Camp Schmidt. Otto Yulievich Schmidt - hero, navigator, academician and educator

He was called the ice commissar. He received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for organizing the first drifting polar station, North Pole-1. He was the initiator and editor-in-chief of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. He led the legendary Arctic expeditions of the 30s on the icebreakers Sedov, Sibiryakov and Chelyuskin. He became director of the All-Union Arctic Institute, then head of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route. He was also an outstanding mathematician, geologist, geophysicist and astronomer, academician and vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. This amazing man's name was Otto Yulievich Schmidt.

Otto Schmidt was born in Mogilev on September 30, 1891. There was not a drop of Russian blood in him: his father was German, his mother was Latvian. And yet he was a real Russian: he did so much for Russia.

Talented since childhood - he graduated from high school in Kyiv with a gold medal. Then, brilliantly, the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kyiv University. For one of his early scientific works on group theory he was awarded a gold medal. At the age of 25 he published a monograph on mathematics.

But the world knows Schmidt as the conqueror of the Arctic, traveler and explorer. First, he “trained” in the Soviet-German Pamir expedition of 1928, the purpose of which was to study the mountains, glaciers, passes and climb the peaks of the Western Pamirs. A year later, Schmidt already led an Arctic expedition on the icebreaker Sedov. Moreover, he became the “government commissioner of the Franz Josef Archipelago”! A polar geophysical observatory was created in Tikhaya Bay under the leadership of Schmidt.

The famous polar explorer was on expeditions almost all the time. In 1930, during his second expedition, Schmidt discovered several islands in Severnaya Zemlya on the Sedov. One of them is named after him. In 1932, on the ship Sibiryakov, he managed to travel the entire Northern Sea Route in one navigation, marking the beginning of regular voyages along the coast of Siberia.

"Chelyuskin" hits the road

Schmidt's finest hour was his expedition on the steamship Chelyuskin (1933−34). The purpose of the voyage was to prove the possibility of crossing the Northern Sea Route by a non-icebreaking vessel. The Chelyuskin encountered the first ice in the Kara Sea and successfully passed it. The solid ice of the Chukchi Sea did not stop him either. On November 4, 1933, drifting with them, the Chelyuskin entered the Bering Strait. When clear water was just around the corner, the ship was carried back in a northwest direction. Until February, the crew drifted with the ship, but on the fateful day - February 13, 1934, a radiogram went on air with the words: “At 15:30, 155 miles from Cape Severny and 144 miles from Cape Uelen, the Chelyuskin sank, crushed by compression ice..." The crew managed to land on the ice floe. Barracks were built from boards salvaged from Chelyuskin. The camp was evacuated by air. The first flight took out women and two children. We had to wait until April for the second flight. And yet, all 104 people, after spending two months on the ice floe, survived and returned home. This is the merit of not only the hero pilots, but also the leader of the expedition, Otto Schmidt: his composure and organizational talent saved people.

The death of "Chelyuskin" Fyodor Reshetnikov

The Chelyuskin epic shocked contemporaries so much that after the heroes returned to the mainland, newborns began to be named after Schmidt, giving fancy names - Oyushminald (“Otto Yulievich Schmidt on the Ice Floe”), Lagshminald (“Schmidt’s Camp on the Ice Floe”), Lagshmivar (“Schmidt’s Camp”) in the Arctic"). Chelnaldin and Chelnaldina (“Chelyuskinets on an ice floe”). The thieves' folklore also responded: “Schmidt sits on an ice floe like a nix on a raspberry.” It was nationwide love and admiration. For those living in the 30s, Schmidt was like Gagarin in 61. From Paris, I admired the courage of the Chelyuskinites and the organizational skills of the expedition leader in poetry.

Marina Tsvetaeva:

On an ice floe (not like - damn it - Nobile!)

They gave birth to a child and did not kill the dogs -

On the ice floe, Eol reports via cable:

“They didn’t leave the dog alone on the ice!”

In 1937, Otto Schmidt organized an expedition to the world's first drifting scientific station, North Pole-1, in the very center of the Arctic Ocean. His services were highly appreciated by the USSR government. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, the outstanding polar explorer was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded the Order of Lenin.

His famous beard also became legendary: not a single image of a movie hero - the conqueror of the North - could do without it. This beard captivated not only his compatriots, but also foreigners. “You may laugh, but I assure you that Schmidt’s beard has won you thousands of friends in our country,” said the English writer Bernard Shaw to the USSR Ambassador in those years, I. Maisky. - You are an amazing country! You turned the polar disaster into a national celebration and found a man with a Santa Claus beard as the main character.”

There is a version that Schmidt introduced a new word into the Russian language. Once, at a meeting with Lenin, when discussing the issue of universities, Otto Yulievich, who knew Latin, proposed that graduates left to continue scientific work be called graduate students: from the Latin aspirans, aspirantis - striving for something. Thus, thanks to Schmidt, “graduate students” appeared

And then there is Schmidt’s theorem, Schmidt’s hypothesis (about the birth of planets from cosmic dust), the peak and pass of the Pamirs, an island in the Kara Sea, the peninsula of Novaya Zemlya, a cape in the Chukchi Sea, the Institute of Physics of the Earth of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a Gold Medal awarded to mathematicians are named in his honor Russian Academy of Sciences.

From: https://regnum.ru/news/innovatio/2186713.html

Polar explorer, one of the first Heroes of the Soviet Union. And also an academician, vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. A brilliant mathematician and a passionate mountaineer. Statesman and creator of one of the theories of the origin of the Earth. All this is about Otto Yulievich Schmidt, the famous polar explorer, who was born on September 30, 1891 (new style) in Mogilev, where his father served as a clerk in a writing instruments store. His ancestors were settled Germans who moved to Little Russia at the end of the 18th century.

Otto showed a penchant for science as a child, when, while still at the gymnasium, young Schmidt surprised his mentors with his unprecedented performance in all subjects. In 1909 O.Yu. Schmidt graduated from the Kyiv Classical Gymnasium with a gold medal and entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kyiv University.

In 1917, along with the beginning of the revolution, the darkest part of Schmidt's biography begins. The official history tells that in 1918, Otto Yulievich was appointed head of the product exchange department of the People's Commissariat of Food. In those years, the department was engaged in regulating the supply of the young Country of Soviets. Schmidt participates in the development of regulations on food detachments and on workers' food inspection.

Otto showed a penchant for science as a child, when, while still at the gymnasium, young Schmidt surprised his mentors with his unprecedented performance in all subjects.

Here is what Schmidt himself writes about that period: “This time, starting in 1918, was the happiest for me. I often saw Vladimir Ilyich and received his instructions. I attended almost all meetings of the Council of People’s Commissars, party congresses, plenums of the Central Committee, I could talk with members of the Central Committee - all this created the opportunity for great growth, not only from books, but from living examples.”

So Schmidt becomes a professional manager. Schmidt is chairman of the Cooperative Commission and head of the Institute for Economic Research. Schmidt is a member of the boards of the People's Commissariat for Food, the People's Commissariat of Finance, and the People's Commissariat for Education. Schmidt is the head of the State Publishing House.

In his youth, Schmidt fell ill with pulmonary tuberculosis, which was initially suppressed, but the disease returned every ten years. In 1924, as a major party official, he went to Austria, where he took mountaineering courses in Tyrol. And four years later, Schmidt heads a Soviet-German group that explores the glaciers of the Pamirs.

Drift of "Chelyuskin".

In 1929, he was appointed head of an expedition to Franz Josef Land to consolidate the sovereignty of the USSR in this territory and study the possibility of a through passage through the Northern Sea Route in one navigation. He headed the famous Arctic expeditions on the icebreaking ships Sedov, Sibiryakov and Chelyuskin. During the expeditions he proved the possibility of active economic development of the Arctic. For organizing an expedition to the North Pole in 1937 with the aim of creating the first drifting station there (later called “SP-1”), he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

During his expeditions, Schmidt was the first to prove the possibility of active economic development of the Arctic.

Director of the All-Union Arctic Institute, since 1932 - head of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route, for several years he was vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1939-1942 - director of the Institute of Geography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, one of the founders and editor-in-chief of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1924– 1941) - this is an incomplete list of high positions of the famous scientist and public figure.

The last period of O.Yu.’s life Schmidt turned out to be the most heroic for him. Since the winter of 1943–1944, tuberculosis progressed and spread not only to the lungs, but also to the throat. O.Yu. Schmidt was periodically forbidden to speak; he spent a lot of time in sanatoriums in the Moscow region and in Yalta. In recent years, he was practically bedridden - mainly at a dacha near Zvenigorod - where he died on September 7, 1956.

On the day of his funeral, mourning was declared in the Arctic. All polar stations and ships of the coastal fleet lowered their flags. And at the funeral meeting in Moscow, some spoke about the famous mathematician Schmidt, others about the Earth explorer who first paved the way in the Pamirs, and then made the Arctic and the North Pole accessible, and still others about the man who founded the cosmogonic theory. They seemed to be talking about many wonderful people, but there was only one name - Otto Yulievich Schmidt.
Read on Don’t Panic: http://dnpmag.com/2014/10/06/otto-shmidt/

(1891-1956) - famous polar explorer.

He was an outstanding astronomer, mathematician, geophysicist, and explorer of polar latitudes.

In 1930, Schmidt went on the icebreaker Georgiy Sedov to Earth, where he organized a geophysical observatory. The following year, the icebreaker Georgiy Sedov sails further into the unexplored northern regions. Here in August 1930, the island of Wiese was discovered, named after the scientist, explorer, who theoretically predicted its location there. This expedition discovered many more islands.

Since 1930, O.Yu. Schmidt was appointed director of the Arctic Institute. In subsequent years, a lot of research work was carried out and polar stations were built.

In 1932, Schmidt decides to travel the route - the shortest distance between and off the coast - in one navigation. On July 28, the icebreaker Sibiryakov left Arkhangelsk. Schmidt decided to go around the high latitudes like no one had ever sailed. The expedition encountered heavy ice. The Sibiryakov lost its propeller blades, then the propeller shaft burst. The ship was made of tarpaulin and sails were set. The icebreaker entered the strait, completing this path for the first time in history in one navigation.

In 1933, Schmidt led an expedition on the icebreaker Chelyuskin to once again travel the Northern Sea Route without wintering and finally convince those who did not believe in the feasibility of developing the route. An authoritative commission, which included leading shipbuilders, considered the ship unsuitable for long-distance voyages, nevertheless, the icebreaker “Chelyuskin” went on an Arctic voyage with over a hundred people on board. The steamer reached the strait, but here it was frozen and carried far to the north, to the center. After a hard winter, the ship was crushed by ice. This happened on February 13, 1934.

The inevitable happened: the left side of the Chelyuskin was torn apart by ice. This is how the radio operator of the ship later described this picture: “In the gray twilight, a terrible thing happened - our ship, our home was dying... Gnashing, roaring, flying debris, clouds of steam and smoke...” During the disaster, one person died, who did not have time to jump onto the ice floe. Everyone else found themselves in relative safety in the Schmidt ice camp. In the foreign world, few people doubted the tragic outcome - the inevitable death of 104 Chelyuskinites. But their courage and endurance, the great organizational talent of O.Yu. Schmidt and his assistants helped people find peace and hope.

There was not a single sign of panic on the ice floe; scientific research continued around the clock according to the broadest program. People living in tents on meager rations did not lose their presence of mind. Salvation came to them from heaven. Civilian and military pilots rushed to help people. On April 13, exactly two months after the death of the ship, the last Chelyuskin was brought ashore.

Under the leadership of O.Yu. Schmidt, the first drifting polar station “-1” was organized. On June 6, 1937, her crew began drifting in the Arctic ice. This expedition marked the beginning of a new stage in.

In 1944, O.Yu. Schmidt developed. Its occurrence was due to the fact that new data appeared that were difficult to explain using the Kant-Laplace hypothesis. A new hypothesis was needed that would explain these data. It was developed by V.G. Fesenko and O.Yu. Schmidt. According to this theory, the Earth and other celestial bodies of the solar system were formed from cold cosmic

Russia (USSR)

Domestic Pamir explorer, polar explorer; I suffered from tuberculosis since childhood.

Otto Schmidt Graduated from high school in Kyiv with honors.

Characteristic episode: student Otto Schmidt made a list of books he should read. It turned out that even if you read one book a week,serious reading will take a thousand years...

In 1918 Otto Yulievich Schmidt joined the Bolshevik party.

In 1928 Otto Schmidt at the head of an international expedition he studied the glaciers of the Pamirs.

In 1929 and 1930, he led expeditions on the icebreaking steamer "", which organized the first Soviet polar scientific station on Franz Josef Land.

In 1933, to check the possibility of ships passing along the Northern Sea Route, the Chelyuskin steamship was sent from Murmansk, led by Otto Yulievich Schmidt and V.I. Voronin. But the ship was covered in ice and sank, and 104 people who found themselves on the ice floe were forced to spend two months on it in polar winter conditions until they were rescued by polar aviation.

In 1937 Otto Yulievich Schmidt organized an expedition to the North Pole to create a drifting station.

Otto Yulievich Schmidt- one of the founders and editor-in-chief of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1924-1942).

“A number of prominent scientists are opponents of any kind of plan.
They believe that scientific work is a creative activity, and creativity is not subject to planning, it should develop completely freely, and scientists create only what they have an inclination for at a given time.
A number of convincing examples are given to confirm this point of view.
Myself , for example, according to a given plan, he could not have discovered the law of gravity, since this happened spontaneously; he was inspired when he saw the famous falling apple. Obviously, it is impossible to plan the moment when a scientist sees a falling apple and how it will affect him. The most valuable thing in science - and what constitutes the basis of great science - cannot be planned, since it is achieved by a creative process, the success of which is determined by the talent of the scientist.

To reconcile these contradictions, a compromise view is put forward. At our meeting this view was put forward by academician O.Yu. Schmidt. He believes that scientific discoveries do exist and, of course, no one can force scientists to plan their discoveries in advance, and here we give scientists freedom.
But there is a lot of work besides creative work, and we will plan this work.
I consider this view to be unfounded.

This would be the same as if, when evaluating a painting in a museum, although we know that we are deprived of the opportunity to evaluate, for example, a painting,since artistic quality cannot be expressed in money, we would still accept that we can evaluate the frame, paints, etc., and thus determine some part of the value of the museum’s art holdings. Such assessments do not express anything and can only satisfy the bureaucratic administration.

I think that the proposal of O.Yu. Schmidt, like all others, does not solve the problem and we need to look for a broader approach, which should be based on the following principle: in science the most valuable thing is creative element, therefore, the plan and report should be drawn up in such a way as not to restrict the freedom of creativity, but to support it.”

,Experiment. Theory. Practice, M., “Science”, 1987, pp. 160-161.

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126 years ago, a future scientist was born in Mogilev, whose name would become one of the main call signs of the 20th century. Otto Yulievich Schmidt was one of the most prominent servants of the Enlightenment.
Otto accomplished his first feat at the age of six, when he swam across the then full-flowing Dubravenka River. Not every adult could do this. In a report from 1900/01, the class teacher described Schmidt as a student of “exemplary behavior, hardworking and academically capable.” Otto Schmidt retained this hard work throughout his life.

So he became a student at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Kyiv University, and compiled a list of literature that he, as a future scientist, needed to read. And, without giving himself any concessions, he moved towards the heights of knowledge. A simple mathematical calculation showed that it would take a thousand years to read the books on his list! Otto, with a pain in his heart, shortened the list, counted again - it came out to 250...

Pages from the diary of student Schmidt demonstrate an ambitious worker or, as they say in our time, a workaholic - as he will remain in the history of science: “... all the time, starting in March or earlier, I studied, without ceasing and without rest. And yet I did not come to satisfactory results: my subjects are too extensive, they require more time. Lessons also take a lot of time, but this is perhaps not bad, it protects you from becoming dull doing the same work. In any case, I don't want to complain. If I fail, I won’t blame anyone.”

Otto Yulievich Schmidt - researcher, scientist, polar explorer.

The first-year student’s fears were not justified; on May 17, he wrote: “I left the classroom beaming. I could be satisfied with this exam. I was able to demonstrate knowledge in all disciplines, and they passed the test very well.”

In 1912, in the Proceedings of Kyiv University, Schmidt published a new proof of the theorem in group theory, which compares favorably with its predecessors. He also continued one of Jourdan’s studies in the work “On equations solvable in radicals, the degree of which is a power of a prime number.” The result is a gold university medal and the decision to print the work at the expense of the university.

After the February Revolution, in the summer of 1917, he moved from Kyiv to Petrograd to participate in the All-Russian Congress on Higher Education Affairs and soon became interested in administrative work. He was involved in food supply and worked in the Ministry of Food of the Provisional Government, then as head of the Product Exchange Department. Schmidt compiled an “Address from the group of united socialists of the Ministry of Food outlining a draft political platform.” The essence of the “Appeal” is the willingness to cooperate with everyone who agrees with state regulation of the economy, regardless of the political views of citizens.

His fragmentary memories of that time convey some confusion, which Schmidt’s active mind overcame, plunging headlong into new projects - large and small.

“I felt confusion in my head, I could not grasp the entire totality of phenomena... I greeted the October Revolution with joy...”, however, “... before the October Revolution I had not yet matured... I had no experience of working with the masses, I poorly understood the power of the masses "

The Civil War was still going on, and he had already become a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Finance, also heading the tax department. Where is the science? Where is the mathematics and astronomy? He returned to science when he came up with the idea for the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. And already in the late twenties he found his main calling - travel, geographical discoveries, the discovery of new spaces and routes necessary for science and humanity.

Polar explorers got an energetic leader

First he went to the mountains and took part in expeditions to the Pamirs. Gained experience as a traveler. But since the late twenties, the Arctic has been considered the main front in the struggle for the “conquest of space and time.” And Schmidt was unexpectedly appointed head of the expedition to Franz Josef Land. Unexpectedly, because there were many more experienced polar explorers around...

The political subtext of the project was visible in the idea of ​​scientific and practical development of Franz Josef Land and its inclusion in our polar possessions, as declared by a note from the tsarist government in 1916 and confirmed by a Soviet note in 1926. They had to build a radio station on remote islands.

The finale of the campaign is described as follows in Schmidt’s diary:

“September 6, evening. The end of the epic is near. We go south, back to the ground. We made a hydrological section along 79° N. w. up to 70° E. for the longitude of Cape Zhelaniya. From the plan to get to about. I have to give up solitude even to Severnaya Zemlya... On the evening of September 5, the captain, with the sympathy of Samoilovich, began to convince me to turn back... the ship in this form can no longer enter the ice and will not survive a serious storm. The water ahead is clear... but the captain's arguments are serious... On the morning of the 6th, the moment for a decision has come... Sea level 6, the icebreaker is drifting heavily, scientists are struggling without success - it is impossible to work. V.Yu. is already here. Wiese lost his temper, declaring that since hydrological research was no longer possible, there was no need to go further... Having lost my last ally, I can no longer resist the general opinion of experts.”

He became seriously interested in the North. He became the best organizer of winter camps and expeditions, built stations, but this was a mysterious and risky business. The polar explorers received an energetic leader. He lacked specific knowledge and skills, but he was a true scientist, had an adventurous streak and skillfully handled himself in the offices of authorities.

Stalin, in his usual humorous manner in those years, compared the new organization with the English East India Company that existed in the 17th–19th centuries, which colonized India, but unlike it, it was built “not on the bones of the local population, but on the basis of raising culture.” I noticed that the East India Company had troops to suppress uprisings, but with us everything should be resolved peacefully, saying at the end: “Don’t give guns to Schmidt!”

The foreign press called him Red Columbus. Schmidt led six expeditions, each of which left a noticeable mark on the history of Arctic exploration. During the glorious expedition of 1932, Soviet polar explorers on the icebreaking steamship Sibiryakov, for the first time in the history of mankind, passed the Northern Sea Route without wintering, in one navigation. "Schmidt's men" fulfilled a dream that had captivated sailors for four centuries!

Bernard Shaw, meeting the Soviet ambassador to Great Britain Ivan Maisky, exclaimed: “What kind of country are you! They found a real Santa Claus with a big beard to play the role of the main character of the ice drama. I assure you that Schmidt’s beard has won you thousands of new friends!” And so it was. Few could resist Schmidt's charm. Even faded newspaper photographs of the long-bearded polar explorer radiated a romantic flair.

And it is not surprising that folk storytellers composed epics (more precisely, this genre was called novinas) about Schmidt and his associates. Of course, they were fulfilling an ideological order and the state widely advertised its own Arctic project. But no less important was the people's sincere attraction to science, to discoveries and to personalities such as Schmidt. Epic writers - such as the famous Marfa Kryukova - called him the hero Generation-Beard.

The children were named after Schmidt - not only Otto, but also Oyushminalds! This abbreviation name meant “Otto Yulievich Schmidt on Ice.” Loudly, in the taste of the era. Mostly, the happy owners of these names, upon reaching adulthood, were renamed into the most ordinary Olechek. But there was a lot of noise!

Yes, the Arctic project was in many ways a propaganda epic. It was customary to pass off even half-successes and outright failures as victories. But there were still more real victories - and, probably, without the hype they would not have happened. After all, we had to count pennies, the country was preparing for war, and here - large-scale research, travel, icebreakers, stations... Without an ideological side dish, even Schmidt would not have obtained subsidies for such “entertainment.”

The most high-profile of his cases is, of course, the Chelyuskin epic. Then the whole world recognized Schmidt. He spent several months in ice captivity, at the head of the crew of the sunken steamship Chelyuskin. The whole world considered them suicide bombers. 104 people led by a heroic academician. And yet they were saved! On March 5, pilot Anatoly Lyapidevsky made his way to the camp on an ANT-4 plane and removed ten women and two children from the ice floe. Other polar pilots also made their way to the Chelyuskinites. As a result, everyone was saved. Nobody died! Schmidt became seriously ill in the last days of his stay on the ice floe, but behaved courageously and was the last to leave the camp.

Schmidt's next high-profile case was the expedition of Ivan Papanin. For the first time, planes landed in the North Pole area, and for the first time a drifting station was organized. The whole country followed her work.

last years of life

In the early forties, Schmidt did not exactly fall into disgrace, but he was gradually pushed aside... Partly because of illness, partly because new favorites were found in power.

“In the last years of his life, he focused on creating a new theory of the origin of the Earth and planets. Seriously ill, out of the light of glory, removed by Stalin from the leadership of the Academy of Sciences, he, straining his last strength, continued to work. He couldn’t help but work, and I remember a conversation with him when he no longer got out of bed.

The father asked: “Who do you think a true explorer resembles?” I answered some banality, and he said: “Why is it so beautiful? He resembles a bulldog who grabbed a stick and cannot let go of it until he gets the hang of it,” his son, Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt, recalled about his father.

And he added: “What can I say in conclusion about my father? He was a scientist of the Renaissance type, an encyclopedist, an active participant in state building with extraordinary personal qualities, a charming man who loved women and was loved by them.” He developed the same mutual love with science. And especially with its practical branches.

A talented scientist, an enterprising organizer of research, today he is a legend. We miss such cheerful devotees. And if they exist, they remain in the shadows. Nowadays there is even more ostentation everywhere than in the 1930s, there is no time for the Schmidts.

Arseniy Zamostyanov