TASS, April 27. A new interactive exhibition project, dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the Chelyuskin expedition rescue, opened in Arkhangelsk. The exposition is designed as a theatrical and museum composition, where visitors will feel the polar life, the museum's Director Yevgeny Tenetov told TASS.
"The visitors will not just see an exhibition, they will see a study devoted to an important topic - the role of a unique rescue operation that took place in the Far East, on the Chukchi Sea ice, its heritage, numerous cultural manifestations, the formation of the institute of national heroes and the role of the Chelyuskin mission in this country and in the world. <...> It gave a start to a global, grandiose cult of polar explorers <...> Those were not military, but ordinary civilians who <...> were fighting the forces of nature," he said.
The Chelyuskin steamer within one navigation season in 1933 was supposed to repeat the through passage of the Alexander Sibiryakov icebreaker steamer (Arkhangelsk) along the Northern Sea Route. The steamer got stuck in the ice and after several months of drifting it was crushed by the ice and sank in the Chukchi Sea on February 13, 1934. For exactly two months, until April 13, 1934, on the ice existed the Schmidt Camp. Moscow organized a commission to rescue the expedition. The polar aviation rescued all the 104 people. A parade was held on Red Square in Moscow, and the pilots were awarded the title of Heroes of the Soviet Union for the first time in history.
"There were many Northerners among the Chelyuskin expedition. We all know Captain Vladimir Voronin. There also were his assistants Sergei Gudin, Mikhail Markov and Vladimir Pavlov, stokers Nikolai Butakov, Valerian Parshinsky, Boris Kukushkin, sailors Grigory Durasov, Gennady Baranov and many others. In fact, it will be for the first time that their biographies and lives will be the subject of special attention," the museum's director said.
How exhibition is organized
The name of the exhibition comes from the name of the Schmidt Camp's wall newspaper - We Are Not Giving In! Later on, was written a play with the same name. It was staged at Legningrad's Bolshoi Drama Theater. The exhibition presents the performance's working materials, the history of documentaries and feature films.
The museum's task was to have young people feel the atmosphere, since for many people the polar explorers is something far away.
"We have a lot of game elements, interactive elements: you can crawl into a tent, can play the Chelyuskin 1934 game. We've made it, it's a roll-and-move game," said Tenetov.
According to the Northern Maritime Museum's director, for the exhibition, experts have "revived" a diorama, which the museum had kept. "A diorama of 1934, which shows the Chelyuskin camp. Everything there was hand-carved, and we've animated it, turned it into a cartoon that takes an entire wall of the exposition. An animated story it is," he said.
Another part of the exposition is taken by huge blocks of ice that children can rearrange, observing a certain logic and chronology of events. "Those game elements are an important part of the exhibition," he added.
Unique exposition elements
The documentary museum history, collected for about a year before the opening, takes a huge part. "For a year, we were collecting a lot of artifacts related to the Chelyuskin people: from personal belongings, we contacted relatives, and so on," the director said.
The part, related to the Chelyuskin, which earlier was a part of the permanent exposition, has at least tripled, he said in conclusion.
The exhibition project "We Are Not Giving In!" will run to March, 2025.