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.

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

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