Northern Sea Route. Shmidt had also been director of airborne operations and evacuation on the North Pole -1 expedition. In 1940 Papanin received his second Hero of the Soviet Union award for the organization of the expedition that saved icebreaker "Sedov". During World War II he was the representative of the State Defense Committee responsible for all transportation by the Northern Sea Route. In 1941-1952 he was a member of the Central Revision Commission of the Communist Party.
In 1948-1951 he was the deputy director of the Institute for Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences and from 1951 until his death in 1966 he was the Head of the Department of Sea Expeditions of the Academy.
Papanin's name was given to a cape on the Taymyr Peninsula, a mountain in Antarctica, and an underwater mountain in the Pacific Ocean.