Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939 [Hardcover]

John McCannon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195114361 | ISBN-13: 978-0195114362 | Publication Date: April 9, 1998

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A glance at the globe from the top down reveals the Arctic Ocean raggedly enclosed by a rough crook of land running 6,000 miles between European Russia and the Bering Straits. The vastness of this area has always fired the Russian imagination and fueled the drive toward the more practical applications of scientific exploration and economic growth.

Although Russia's relationship with the North Pole dates from the 1500s, it wasn't until "after World War II [that] the USSR emerged as one of the top nations in polar research and development, both in the Arctic and the Antarctic." Expeditions peaked in the Stalinist years of the 1930s, and in less than a decade, there occurred many notable achievements: 1932 saw the icebreaker Sibiriakov cross through the fabled Northeast Passage; in 1934 Soviet aviators staged an unprecedented and daring rescue mission; and 1937 saw "Soviet pilots capture the world record for long-distance aviation two times in succession...." McCannon's focus is on the larger subject of the USSR's economic and cultural development in this period seen through the prism of Arctic exploration.

The heroic exploits of polar explorers and aviators seized the public imagination, and helped unify this huge, sprawling, diverse "totalitarian" culture. McCannon regards these heroes as an answer to the question of how totalitarian regimes command loyalty from their populations. Brainwashing and terrorism can not alone explain it. But the galvanizing force of popular myth might, and in the service of this idea, McCannon analyzes "socialist realism" of the time as a Zeitgeist. Its key elements are "the cults of Lenin and Stalin, a keen sense of patriotism, a great emphasis on technological and industrial power, and, above all, heroism." The Arctic itself grounded these ideals, enriching them with the North's mythic pull and the high-tech grandeur of aviation. Until the appearance of this history, the impact of the Arctic on Soviet popular culture has been a neglected study.

Though flush with scholarly detail, McCannon's history will engage the layperson who has some knowledge of the subject. Within each chapter, the material is organized into manageable narrative blocks. The subject might have remained as cold as the title, but McCannon's narrative voice conveys clarity as well as a love of subject. --Hollis Giammatteo

Review

"A probing and thoroughly engrossing account. Professor McCannon makes judicious use of once secret Russian archives to produce a fascinating study of one of the most neglected aspects of Soviet history in the pre-World War II Stalin era."--Bruce Lincoln, Distinguished Research Professor, Northern Illinois University

"Red Arctic is a richly constructed and conceived work of history, populated by heroic northern explorers, dashing aviators, grim Stalin bureaucrats, polar bears, shamans, and class enemies. In this engagingly written narrative based on an impressive array of archival and published sources, John McCannon examines the Arctic myth in reality and legend, documenting the history of arctic exploration under Stalin as well as delving into the still relatively uncharted arena of Stalinist popular culture. Red Arctic is an original piece of work, representative of a new generation of historical scholarship on the Soviet Union."--Lynne Viola, Professor of History, University of Toronto

"John McCannon's book is about both the actual and the symbolic Arctic, a place where heroes were made while real men and women slaved away in labor camps. Combining social and cultural history in a vivid narrative, the author explores how explorers became icons in a Stalinist dream factory. The central characters are as tall as the legendary Otto Shmidt but are dwarfed by Stalin and his minions who in doctored photographs towered over the heroes they made. This book is about Soviet celebrity and the ways in which the state and society conspired to create a post-revolutionary cultural hegemony."--Ronald Grigor Suny, University of Chicago

"...a scholarly bureaucratic history of Soviet efforts to exploit the Arctic."--The New York Times Book Review

"McCannon's book is the first in any language to chronicle and analyze the heroic era of exploration and development in the Soviet Arctic. Drawing heavily on newly opened Soviet archives and a great variety of other sources, it combines solid scholarship, clear writing, and a deep understanding of the Russian and Soviet cultures to illuminate a subject, a region, and a period well known through rough sketches but for which there have been no detailed pictures."--Choice

"...no one has examined [the Cheliuskin and polar flights] as extensively as McCannon. Anyone interested in Soviet history will find his story engaging."--Slavic Review

"...Red Arctic is a very rich and enjoyable study which will appeal to historians, scholars of Soviet popular culture and anyone interested in the history of polar exploration."--Slavic and East European Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195114361
• ISBN-13: 978-0195114362
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,358,954 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a note from the author, January 15, 2002

By 

"johnmccannon" (Saskatoon, SK, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939 (Hardcover)

Since I'm the author of this book, please disregard the five-star review, which I've assigned pro forma. This is meant to be a note about Ted Heckathorn's customer review of _Red Arctic_.

Mr. Heckathorn criticizes my book mainly on the grounds that I fail to take into account Robert Harrison's "proof" that the USSR's three transpolar flights of 1937 (along with other Soviet air expeditions) were faked. I would argue in return that to ignore Harrison's "findings" is not a fault, but rather responsible scholarship.

Readers should be aware that Harrison's book (a vanity publication that was, for some time, unable to find a press at all, then was taken up by a publisher that specializes mostly in thriller fiction) is a classic example of conspiracy-theory fringe literature. At least on the Internet, its principal endorsement comes from a British neo-fascist group (www.heretical.co.uk), most of whose web space is taken up with paranoid ravings about "Hebrew millionaires" and "Jewish communists." This is not to say that Harrison (or Heckathorn) shares any of these views; it is simply to show that Harrison's writings hardly occupy a place in the scholarly mainstream.

Harrison's arguments are based on speculative readings of grainy, poor-quality Soviet photos, equally grainy, poor-quality photos taken by the U.S. Army, and theories and assessments contained in U.S. intelligence reports. Harrison fails to take into account that the Soviet media (much like Western news services, then and today) routinely printed stock photos of pilots and aircraft, so images in newspapers and books did not always match the times and places mentioned in captions or headlines. This creates inconsistences, out of which Harrison spins theories more elaborate than they need to be. Moreover, the U.S. Army was hardly the most objective observer of Soviet aviation, and, for that matter, it was not always the most accurate. Also, writing in the 1980s, Harrison had no access to government and Communist Party documents in Russian archives, a plethora of which shows that these flights did in fact take place (and since these documents were never intended for public consumption, Soviet or foreign, it is safe to assume that they were not faked).

Finally, Harrison's conclusions, especially when applied to the third polar flight of 1937--Levanevsky's fatal disappearance--flies in the face of all logic. If the Stalinist regime went to such great lengths to deceive the world about its polar triumphs, in order to impress the international community with its technological prowess and human bravery, why on earth would it follow two stunning successes with a hideously embarrassing failure? If Stalin had wanted to purge Levanevsky (as Harrison and Heckathorn assert), he could have done so easily without a needlessly intricate plan that necessitated tarnishing the USSR's earlier exploits in the Arctic (faked _or_ genuine).

Admittedly, no archival record ever reflects the past with absolute precision or completeness. And Stalin was certainly ethically and practically capable of any deception imaginable. But Stalin did not deceive without rational purpose. And the archival record is more trustworthy than dubious guesswork based on possible inconsistencies spotted in photographs of less than stellar quality. At most, Harrison has raised the rather truistic point that not everything about Soviet propaganda exploits was as it seemed. But, with respect to matters of substance, he has neither proven nor disproven anything, circumstantially or conclusively.

0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Stalin's Fake Polar Flights of the 1930's, December 27, 2001

By 

Ted Heckathorn (Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939 (Hardcover)

Few polar historians or academics are aware of the late Robert J. Morrison's 1987 exposure of Stalin's North Pole scam of the 1930's, in "Russia's Shortcut to Fame: 50-Year Hoax Exposed." Morrison researched from previously classified US Army documents and photographic evidence that the so-called record setting flights originated from remote islands of the Alaskan panhandle to Vancouver, WA and San Jacinto, CA, not from Moscow as Stalin wanted the world to believe. Also Levanevsky was not lost in the Arctic, but was a victim of Stalin's great paranoid 1937 purge