The Presidential Library's webinar spotlighted the "land of volcanoes and bears"

On September 20, 2023 the online webinar "The Land of Volcanoes and Bears: The First Kamchatka Expedition" was broadcast on the Presidential Library's portal, which presented the most interesting materials from the library's collection relating to the history of the development of the eastern part of Siberia and the Kamchatka Peninsula.

In the second half of the 17th and throughout the 18th centuries, the search and exploration of “new lands” was carried out by both the central government and free people. A significant role in this was played by the Yakut Cossack, clerk of the Anadyr prison Vladimir Atlasov, whom Alexander Pushkin called the “Kamchatka Ermak”. In his reports - “skasks” - he compiled descriptions and drawings of Kamchatka and reported a lot of interesting things about the nature and population of the peninsula. The first mentions of volcanoes and hot springs belong to him.

The Russian poet, folklorist and ethnographer Dmitry Sadovnikov wrote about this in his work “Our Explorers”, which was presented as part of the Presidential Library's webinar. 

When, after all the exploration of the Siberian outskirts, the Russians found themselves off the coast of America and Japan, it was necessary to llearn about these countries. And this great mission was accomplished by the expeditions of Vitus Bering. In 1703, Bering graduated from the naval cadet corps in Amsterdam, which was considered the best in the world, and was later enlisted in the Russian navy. Monographs from the collections of the Presidential Library, for example, the work of Boris Ostrovsky, can tell about the life of the great navigator before the expeditions.

On January 6, 1725, three weeks before his death, Peter I personally wrote instructions in which he ordered: to build two deck boats in Kamchatka, sail along the land to the north and look for where this land meets America, and then “get to which city of European possessions and put the shores on the map”. Vitus Bering was appointed head of the expedition. It consisted of Lieutenant Alexey Chirikov, midshipman Pyotr Chaplin, Lieutenant Martyn Shpanberg and more than 60 sailors. Anton von Moller’s monograph contains a list of “officials, some of whom were sent from St. Petersburg, and others were assigned to Tobolsk and Okhotsk,” which can be met during the webinar.

The plan of the expedition was as follows: through Siberia by land and along rivers to Okhotsk, from there by sea to Kamchatka and then sailing on ships in search of the strait. The journey was difficult. Maria Lyalina writes about this in detail in her book “Russian Arctic and Round-the-World Sailors”.

AIn addition, as part of the webinar, it was possible to learn about the research paper of Lev Berg “Discovery of Kamchatka and Bering’s Kamchatka Expeditions”. This work is unique as the author, in his own words, “tried not to lose sight of even the little things”.

The Presidential Library's collections contain Vasily Vakhtin’s work “The First Bering Marine Expedition to Solve the Question of Whether Asia is Connected with America”, which gives readers a unique opportunity to see extracts from the logbooks of the First Kamchatka Expedition. It is worth paying special attention to one more work - “The Bering Expedition: a collection of documents” of the Main Archival Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR. It contains a large number of historical documents: Bering's reports on the first and second expeditions, his proposals to the Admiralty Board, Senate decrees, reports, letters, dispatches, drawings and maps.

One of the important components of the Presidential Library's collections are maps - one of the main sources of the history of discoveries. The previously mentioned work by Lev Berg, “The Discovery of Kamchatka and Bering’s Kamchatka Expeditions”, contains many maps, including a map of the First Kamchatka Expedition.

The 1730 map was presented by Bering along with a brief report and became widespread in Russia and abroad; it was used in the compilation of many maps and atlases, including the authors of the Academic Atlas of 1745, which became the first completed atlas of the Russian Empire. It contained a map of the state on two sheets and 19 sheets of maps of its parts.

A brief report by Vitus Bering on the First Kamchatka Expedition in the form of an independent document was also presented at the Presidential Library's webinar. 

These and many other materials dedicated to the First Kamchatka Expedition and the development of Kamchatka are available in more than 1,500 remote access centers opened in the Russian Federation and 33 foreign countries. The electronic collections of the Presidential Library arefully available.   

Webinars on various topics are regularly held at the Presidential Library. With their help, one can discover unique collections of the national electronic repository, learn about rare historical documents, publications and other materials that are little known to a wide audience.

The Presidential Library’s portal provides all the information about past and upcoming webinars in the Webinars section as well as information about remote access centers in the Remote Access Centers section.