Russia (bbabo.net), - In 2022, the 110th anniversary of Georgy Sedov's expedition to the North Pole and the 145th anniversary of his birth. On the eve of the round dates, journalists from Rodina and Rossiyskaya Gazeta followed in the footsteps of the team of Georgy Yakovlevich on Novaya Zemlya and tried to understand why contemporaries see only recklessness and fanaticism in the personality of the legendary lieutenant, leaving behind the obvious contribution to the study of high latitudes?/i

Following the team of Sedovites, "Motherland" used two "guides". Historical - these are the first published photographs of the expedition member, artist, writer and biographer of Sedov Nikolai Pinegin (today they form the gold fund of the Northern Maritime Museum). And the modern one is a photo chronicle and finds of Nikolai Gernet, a photojournalist of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, an Arkhangelsk researcher of Sedov's heritage.

In 2020, Gernet participated in the Arctic expedition of the Northern Fleet and the Russian Arctic Park, which followed in the footsteps of the legendary polar explorers Georgy Sedov and Vladimir Rusanovaya Zemlya. It was there that in 1912 the Sedovites spent the winter before the tragic trip to the Pole.

In 2020, memorial crosses were found on Novaya Zemlya, erected by members of the expedition more than a hundred years ago.

- When we approached the Kara side of Novaya Zemlya, we were guided by the point of entry to this coast of the Sedov expedition, - says Gernet. - In the spring of 1913, the Sedovites crossed the archipelago on dogs through the glacier. It was a classic summer day on Novaya Zemlya - windy, cold drizzle. We were soaked before leaving the beach. Lined up in a chain. Visibility was 50 meters. But my partner and I looked at the houris - a pyramid of stones stacked on the shore to mark the place, and next to it was some kind of log. Turned out it was a cross. Old, polished with water and stones to a shine. We were upset - all the inscriptions were erased. But when they turned it over, they read the carved words - "Sedov's Expedition 1912-13". It was this cross that the expedition member Vladimir Vize described later in his book. They also found a second cross - one and a half kilometers from that place. Now all the artifacts are in the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic in St. Petersburg.

Gernet was able to see and film exactly the places that Sedov had walked through and on dogs. A photographic chronicle was compiled: the rock that Pinegin described in his diaries, Cape Stolbovoy, the place where Sedov fell through the ice on a dog sled ...

When it became clear that the ice-bound ship "Saint Foka" would have to spend the winter on Novaya Zemlya, the Sedovites converted the ship into a scientific laboratory. On the archipelago, they made depth measurements, were engaged in cartography and found out that the maps did not correspond to real data: in reality there were no islands at all, and members of the expedition rediscovered some of the islands. They hold the lead in crossing the ice sheet of Novaya Zemlya, in surveying the glacial coast of the archipelago.

- If Georgy Yakovlevich ended his famous expedition only by studying Novaya Zemlya, it would already be considered successful. The trip to the Pole was not a scientific issue, but rather a political one, Gernet believes.

At the beginning of the last century, any expedition, even an unsuccessful one, supplemented the set of rules and recommendations for trips to the Arctic. How the sled behaves, what you need to keep the instruments from freezing, what to take on the next expedition...

The polar explorers studied the experience of their predecessors step so as not to repeat the mistakes. This is not only the expedition of Sedov, but also of Brusilov, Rusanov - they went to conquer the Arctic ice on the eve of the First World War. Of the ships of the three famous captains, only Georgy Sedov's "Saint Foka" returned back. This is probably why the Sedovites got most of all from their contemporaries for the poor preparation of the Arctic campaign: “instead of corned beef they could take sauerkraut, like Nansen, they would be saved from scurvy”, “instead of Arkhangelsk dogs, which turned out to be ordinary mongrels, it was necessary to take proven Siberian like "...

Likes remained in the photographs of Nikolai Pinegin - both Siberian and Arkhangelsk. They arranged fights and did not want to follow the leader of the team. And when the members of the expedition were starving, the schnitzel from the Arkhangelsk mongrels was considered a delicacy.

In one of Pinegin's pictures, there are cubs next to the dogs. According to Gernet, members of the expedition tried to use the bears as a transport to reach the North Pole - they trained the cubs. Several times they even managed to bring firewood from the shore to the camp on a bear team. The experiments ended there - the bears roared and refused to obey. As a result, they were left on the "Saint Fok" for the entertainment of the crew and as a living commodity, which, after returning, could be sold to the zoos of St. Petersburg in order to somehow compensate for the costs of the expedition.Gernet testifies: even to well-prepared expeditions, the Arctic today is just as unfriendly. Members of expeditions continue to die here, tourists get injured and polar bears attack people with the same constancy as they did a hundred years ago. But Georgy Sedov spent the winter on Novaya Zemlya in favorable conditions under the skins of walruses, managed to survive and, with most of the team, went further - to the North Pole.

Everything rests on the personality of the lieutenant - Georgy Yakovlevich was sharp, desperate, eager to prove that he, the son of a simple fisherman, was capable of something. Sedov invested in the expedition with his heart and soul, and the team "held" only for his enthusiasm: the head made everyone celebrate the sunrise, the name day of the expedition members and the royal people. They even put on plays. That is, Sedov did everything not to fall into depression and illness. As a result, the losses of the expedition, by the standards of their time, turned out to be not so great - one participant in the campaign, and his main inspirer, died.

Georgy Sedov died on the way to the Pole on February 20, 1914, never having reached it. Where are the lieutenant's remains? Immediately after the return of the "Saint Foka" to Arkhangelsk, two sailors who accompanied Sedov to the Pole admitted that they allegedly gave the head's body to the dogs: the team needed food to return back. As if Georgy Yakovlevich himself asked his companions about this, dying.

But later, during the investigation, the sailors retracted their words. Sedov was unconscious and actually delirious. What could he have bequeathed to Alexander Pustoshny and Grigory Linnik before his death? One way or another, the sailors who got lost on the way back were saved only thanks to Sedov, who had previously drawn the attention of his companions to a beautiful ice rock-arch. Seeing her, the sailors were able to orient themselves in the icy desert and return to the Saint Fok.

There is a version that they buried their boss in one of the cracks on the way back. But feeding the body of a dead comrade to the dogs is unlikely. Even if there was a direct order. Perhaps the members of the expedition simply could not save Sedov's body from the hungry dogs. They themselves were sick, frostbitten, one of them was bleeding in the throat. It should also be taken into account that the dog food should have been enough for 1000 kilometers, and they only covered about 200.

Although the expedition never reached the "North Pole", this trip was a breakthrough in Russia's Arctic epic.

- When several new expeditions were sent to search for Sedov, Brusilov and Rusanov, their budget exceeded the funds allocated for the missing ships, and the number of finds and scientific discoveries exceeded the results of the original ones! If it were not for Sedov, we would not have received pilot Nagursky, who made his first Arctic sorties precisely in search of Georgy Yakovlevich. It was the first experience of Arctic flights, - says Nikolai Gernet.

The expedition brought up Vladimir Vize - in 1912 he went with Sedov, a frail student, and turned into a hardened polar explorer, an academician who, after that campaign, was already up to everything. Pavel Kushakov was sent to Dixon to build radio stations. Nikolai Pinegin led the Soviet polar expeditions, created and headed the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic.

- Sedov's expedition became a grain thrown on the barren soil of the Arctic. But a tree has grown out of it, without which it is already impossible to imagine the modern Arctic. If not for the campaign of Georgy Yakovlevich to the North Pole, the navigator Albanov and the sailor Konrad would hardly have returned home - the only surviving members of the crew of the "St. Anna", picked up by the Sedovites on Franz Josef Land and delivered materials of the Brusilov expedition to their contemporaries, Gernet notes.

And Veniamin Kaverin certainly would not have written his famous novel "Two Captains", where the role of the main character was "performed", as you know, by the entire legendary trinity - Sedov, Rusanov and Brusilov. And the immortal words have been with us since then: "Fight and seek, find and not give up."

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