“Our Trip to the Island Should Be as Secure as Possible”: G. D. Krasinsky’s Contribution to the Establishment of the Sovereignty of the USSR over the Wrangel Island in 1921-26
The article draws on archival documents to analyze the events connected with policies of a number of foreign states contesting the sovereignty of the Wrangel Island in the Arctic that belonged to the young Soviet state in 1921-26 and the role of the polar researcher Georgy Davidovich Krasinsky in prevention of these aggressive actions. Content analysis provides new information on this historical episode. The documents from the personal provenance fond of G. D. Krasinsky in the Russian State Archive of Economics demonstrate Krasinsky’s active position and role in the development of the Arctic and in the establishment of Soviet frontiers, when he was appointed assistant to the head of Special hydrographic expedition to the Wrangel Island in 1924. The most interesting document in our opinion - the official address of G. D. Krasinsky to the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of G. V. Chicherin concerning organization of the second expedition on the island - is published in the article with some abbreviation. This document provides insight into Krasinsky’s plans on implementation of the final stage of suppression of active actions of foreign “aggressors.” He believed that only actual colonization of the Wrangel Island can provide effective response to the encroachments of the British and the Americans, who naturally saw it as an important base for transpolar air traffics. Along with principle of historicism, the article uses method of biographic analysis, which allows to investigate in details Krasinsky’s course of life and to give objective assessment of his professional ability to anticipate the future, that is, to work out his actions proactively. Thus, G. D. Krasinsky ideas were confirmed in the days of the Cold War, when military facilities of the Soviet Union were placed on the island, and it became an important outpost in monitoring the integrity of the Soviet frontiers in the Arctic. We still observe these same tendencies today, in the light of the strengthening of Russian military presence in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation.