About the book: 1953 / From the preface: “The island did not yet have a name. It could not be found on any map in the world. And it was as uninhabited as a small piece of land can be uninhabited, just discovered among the polar ice at half-eighty degrees north latitude. There were no mountains, no rivers, no lakes, and they simply could not fit here. It was just the ridge of a limestone fold jutting out from the sea. It rose up as a narrow, hunched strip and resembled the back of a whale sticking out of the water. Having stepped onto its icy, slippery surface for the first time, we involuntarily walked with a cautious gait, as if there really was a whale lying under our feet, ready to plunge into the cold abyss at any moment.” And to the north and east of this island lay a huge, unknown land. Untrodden, unknown. It, too, was not on the map - there was only a white spot, outlined here and there by an uncertain, timid dotted line. Everything here was a mystery - the territory of the earth, its structure, its soil, its flora and fauna. It was up to the people who remained on the shore to unravel these secrets, discover these lands, put them on the map, give names to the islands, mountains, bays and lakes. Needless to say, a difficult task fell to the pioneers of Severnaya Zemlya! But these were Soviet people. They knew what kind of work their homeland had sent them to do, they were proud of its trust and boldly looked forward. “Neither I nor my companions were going to play the role of Robinsons or pretend to be stilted heroes; We did not dream of difficulties and hardships as of bliss, since we knew perfectly well that there would be enough of them on our path and that we could not avoid them. Therefore, we looked at the frosts of the Arctic in the same way as stokers look at the heat near the boiler furnaces; to polar snowstorms - like a sailor in a storm; and on ice - like a driver on a difficult road. Conditions are difficult, but normal and natural for the Arctic. In those cases where it was possible, we had to avoid difficulties, and where this was not possible, we had to fight them.” The people kept their word. They spent two years on Severnaya Zemlya and walked the length and breadth of it. They traveled seven thousand kilometers on dogs and on foot. They walked in blizzards and frosts, in the polar night and in the spring thaw, through the chaos of icebergs and the confusion of hummocks, through icy water and sleet, overcoming drifts of loose snow and slush, taking rocks in battle and risking their lives every minute. They mapped 37 thousand square kilometers of untrodden land, found out its extent and configuration, delineated its boundaries, learned its topography, geological structure, climatic conditions, flora and fauna, and the nature of the ice regime of the surrounding seas. With this they completed the discovery of Russian sailors and once again glorified Soviet science - the most advanced in the world. G. A. Ushakov, who was the head of the first expedition to Severnaya Zemlya, talks about this glorious feat of Soviet polar explorers in his book.