ARCTIC EXTREME. THE CATASTROPHE OF THE AIRSHIP “ITALIA” IN THE SOVIET DOCUMENTARY OF 1928-1930
The campaign of the Soviet arctic exploration was launched in 1928 by the rescue mission of U. Nobile’s crew members, survivors of the airship “Italia” crash. Significant for the Soviet world, this operation was associated both with geopolitical issues and intracultural trends. Consequently, texts about this campaign (with the participation of the icebreakers “Krasin” and “Malygin”) became the foundation for the Soviet polar feat concept. This important for Soviet identity concept was created at the end of the 1920s and finally formed in the second half of the 1930s. The article explores two groups of texts related to the 1928 expedition: books written by polar scientists, including expedition leaders, and journalists directly involved in the voyage. For the first time in the Soviet cultural space, these materials of mass media and documentary developed and tested norms designed to regulate specifically Soviet ways of transmitting extreme experience. The crash of Nobile’s “Italia” excited the world community with its contradictory and terrible details. Various sources belonging to aeronauts and members of the rescue expeditions crew make it possible to see how the style of writing varies depending on the addressee, author’s position, time of creation of the text, and other factors. The authors analyze the differences in assessments of the extreme in the texts of the scientific and journalistic communities, as well as in narratives of the experienced extreme. They come to the conclusion that there was a variety of stylistic trends in descriptions of the extreme and directions of the subsequent evolution of the heroic myth of the Soviet Arctic.