Measures 6 ¾" x 4 ¼", b/w, printed on semi-gloss cardboard photo paper. The photo is not signed or captioned but, judging by the quality, it was made by a professional photographer. Actually, it is unrealistic to think that an amateur with a camera would be allowed to take pictures during an official high-level meeting in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

In excellent condition. The emulsion is intact, the crease at the lower left-hand corner is barely visible unless you tilt the photo at an angle to reflect a bright light. The verso is barely age-toned, and quite clean except for a small smudge in the upper left-hand corner, which, being on the verso, is irrelevant.

Ivan Papanin (Иван Дмитриевич Папанин, 1894 - 1986) is of the fame of leading the first Soviet drifting ice station "North Pole" and thus becoming the face of Soviet polar exploration, at home and abroad. However, his biography is much more diverse and is certainly worth mentioning, at least in bullet points.

Son of a retired Russian Imperial Navy sailor, Ivan had very little formal education (four years of parochial school). In 1914 he was conscripted as a sailor into the Black Sea Fleet. After the Revolution of 1917, Papanin quickly attaches himself to the Bolsheviks, participates in the Civil War in Ukraine and Crimea. In 1920, he is already a commissar, and his career is clear and secure. In November 1920 he is appointed commandant of the Crimean ChK. Papanin personally executed so many captured "white guardsmen" and Crimean civilians whose roots were insufficiently proletarian that he got exhausted by this activity and ended up in a psychiatric clinic.

After that, Papanin's loyalty to the cause of socialism was beyond reproach, and his career really took off. Wherever he was appointed and sent, he was first and foremost, a commissar, a political officer. Several appointments and a few years later, Papanin finishes the Higher Communications Courses, and is sent to the Soviet Far East as deputy leader of the expedition tasked with building a radio station in Tommot, a town in Yakutia.

That expedition tied Papanin to the polar regions and communications. After two stints leading polar stations in the Soviet Arctic North, Papanin is sent to lead the first drifting ice station "North Pole" in the Arctic Ocean. For a devoted commissar and professional radioman, this appointment was far from accidental. The scientific materials obtained by the scientists of the "North Pole" station were highly acclaimed by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Papanin, among other participants, was bestowed with PhD in Geography (without a graduate paper to defend) and was elected to the Geographic Society of the USSR as an honorary member.

During WW2, Papanin rose to the rank of rear admiral, working as Director of "Glavsevmorput" (Russian acronym for Directorate for North Seas Navigation) and representative of the State Committee for Defense, supervising all maritime traffic in the White Sea.

Even after retirement due to a heart condition, Papanin's devotion to his superiors was not forgotten, and he got several high-positioned sinecure jobs.

To the right of Pananin stands Alexey Tryoshnikov (Алексей Федорович Трешников, 1914 - 1991), Hero of Socialist Labor, an outstanding Soviet oceanologist, geographer, explorer of the Arctic and Antarctica, participant and leader of twenty-two expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica, contributor to the creation of the Atlas of the Antarctica, editor-in-chief of the Atlas of the Arctic and the Encyclopedic Geographical Dictionary, president of the Geographic Society of the USSR. The volume and significance of Tryoshnikov's scientific achievements and discoveries are truly difficult to overestimate.

Please note that the penny in our photo is for size reference.