Red Arctic : polar exploration and the myth of the north in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939 / John McCannon.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-225) and index.

Polar exploration and soviet political economy -- Arctic as popular culture -- Defining the Arctic -- Footholds in the North: Russians in the Arctic, 1500-1932 -- First steps: opening the North, 1500-1800 -- Arctic in the late imperial period, 1800-1917 -- Building the North: Soviet Arctic, 1917-1932 -- Commissariat of ice: Rise of Glavsevmorput, 1932-1936 -- Growing giant: GUSMP's central apparatus, 1933-1935 -- Science, economic development, and the state -- Periphery: Glavsevmorput in the field -- Days of glory: Major expeditions, 1932-1939 -- Sibiriakov Voyage (1932) -- Cheliuskin Epic (1933-1934) -- Chkalov, Gromov, and Levanevsky: Arctic fFlights (1936-1937) -- "Pole Is Ours!": SP-1 and the North Pole Landing (1937-1938) -- Passing of an era -- From victory to victory: Myth of the Arctic in Soviet culture -- Outlooks toward nature: Arctic as adversary -- Cosmographies: Perceptions of the USSR and the world -- Nation of heroes: Individual and the state -- Living the great dream -- Between Rhetoric and Reality: Manufacturing the Arctic Myth -- Engineering human souls: Arctic myth as state policy -- Crafting the myth: Media and the Arctic -- Consuming the myth: Public responds -- Propaganda: Effects and limitations -- Polestar descending: Glavsevmorput in decline, 1936-1939; Glavsevmorput in drisis -- Glavsevmorput and the great purges -- New primacy in the North: Dalstroi and the demotion of GUSMP.

A work of refreshing originality and vivid appeal, Red Arctic tells the story of Stalinist Russia's massive campaign to explore and develop its Northern territories during the 1930s. Author John McCannon recounts the dramatic stories of the polar expeditions--conducted by foot, ship, and plane--that were the pride of Stalinist Russia, in order to expose the reality behind them: chaotic blunders, bureaucratic competition, and the eventual rise of the Gulag as the dominant force in the North. Red Arctic also traces the development of the polar-based popular culture of the decade, making use of memoirs, films, radio broadcasts, children's books, and cultural ephemera ranging from placards to postage stamps to show how Russia's "Arctic Myth" became an integral part of the overall socialist-realist aesthetic that animated Stalinist culture throughout the 1930s.

Print version record.

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