The year 2023 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the legendary geologist Nikolai Urvantsev. For Siberians, this is a truly iconic figure, like Peter the Great for St. Petersburgers. Arctic explorer, founder of Norilsk and its first resident, "official friend of the Norwegian government", discoverer and pioneer, the results of whose expeditions formed the basis for the creation of the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Combine. Today it is believed that in the area of the deposits discovered by the scientist there are about 35% of the world's explored reserves of nickel, 10% of copper, 15% of cobalt and 40% of platinoids.
The whole life of this man is an adventure novel with a cleverly twisted plot, unexpected turns and a dramatic ending. Despite the fact that Urvantsev can be safely put on a par with such polar explorers as Schmidt, Amundsen, Nansen, Papanin, Lyapidevsky, his name in Soviet times did not rattle the whole country, and remained familiar only to the inhabitants of the city on the 69th parallel and geologists. The answer lies in the very biography of Nikolai Nikolaevich - he was arrested three times and in the 30s of the last century served time in "Norillag", at the construction site of the very metallurgical plant, the foundations of which were laid by his research....
It all began in 1893, when a long-awaited son was born to a merchant family in the town of Lukoyanov, Nizhny Novgorod Province. After graduating from the local real school, the young man went to Siberia at the invitation of his uncle and enrolled in the newly established Tomsk Institute of Technology. Of course, he wanted to study in the capital, but his father went bankrupt and could not help him with finances to realize his dream.
Initially Urvantsev studied at the mechanical faculty, but after a year he transferred to mining engineering. The choice of profession was made under the influence of lectures and books by Vladimir Obruchev - a famous scientist, writer and science organizer, author of "Plutonia" (1924) and "Sannikov Land" (1926). A graduate of the Mining Institute of St. Petersburg, he essentially founded the Siberian geological school - based on his memories of his alma mater and the experience gained, the professor created the Mining Department at the Tomsk Institute of Technology and became its first dean. Obruchev's speeches gathered not only mining engineers, but also representatives of other fields of study, literally infecting them with passion for geology and the search for an answer to the question: how the structure of the Earth has evolved over the centuries.
There was another reason for changing the faculty... At the institute, Nikolai Nikolaevich met and became friends with Alexander Sotnikov, who came from a family of merchants who had lived in Taimyr for generations. Once they had almost undivided power on the peninsula, conducted monopoly trade and were the first to try to develop local mineral deposits: coal, copper ore and graphite. Sotnikov dreamed of further development of the family business, and Urvantsev dreamed of new discoveries. Together the clever poor man and the ambitious rich man visited Taimyr in the Norilsk mountains during summer practice and thought about organizing a large-scale expedition to its unexplored corners. Already then, in the student laboratory, studying selected rock samples, Urvantsev was able to determine that the deposit was not copper, as previously thought, but copper-nickel with a high platinum content.
Nikolay Nikolaevich's graduation from the Institute coincided with the civil war and revolution in the country. The young specialist got a job in the Siberian Geological Committee and in 1919 went to the Sotnikov-Urvantsev expedition to the lower reaches of the Yenisei. And here history offers several variants of unfolding of further events.
According to the official version, the geologist was sent there by Sibgeolkomom to search for coal, necessary for the development of the Northern Sea Route, in accordance with the order of Lenin himself. Another version says that the trip was organized by Admiral Kolchak to explore the transport prospects of the region and coal deposits for Entente ships delivering weapons and ammunition by sea. There is also a third - allegedly Urvantsev himself persuaded Kolchak to finance the geological party.
Anyway, in 1920 Nikolai Nikolayevich not only found the coveted coal, but also confirmed his conclusions about the presence of rare copper-nickel ores on Rudnaya Mountain and the possibility of their development. The deposit was named Norilsk-1. Judging by the numbering, the researcher assumed that other similar deposits would be found there. Let us say in advance: he turned out to be right.
"Now the industrial prospects of the Norilsk deposit have acquired special significance. The immediate neighborhood of large deposits of energy fuel and ore deposits is rare in nature. However, all this wealth lies far to the north, beyond the Arctic Circle, under the 70th degree of northern latitude. It is not known whether it is possible to organize a large enterprise here. What will be the conditions of its development? There has been no such experience either in our country or abroad," the geologist wrote.
After the return of the expedition, events developed rapidly. The Whites were being defeated. Sotnikov followed Kolchak and was eventually shot by the Bolsheviks. Nikolai Nikolaevich himself was arrested and kept in prison for several months, but then the valuable specialist was released and sent to the North again. However, this story was reflected on Urvantsev's fate later in the most tragic way.
In the meantime, Sibgeolkom decided to continue exploration in the promising area: in order to find out the conditions of field development in a harsh climate, it was necessary to winter there, make the first sinking of mine workings and conduct weather observations.
Seven polar explorers under Urvantsev's leadership coped with all the goals set before them. The work was hardest: they had to build boats for rafting on Taimyr rivers and shelters for parking, put astronomical points (for marking coordinates) in the middle of the tundra, sew camp clothes and shoes. Add to this the occasional polar bears and blizzards, in which you can get lost within a few meters of your tent.
In his autobiography, Urvantsev himself recalled those difficulties in a very restrained manner: "In 1921-1922 I continued exploration of the coal deposit with underground works in the polar wintering conditions. He built two houses from local wood, which laid the foundation of a new settlement - the city of Norilsk". Today one of them is called "The First House of Norilsk" and officially belongs to the objects of cultural heritage of regional significance.
In 1922 another equally bright event took place. While exploring the Taimyr Pyasina River, Urvantsev and his companions found the mail of the famous Norwegian traveler Roald Amundsen, which was considered lost - sailors Knutsen and Tessem, who in 1919 were to deliver it to Norway from the schooner "Maud", overcame 900 kilometers of snowy desert and died on the way to Dickson. Quite by chance, Nikolai Nikolaevich came across the documents scattered along the ocean shore and collected them. Having arrived on the big land, Urvantsev sent the found correspondence to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.
When the Norwegians learned that a weighty parcel had been sent to them by a diplomatic mission, they were very surprised. And when they saw the contents, they were shocked - after all, their own attempts to find Amundsen's letters were unsuccessful. Oslo awarded the scientist with a personalized gold watch, and the Russian Geographical Society awarded him the silver medal named after Przhevalsky.
In addition to exploration of Norilsk fossil reserves, an important milestone in Nikolay Urvantsev's biography was the expedition to Severnaya Zemlya with the polar explorer Georgy Ushakov.
Its discovery in 1913 by Boris Vilkitsky is considered the greatest geographical discovery of the XX century, which erased the last white spot from the world map! In 1930 scientists arrived there and became the first inhabitants of the hard-to-reach archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. For two years Nikolay Urvantsev traveled 5000 km, of which 2200 km were covered by route survey, which covered 26700 km. The scientific leader of the detachment of the Government Arctic Expedition studied the Severnaya Zemlya along and across, including its geological structure, and for the first time in the world mapped its clear contours, for which he was awarded the Order of Lenin.
In 1935 the discoverer became a Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, and in 1937 he was appointed Deputy Director of the Arctic Institute. The discoveries made by Nikolai Nikolaevich brought him loud fame. They also led to his arrest and exile. In 1938 - at the time of widespread repressions - Urvantsev was reminded of the connection between his Norilsk expedition and Kolchak. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison camps for "sabotage and participation in a counter-revolutionary organization". Then he was released, arrested again and acquitted. But in August 1940 Urvantsev was arrested again and sentenced to 8 years. Ironically, the geologist was sent to "Norillag", that is, to the same Norilsk mines he had discovered.
Five years later, the scientist got out of the camp early. The imprisonment did not break him - perhaps because, one way or another, even there he continued to be engaged in his life's work. He was appointed head of the geological department and chief geologist of the Norilsk Combine, involved in the search for uranium ores in the area of the Taimyr Peninsula - the raw material for the atomic bomb created in the USSR.
After retirement Urvantsev moved to Leningrad, where he began working at the Oceanologic Federal State Budgetary Institution. In 1958, the Russian Geographical Society honored him with a rare award - the Big Gold Medal - for his scientific achievements, perseverance and courage, and in 1963, in connection with his 70th birthday, he was awarded the second Order of Lenin.
Nikolay Urvantsev passed away in 1985. The working capacity and erudition of the man who discovered fuel, metals and part of the Northern Sea Route for the country inspired writers and directors to create images and entire works. Thus, the geologist became the prototype of Nikolai Mantsev, a character in Alexey Tolstoy's novel "Engineer Garin's Hyperboloid". Writer and screenwriter Eduard Topol admitted that the basis of the script of the movie "Discovery" was the life story of Nikolai Nikolaevich.
In memory of the outstanding polar explorer, paleontologists named after him a fossil species from a branch of jawless organisms, geologists - the mineral urvantsevite. On the map of the Arctic we will find Urvantsev's bay and cape on Oleniy Island in the Kara Sea, as well as a rock among the eternal ice of Queen Maud Land in the Southern Hemisphere in Antarctica. And, of course, Norilsk residents paid their tribute: in addition to the street of the same name and a monument, the Norilsk airport was named after him by popular vote in 2019.
You can join our Telegram channel by clicking here: https://t.me/+xuoRBkSBx7hiMWUy