On the Ice

The lives of 601 Russians last week balanced on the ice. Most of them, 500 fishers for sturgeon and seal, were in the Caspian, Russia's landlocked sea. Though they were scarcely 20 miles from land and home, they stood on ice floes that were shrinking by the hour.

Three great rivers, the Volga, the Ural and the Emba, empty into the Caspian from the North. Their silt makes the Caspian's Northern third shallow; their fresh water makes it easily frozen. Every January the sturgeon swim into this basin on their spring jaunt up the rivers to spawn caviar. Out on the thick ice from January to late March go the Soviet fishermen's cooperatives with horses, sleighs, axes and nets. They chop big round holes in the ice, lower nets on windlasses and haul up sturgeon by the ton. Feeling secure for another month, the fishermen near Dolgy and Kulaly islands north of the Mangyshlak Peninsula paid scant attention last month to heavy winds, rain and mild weather.

By last week the fresh water ice had edged away from the land, carrying men. horses and sturgeon southward toward the open sea. An icebreaker went to the rescue,, grounded on the Mangyshlak Peninsula, limped back to port. Seven Soviet planes flew over the floes, dropped bundles of food, extra clothing and, most important of all, directions as to the best way across the floes to land. In detachments the fishermen followed directions. Some were taken off the ice by coasting vessels. By week's end all but 87 felt solid Russia under foot.

Far different was the case last week of the Arctic Ocean village which took root on the ice pack northwest of Bering Strait last month when the Soviet icebreaker Chelyuskin was crushed and sank (TIME. Feb. 26). Dictator of 101 souls, including ten women and two babies, was able, bush-bearded Dr. Otto Schmidt, a professor of Arctic science and theory. Before the Chelyuskin went down, he had emptied most of her cargo out on the ice pack. With a radio he told the world and the Soviet high command of his fix. He set his crew to building a wooden barracks, heated it sparingly with little stoves. He had those who knew stenography take down a Soviet broadcast of the speeches at the great Communist Party Congress in Moscow (TIME, Feb. 5), and set everybody to studying them to keep their minds busy. When huge crevasses began to appear, he laid planks across them and transferred his stores to the most solid spot he could find. He made a better best of a bad jam than any Arctic explorer in history. But the killing cold (--40DEG F.) soon laid the two babies and eight adults low.

Fortunately the ice pack on which his 101 had settled was last week drifting southeast toward the Strait 1-50 miles away. There was no danger of its melting, like the Caspian fishermen's ice floes. But presently it will get caught in the circular Arctic current, tack northward again.

The Soviet high command was trying hard to match Professor Schmidt's efficiency. Last week in Moscow Vice President of the Council of Commissars Valerian Kuybyshev named bleak Providence Bay on the Siberian coast south of Bering Strait as a rescuers' rendezvous. Thither a steamer sailed from Vladivostok. 3.000 miles away, carrying seven planes and three pilots. From Petropavlovsk. only 1.500 miles away, another sailed with two planes. Stalin himself radioed a personal message of good hope to Professor Schmidt. Westward across Europe and the Atlantic Kuybyshev dispatched three of Russia's ablest Arctic flyers to the rescue.

Meanwhile, at Cape Wellen,two able Arctic pilots. Liapidevsky and Petrov, hopped into a ten-passenger plane, flew north until they spied black spots on the dazzling ice, made a safe landing. The villagers stumbled across the ice toward them. Professor Schmidt picked the ten women and the two babies. The pilots handed them into their plane, flew safely back to Cape Wellen.

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