Arctic Day opened at the Presidential Library

On February 25, 2022 St. Petersburg (Senate Square, 3) hosted the traditional annual conference "Arctic Day at the Presidential Library". The event is held with the support of the Committee of St. Petersburg for the Arctic.

The conference participants were welcomed by Andrey Anokhin, Deputy Chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for Arctic Affairs, Yury Kravtsov, Deputy Permanent Representative of  Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) to the President of the Russian Federation, Maria Dukalskaya, Director of the Russian State Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic, Vice President of the Association of Indigenous Minorities North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation Nina Veysalova, Chairman of the Polar Commission of the St. Petersburg City Branch of the Russian Geographical Society Viktor Boyarsky. 

According to Andrei Anokhin, Deputy Chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for the Arctic Affairs, St. Petersburg is the largest communication platform on the development of the Arctic not only in Russia, but also in the world: “Our city regularly hosts two world-famous international events on Arctic issues - the summit "The Arctic - the territory of dialogue", which will be held in April 2022, and the forum "The Arctic: present and future". At the same time, as Andrei Anokhin emphasized, “for the tenth year in a row, the Arctic calendar of our city begins with the Arctic Day at the Presidential Library. It's always expected."The main task of the Arctic Day in the Presidential Library is to promote Arctic expeditions, scientific research on Arctic topics, draw attention to the problems of preserving the nature of this northern region and its original culture, as well as the livelihood of Arctic communities.

The conference was opened with a speech to mark the 90th anniversary of the expedition on the icebreaker “A. Sibiryakov" on the route Arkhangelsk - Vladivostok. The story of the famous dynasty of Russian hydrographers, polar explorers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Andrey and Boris Vilkitsky, will continue the theme of the history of the development of the Arctic.

The event provided an overview of the Arctic expedition in 2021, presented the current state and prospects of the nuclear icebreaker fleet, the history and possibilities of using drifting stations in Arctic research.

The conference participants were told about the first results of the Oral Memory of the Arctic project, aimed at preserving the unique experience of Russian polar explorers in video recordings.

The event also focused on promoting the cultural heritage of the Arctic, indigenous peoples in the Arctic Council system and their role in the preservation and development of the northern regions. The video lecture hall of the Presidential Library “Knowledge about Russia” and an interactive interregional online quiz prepared by the Regional Center of Komi Republic based on materials from the Presidential Library’s collection will also be dedicated to the indigenous peoples of the Arctic.

The Arctic Day at the Presidential Library ended with a cinema club meeting, which will included a screening of the film Polar Happiness, which told about the amazing life of Alexei Treshnikov, an academician, an outstanding polar explorer and head of the Russian Geographical Society from 1977 to 1991. The director and scriptwriter of the film is the legendary polar explorer Vladimir Strugatsky.

The participants of the "Arctic Day" at the Presidential Library, including via video conference, were representatives of state authorities, the Russian Geographical Society, Atomflot, the Russian State Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic, the Russian Museum of Ethnography, the Arctic and Antarctic Scientific and research institute and other organizations were involved in the study and development of the Arctic, as well as schoolchildren, students, graduate students and cadets of Russian higher and military educational institutions.

The event is available on the institution’s YouTube channel.