Sovereignty Matters in the Arctic - Wrangel Island: A Russo-American Crisis in the Making?

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Dimitrakos
Keyword(s):  
The Arctic ◽  
Wrangel Island

scholarly journals “Our Trip to the Island Should Be as Secure as Possible”: G. D. Krasinsky's Contribution to the Establishment of the Sovereignty of the USSR over the Wrangel Island in 1921–26

2020 ◽  
pp. 751-762
Author(s):  
Evgeniy V. Bey ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Objective Assessment ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Effective Response ◽  
Wrangel Island ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Military Facilities ◽  
Russian Military

The article draws on archival documents to analyze events connected with the policies of a number of foreign states contesting the sovereignty of the Wrangel Island in the Arctic that belonged to the young Soviet state in 1921-26 and the role of the polar researcher Georgy Davidovich Krasinsky in prevention of these aggressive actions. Content analysis provides new information on this historical episode. The documents from the personal provenance fond of G. D. Krasinsky in the Russian State Archive of Economy demonstrate Krasinsky’s active position and role in the development of the Arctic and in the establishment of Soviet frontiers, when he was appointed assistant to the head of Special hydrographic expedition to the Wrangel Island in 1924. The most interesting document in our opinion – the official address of G. D. Krasinsky to the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of G. V. Chicherin concerning organization of the second expedition on the island - is published in the article with some abbreviation. This document provides insight into Krasinsky’s plans on implementation of the final stage of suppression of active actions of foreign “aggressors.” He believed that only actual colonization of the Wrangel Island can provide effective response to the encroachments of the British and Americans, who naturally saw in it an important base for transpolar air traffics. Along with principle of historicism, the article uses method of biographic analysis, which allows to investigate in details Krasinsky’s course of life and to give objective assessment of his professional ability to anticipate the future, that is, to work out his actions proactively. Thus, G. D. Krasinsky ideas were confirmed in the days of the Cold War, when military facilities of the Soviet Union were placed on the island, and it became an important outpost in monitoring the integrity of the Soviet frontiers in the Arctic. We still observe these same tendencies today, in the light of strengthening of the Russian military presence in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation.

scholarly journals Mammoth Extinction: Two Continents and Wrangel Island

Radiocarbon ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul S. Martin ◽  
Anthony J. Stuart
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Striking Difference ◽  
Mammuthus Primigenius ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Wrangel Island ◽  
Arctic Coast

A harvest of 300 radiocarbon dates on extinct elephants (Proboscidea) from the northern parts of the New and Old Worlds has revealed a striking difference. While catastrophic in North America, elephant extinction was gradual in Eurasia (Stuart 1991), where straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) vanished 50 millennia or more before woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius). The range of the woolly mammoths started shrinking before 20 ka ago (Vartanyan et al. 1995). By 12 ka bp, the beasts were very scarce or absent in western Europe. Until the dating of Wrangel Island tusks and teeth (Vartanyan, Garrutt and Sher 1993), mammoths appeared to make their last stand on the Arctic coast of Siberia ca. 10 ka bp. The Wrangel Island find of dwarf mammoths by Sergy Vartanyan, V. E. Garrut and Andrei Sher (1993) stretched the extinction chronology of mammoths another 6 ka, into the time of the pharaohs.

Precambrian U–Pb ages of igneous rocks, Wrangel Complex, Wrangel Island, USSR

1991 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 1340-1348 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Cecile ◽  
J. C. Harrison ◽  
M. K. Kos'ko ◽  
R. R. Parrish
Keyword(s):  
Volcanic Rocks ◽  
Canadian Arctic ◽  
Canada Basin ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Porphyritic Granite ◽  
Late Proterozoic ◽  
Wrangel Island ◽  
Arctic Alaska ◽  
Continuous Plate ◽  
Orogenic Events

Proterozoic rocks exposed in an anticlinorium at the centre of Wrangel Island are among some of the few exposures of Precambrian strata around Canada Basin. U–Pb zircon dating of samples collected during joint Canadian–Soviet fieldwork on the island has provided crystallization ages of [Formula: see text] on a volcanic rock, 699 ± 2 Ma on a porphyritic granite sill, and a very imprecise age of ca. 0.7 Ga on a small leucogranite. Broadly similar 600–750 Ma, mostly metamorphic, ages are known from both the Arctic Alaska and northern Chukotkan parts of what is called the Arctic Alaska – Chukotka Ancestral Plate, supporting the hypothesis that they were once a single entity. By contrast, potential Late Proterozoic equivalents in the Canadian Arctic Islands include a deeply buried and relatively undeformed seismically defined succession of hypothesized Late Proterozoic age, now at greenschist-facies metamorphic grade, and the unmetamorphosed 725 Ma Franklin mafic sills, dykes, and volcanic rocks. The differences in metamorphic and igneous ages between the Arctic Alaska–Chukotka Ancestral Plate and the Canadian Arctic Islands suggest that these two areas have fundamentally different Precambrian rocks. If so, this challenges the fundamental assumption of most paleogeographic models of the pre-Canada Basin Arctic that the two areas once formed a single continuous plate. Earlier K–Ar dates together with major unconformities in Phanerozoic successions on Wrangel Island suggest early Paleozoic orogenic events.

scholarly journals Overview of strong winds on the coasts of the Russian Arctic seas

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 14-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna A. Shestakova ◽  
Irina A. Repina
Keyword(s):  
The Arctic ◽  
Joint Analysis ◽  
Strong Wind ◽  
Russian Arctic ◽  
Arctic Seas ◽  
Novaya Zemlya ◽  
Wrangel Island ◽  
Hurricane Wind ◽  
Wind Climatology ◽  
Strong Winds

Joint analysis of ground-based standard observations, spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar observations and the Arctic System Reanalysis (ASR) v.2 allow us to identify areas with storm and hurricane wind in the Russian Arctic in detail. We analyzed statistics and genesis of strong winds in each region, with the special emphasis on orographic winds. For those regions where wind amplification occurs due to downslope windstorms (Novaya Zemlya, Svalbard, Tiksi, Pevek, Wrangel Island), a statistical analysis of the intensity and frequency of windstorms was carried out according to observations. Reanalysis ASR v.2 demonstrates significantly better strong wind climatology in comparison with another high-resolution Climate Forecast System Reanalysis. ASR v.2 still underestimates speed of strong winds, however it reproduces rather well most of mesoscale local winds, including Novaya Zemlya bora, Spitsbergen foehn, bora on Wrangel Island and some other.

scholarly journals A new species of Uusitaloia Marusik, Koponen & Danilov (Araneae: Linyphiidae: Erigoninae), a genus thought to be monotypic, from the Wrangel Island, NE Russia

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-21
Author(s):  
Yuri Marusik ◽  
Seppo Koponen
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Type Species ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Wrangel Island ◽  
Ne Russia ◽  
A New Species

A new species, Uusitaloia wrangeliana sp. n. is described on the basis of two males from the arctic Wrangel Island, NE Russia. The type species of the genus, which has been thought to be monotypic, U. transbaicalica Marusik, Koponen& Danilov, 2001 is redescribed. The position of the genus within its subfamily is also briefly discussed.

scholarly journals Eskimo languages in Asia, 1791 on, and the Wrangel Island-Point Hope connection

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 163-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Krauss
Keyword(s):  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
North Coast ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Wrangel Island ◽  
The North ◽  
Point Hope ◽  
Arctic Coast ◽  
Cultural Interest

Abstract Merck’s statement about four “Sedentary Chukchi” (Eskimo) languages or language varieties along the coast of Chukotka in 1791 is thoroughly remarkable and worthy of careful interpretation. By his statement of their geographical distribution, the first three languages are very easy to identify, as 1) Sirenikski, 2) Central Siberian Yupik, explicitly including St. Lawrence Island, and 3) Naukanski. Merck’s language number four, “Uwelenski” he claims, startlingly, to be spoken along the Arctic Coast of Chukotka from Uelen as far as Shelagski Cape, 600 miles to the northwest. Serendipitously enough, Merck has 70 or so ”Uwelenski” words of cultural interest transcribed throughout his text. Careful studies of these words by this writer and also by Mikhail Chlenov show that “Uwelenski” is in fact a dialect of Central Siberian Yupik, thus part of a language continuum spoken from St. Lawrence Island to the Chaplino corner and the East coast of Chukotka, thence to the North coast of that mainland, treating Naukan as a “third Diomede” rather than as a mainland interruption. However there is no evidence that language number four, “Uwelenski,” actually a dialect of Merck’s language number two, was spoken beyond Kolyuchin Bay. Beyond that point, however, there was indeed a fourth Eskimo language. The second half of the paper concludes, from at least seven independent sources, that that fourth language was in fact none other than North Alaskan Inupiaq, spoken intermittently in pockets between Kolyuchin and Shelagski Cape, at least since the opening of Russian posts at Kolyma and into the nineteenth century, by north Alaskans from the Point Hope area, who also used Wrangel Island as a stopping place.

The Arctic Climate System

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Serreze ◽  
Roger G. Barry
Keyword(s):  
Climate System ◽  
Arctic Climate ◽  
The Arctic
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