Vitus ionassen bering. Vitus Jonassen Bering. Photo, biography The true face of Vitus Bering

Danish navigator, captain-commander of the Russian fleet

Led the 1st and 2nd Kamchatka expeditions. Passed between the Chukotka Peninsula and Alaska, confirming the presence of a strait separating them (later the strait between Russia and the USA was called Bering Strait), reached North America and discovered a number of islands in the Aleutian chain.

An island, a strait, an underwater canyon, a river, a lake, a glacier, two capes, a street in the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a sea in the North Pacific Ocean, as well as the Commander Islands are named after the great navigator. In archeology, the northeastern part of Siberia, Chukotka and Alaska (which are now believed to have been previously connected by a strip of land) are often referred to by the general term Beringia.

Brief chronology

1703 graduated from the Amsterdam Naval Cadet Corps

1704, with the rank of second lieutenant, entered service in the Russian Navy, in the Baltic

1710-12 transferred to the Azov Fleet, participated in the war with Turkey

1715 promoted to captain 4th rank

1725-30 headed The first Kamchatka expedition, surveyed and mapped the Pacific coast of Kamchatka and Northeast Asia

1733-41 headed Second Kamchatka expedition, during which it was possible to map the northern and eastern coasts of Russia, the internal territories of Eastern Siberia, explored routes to America and Japan, discovered the coast of Northwestern America, the islands of the Kuril and Aleutian ridges

1741, under difficult conditions of forced wintering on the island, later named after Bering, the captain-commander died. The great navigator was buried on Bering Island in Commander Bay.

Life story

Bering Vitus Jonassen born in 1681 in the Danish city of Horsens, graduated from the cadet corps in Amsterdam in 1703, in the same year he was accepted into the Baltic Fleet with the rank of second lieutenant, and in 1707 he was promoted to lieutenant. In 1710 he was transferred to the Azov Fleet, promoted to captain-lieutenant, and commanded the shrewd Munker. In 1712 he was transferred to the Baltic Fleet, in 1715 he was promoted to captain of the 4th rank.

In 1716 he commanded the ship Pearl. In 1717 he was promoted to captain of the 3rd rank. In 1719 he commanded the ship "Selafail". In 1720 he was promoted to captain of the 2nd rank, commanded the ship "Malburg", then the ship "Lesnoye". In 1724, he was dismissed from service at his request, and then re-employed as commander of the Selafail with the rank of captain 1st rank.

From 1725 to 1730 - boss First Kamchatka expedition. In the middle of the summer of 1728, he explored and mapped the Pacific coast of Kamchatka and Northeast Asia. He discovered two peninsulas (Kamchatsky and Ozerny), Kamchatka Bay, Karaginsky Bay with Karaginsky Island, Cross Bay, Providence Bay and St. Lawrence Island.

In the Chukchi Sea, passing through the Strait (later called the Bering Strait), the expedition reached 62° 24′ With. sh., but because of the tum Ana and the wind did not find the ground and turned back. The following year, Bering managed to move 200 kilometers east from Kamchatka, inspect part of the Kamchatka coast and identify Avacha Bay and Avacha Bay. The discoverer first surveyed over 3,500 kilometers of the western coastline of the sea, later called the Bering Sea.

In 1730 he was promoted to captain-commander.

After returning to St. Petersburg at the end of April 1730, Bering proposed a plan to explore the northern coast of the continent and reach the mouth of the Amur River, the Japanese Islands and America by sea.

Bering was appointed chief Second Kamchatka (Great Northern) Expedition, A. Chirikov became his deputy. On June 4, 1741, Bering and Chirikov, commanding two packet boats, headed from the shores of Kamchatka to the southeast in search of the “land of Joao da Gama,” located on some maps of the 18th century between 46 and 50 ° N. w. For more than a week, the pioneers searched in vain for even a piece of land in the North Pacific Ocean. Both ships headed northeast, but on June 20, due to thick fog, they separated forever. Bering searched for Chirikov for three days: he walked south about 400 kilometers, then moved northeast and crossed the central waters of the Gulf of Alaska for the first time. July 17 at 58° N. w. noticed the ridge (St. Elijah), but did not experience the joy of discovering the American coast: I felt unwell due to worsening heart disease.

In August - September, continuing his voyage along the coast of America, Bering discovered Tumanny Island (Chirikova), five islands (Evdokeevsky), snow mountains (Aleutian Range) on the “mother coast” (Alaska Peninsula), at the southwestern edge of which he discovered the Shumagin Islands and met the Aleuts for the first time. Continuing to go west, sometimes in the north I saw land - separate islands of the Aleutian chain. On November 4, a wave washed the ship to the ground, which turned out to be an island. Here the captain-commander died; 14 people from his detachment died of scurvy. The island was subsequently named after Bering.

Buried on Bering Island in Commander Bay. There are four monuments at the site of Bering's death. Directly at the burial site today there is an iron cross 3.5 m high. At its foot there is a cast-iron plaque with the inscription: “1681-1741. To the great navigator Captain-Commander Vitus Bering from the inhabitants of Kamchatka June 1966.”

Being inquisitive by nature and, like an enlightened monarch, concerned about the benefits for the country, the first Russian emperor was keenly interested in descriptions of travel. The king and his advisers knew about the existence of Anian - that was the name then of the strait between Asia and America - and hoped to use it for practical purposes. At the end of 1724 Peter I I remembered “... something that I had been thinking about for a long time and that other things prevented me from doing, that is, about the road through the Arctic Sea to China and India... Wouldn’t we be happier in exploring such a route than the Dutch and the British?...” and, without putting it off for a long time, , drew up an order for the expedition. Its chief was appointed captain 1st rank, later captain-commander, 44-year-old Vitus Jonassen (in Russian usage - Ivan Ivanovich) Bering, who had already served in Russia for 21 years. The Tsar handed him a secret instruction, written in his own hand, according to which Bering was to reach a large land mass, supposedly extending in a northwesterly direction near the coast of Kamchatka. coast of Kamchatka, walk along the coast, find out whether it connects with North America, and trace the coast of the mainland south to the possessions of European states. The official task was to resolve the question of “whether America has converged with Asia” and to open the Northern Sea Route.

Initially consisting of 34 people, it set off on the road from St. Petersburg on January 24, 1725. Moving through Siberia, they walked to Okhotsk on horseback and on foot, on ships along the rivers. The last 500 km from the mouth of the Yudoma to Okhotsk, the heaviest loads were dragged by harnessing ourselves to sledges. Terrible frosts and hunger reduced the expedition by 15 people. The advance detachment led by V. Bering arrived in Okhotsk on October 1, 1726, and the group that brought up the rear of the expedition, Lieutenant Martyn Petrovich Shpanberg, a Dane in the Russian service, got there only on January 6, 1727. To survive until the end of winter, people had to build several huts and sheds.

The road through the expanses of Russia took 2 years. Along this entire path, equal to a quarter of the length of the earth's equator, Lieutenant Alexei Ilyich Chirikov identified 28 astronomical points, which made it possible for the first time to reveal the true latitudinal extent of Siberia, and, consequently, the northern part of Eurasia.

The expedition members traveled from Okhotsk to Kamchatka on two small ships. To continue the journey at sea, it was necessary to build and equip the boat “St. Gabriel,” on which the expedition set out to sea on July 14, 1728.

As the authors of “Essays on the History of Geographical Discoveries” note, V. Bering, having misunderstood the king’s plan and violated the instructions that prescribed first going south or east from Kamchatka, headed north along the coast of the peninsula, and then northeast along the mainland .

“As a result,” the “Essays...” goes on, “more than 600 km of the northern half of the eastern coast of the peninsula were photographed, and Kamchatsky Peninsula And Ozernoy, and Karaginsky Bay with the island of the same name... The sailors also put 2,500 km of the coastline of Northeast Asia on the map. Along most of the coast they noted high mountains, covered with snow in summer, approaching in many places directly to the sea and rising above it like a wall.” In addition, they opened Bay of the Cross(not knowing that it had already been discovered by K. Ivanov), Provideniya Bay And St. Lawrence Island.

However, the desired part of the land still did not appear. V. Bering, not seeing either the American coast or the turn to the west of the Chukotka coast, ordered A. Chirikov and M. Shpanberg to express their opinions in writing whether the existence of a strait between Asia and America can be considered proven, whether to move further to the north and how far . As a result of this “written meeting,” Bering decided to go further north. On August 16, 1728, the sailors passed through the strait and ended up in the Chukchi Sea. Then Bering turned back, officially motivating his decision by the fact that everything required according to the instructions had been done, the coast did not extend further to the north, and “nothing approached the Chukotsky, or Eastern, corner of the land.” After spending another winter in Nizhnekamchatsk, in the summer of 1729 Bering again made an attempt to reach the American coast, but, having traveled a little more than 200 km, due to strong wind and fog he ordered to return.

The first expedition described the southern half of the eastern and a small part of the western coast of the peninsula for more than 1000 km between the mouths of Kamchatka and Bolshaya, revealing Kamchatka Bay And Avacha Bay. Together with Lieutenant A.I. Chirikov and midshipman Pyotr Avraamovich Chaplin, Bering compiled the final map of the voyage. Despite a number of errors, this map was much more accurate than the previous ones and was highly appreciated by D. Cook. A detailed description of the first marine scientific expedition in Russia was preserved in the ship's log, which was kept by Chirikov and Chaplin.

The Northern Expedition would not have achieved success without auxiliary campaigns led by Cossack Colonel Afanasy Fedotovich Shestakov, Captain Dmitry Ivanovich Pavlutsky, surveyor Mikhail Spiridonovich Gvozdev and navigator Ivan Fedorov.

It was M. Gvozdev and I. Fedorov who completed the opening of the strait between Asia and America, begun by Dezhnev and Popov. They examined both shores of the strait, the islands located in it, and collected all the materials needed to put the strait on the map.

Returning from the expedition, Bering proposed to the government a plan for a new large expedition and expressed his readiness to take part in it. In 1733, he was appointed head of the Second Kamchatka Expedition. His assistant (“comrade”) became A.I. Chirikov, by this time already a captain.

Their task was to explore the American coast from Kamchatka. At the same time, M. Shpanberg was supposed to sail to Japan and establish contact with it, and several detachments were to map the northern shores of Russia from Pechora to the extreme northeast and, if possible, to Kamchatka. An Academic detachment was also formed, whose task was to explore the interior regions of Siberia. The northern detachments worked independently, but all their activities were controlled by V. Bering. The work of the expedition was designed for 6 years.

At the beginning of 1734, V. Bering gathered all the participants of the expedition in Tobolsk. From here several land parties of surveyors left to study the ocean coast. Bering himself headed to Yakutsk, where he had to spend three years. There, under his leadership, an ironworks and a rope workshop were built, the collection of resin, the manufacture of rigging for ships was organized, and equipment and food were sent to Okhotsk for M. Shpanberg’s detachment.

In total, about 800 members of the expedition teams gathered in Yakutsk. The local administration, which was irritated by Bering’s incorruptibility and exactingness, created obstacles to the procurement of food and equipment and wrote denunciations to St. Petersburg against the stubborn “German.” However, V. Bering left Yakutsk only after making sure that the team was fully provided with provisions. In Okhotsk he also had to deal with disorder and corruption of local authorities. The capital's authorities, as is usual in Rus', trusted the denunciations of idlers and bribe-takers, and not the reports of the honest and pedantic Bering.

Finally, at the beginning of September 1740, V. Bering sailed from Okhotsk on two 200-ton ships with crews of 75 people. The ships were named after the apostles of Christ - “St. Peter" and "St. Paul". The expedition spent the winter on the eastern coast of Kamchatka, near Avacha Bay. And on June 4, 1741, eight years after leaving St. Petersburg, Bering ships And Chirikova reached the shores of America. The expedition included the young scientist Georg Wilhelm Steller and Sven (Xavier) Lavrentievich Waxel, who left interesting descriptions of this voyage.

As mentioned above, the German map used by Bering included a mythical landmass. In search of this non-existent land, V. Bering first went to the southeast, to the coordinates indicated on this map. Having lost more than a week in vain and making sure that there was no land in this part of the ocean, the ships headed northeast. But on June 20, thick fog fell on the sea, and the ships were separated forever. From this day on, “St. Peter" and "St. Pavel" made voyages in autonomous mode.

"St. Peter" finally reached the American shore on July 17, 1741. From the deck of the ship one could see the shore and, in the distance, the snowy ridge of St. Elias, almost merging with the clouds, with its peak, Mount St. Elias, 5488 m high. The goal set by the emperor 17 years ago was achieved. But the sixty-year-old captain-commander did not share the joy and triumph of the team. He suffered from scurvy and did not know exactly the coordinates of the ship’s location; acutely experiencing losses and failures, the experienced navigator saw the future in a gloomy light.

Without approaching the mainland, V. Bering moved west along the coast for 4 days. On July 21, he sent people for fresh water and, without even filling all the barrels, despite the stormy weather, headed west, to the shores of Asia.

Scurvy has already killed a third of the crew. On August 10, despairing of moving forward due to a strong headwind, V. Bering decided to go straight to Kamchatka. On August 29, sailors discovered “treeless and deserted islands” off the southwestern tip of Alaska. The captain-commander called them the “Shumagin Islands” - in memory of the sailor buried on one of them. Moving all the time to the west in the open sea, the sailors periodically saw land in the north - it was the Aleutian chain. There the Russians first met with local residents - the Aleuts.

When high mountains covered with snow appeared in the distance on November 4, the sailors mistakenly decided that they had approached Kamchatka. Having landed on the shore, they dug rectangular holes in the sand. To adapt them for housing, roofs were made from sails. Many suffered from scurvy. 20 people died. Only 10 sailors were still standing. The sick Bering lay without getting up. As S.N. wrote in The Earthly Circle. Markov, “...everyone knows what happened next. Arctic foxes gnawed at Bering's boots when he was still alive. In his death throes, Bering buried himself in the sand to warm himself up a little.” After lying there for a whole month, he died on December 6, 1741.

The land to which his ship washed up later received his name and is called Bering Island, and the entire group was christened in honor of the deceased captain-commander Commander Islands. “The sea discovered by F. Popov and S. Dezhnev, along which V. Bering sailed so little in 1728, was called the Bering Strait, through which he was not the first to pass, but the same F. Popov and S. Dezhnev, caused on the map not by them, but by M. Gvozdev and I. Fedorov, and at the suggestion of D. Cook, it was named the Bering Strait. The unfortunate captain-commander Vitus Bering... came to exceptional posthumous glory."

Accepted the team Sven Waxel as senior crew officer. Having walked around the new land, the sailors were convinced that they were on an island. The winter was difficult: frequent storms and hurricanes, unexpected earthquakes, scurvy... By the summer of 1742, 46 people remained alive, including the ten-year-old son of K.L. Vaksel Lorenz, future officer of the Russian fleet Lavrentiy Ksaverevich Vaksel.

The ship "St. Peter" was badly damaged, and it had to be dismantled in order to build a small ship of the same name from its parts. Since all three ship carpenters died of scurvy, the Krasnoyarsk Cossack Savva Starodubtsev took up shipbuilding and successfully completed the construction of a new ship. On August 13, the travelers went to sea and, due to the calm, moving mostly on oars, on August 26, 1742 they reached Petropavlovsk.

Vitus Jonassen Bering is one of the pioneers whose life has become a symbol of courage and dedication. From a young age, the traveler was fascinated by the water element. Thanks to the man’s thirst for knowledge and skill, the first sea expedition took place, bringing the Russian state the title of “the cradle of cartography.”

Childhood and youth

The biography of the great navigator began in the city of Horsens, founded on the Danish coast of the Little Belt Strait. The boy was born on August 2 (old style - August 12), 1861. Vitus became the third son in the family of the bankrupt aristocrat Anna Pederdatter Behring and customs worker Jonas Svendsen.

The boy received both his first and last names from his mother. Despite the family's difficult financial situation, Anna Pederdatter's pedigree could serve Vitus well in the future.

The unusual name was a tribute to the memory of his mother's late brother, who became famous for his service at the Royal Court. The complete coincidence of the name became the reason why contemporaries accompany articles about the navigator with incorrect photographs, confusing representatives of the same family.

Poet Vitus Bering, whose portrait was long passed off as an image of a navigator

Parents attached great importance to the education of their children, so Vitus learned to read and write early. The boy attended school, which was located on the same street where his parents' house stood. Despite his curiosity, the child ran away from classes at the first opportunity to go to the port. Vitus spent a lot of time talking with sailors, who told Bering about exciting sea adventures.

At the age of 14, immediately after graduating from school, Vitus signed up as a sailor on a Dutch ship. The young traveler visited the Caribbean islands and spent a lot of time in the East Indies. Realizing that he did not have enough knowledge to build a career, Vitus went ashore in Amsterdam, where he easily entered the naval cadet corps.

Discoveries

The completion of Bering's studies coincided with his interest in mastering the maritime craft. The agents, whose task was to recruit foreign specialists, immediately drew attention to Vitus, who was distinguished by his relaxed character and self-control, so necessary at sea.

In 1704, Bering moved to Russia, where he quickly moved up the career ladder. But after 20 years of service, marked only by positive characteristics and awards, the navigator resigned. Historians claim that the reason for the act was Bering’s pride. The man did not receive the rank of captain of the 1st rank, which the ambitious sailor had long dreamed of.

Geographical discoveries that glorified the name of Vitus occurred during the first Kamchatka expedition. In 1724, by order of Peter the Great, the Russian fleet set out to explore new lands. The only specialist who could cope with such a difficult task was Bering.

For five years, the man explored and recorded on the map the shores of Chukotka and Kamchatka. Bering's merits include refuting speculation that America is united with Asia, and Kamchatka is inseparable from Japan. Alas, such impressive results of the expedition did not receive due attention from the Admiralty.

Officials decided that Bering had not lived up to expectations and had poorly carried out the tsar’s orders. The importance of Vitus’s discoveries was confirmed by Vitus, who familiarized himself with the navigator’s maps in 1778. Impressed by the painstaking work, the Englishman named the strait between Eurasia and America in honor of the navigator whom he did not know personally.

The second Kamchatka expedition was assembled on the initiative of Vitus himself, who was convinced of the need to study Siberia, the Far East and the shores of the Northern Seas. This time the geography of the study and the tasks assigned to the fleet were much larger. Therefore, Bering decided to go on an expedition on two ships.

Command of the second ship was entrusted to Alexey Chirikov. The man served as an assistant captain in the first Kamchatka expedition and earned Bering’s boundless trust. The researchers' plans were to explore Siberia, get to Kamchatka and move to the shores of North America to get a detailed look at the little-visited shores.

Personal life

During the second Kamchatka expedition, Vitus Bering was accompanied by his wife and children. Back in 1713, the navigator married the daughter of a merchant from Vyborg, Anna Christina Pülse.

At first, the young wife calmly let her lover go on sea voyages. The woman herself took care of the house and raised children.

During the first 18 years of marriage, the couple had 8 children, but only four survived: Jonas, Thomas, Anton and Anna Helga.

By the time her daughter was born, Anna Christina was tired of her husband’s constant absence. Leaving the grown-up Jonas and Thomas in the care of relatives from Vyborg, the woman collected silver and porcelain and, taking Anton and Anna, set off on a trip with her husband.

Death

When leaving Avachinskaya Bay towards North America, the ship “St. Peter”, led by Bering, got lost in the open sea. Bad weather made it impossible to determine the location of the ship, and the scurvy that broke out began to destroy the crew of the ship.

Bering was one of the last to be affected by the unpleasant illness. Even feeling weak, the researcher did not leave control of the ship. An unexpected strip of snow-covered land on the horizon became hope for salvation.

But on December 8, 1741, a month after going ashore, Vitus Bering finally lost his strength and died in a hastily built dugout. The man was buried on an unnamed island, which in the future will be designated on maps as Bering Island.

In 1991, a special archaeological team discovered the remains of Vitus. A detailed study led to the conclusion that the cause of the traveler’s death was an unknown disease, not similar in characteristics to scurvy.

According to Olga Sotnikova, the great-great-granddaughter of the sailor Sotnikov, who sailed under the command of Bering, the great traveler died at the hands of his own subordinates. Due to a nervous breakdown, which caused several strategic mistakes, the crew of the St. Peter found themselves on a desert island, where they could not find food or shelter.

The angry sailors buried their commander alive in the ground. But the analyzes of the discoverer’s skeleton do not confirm the theory. In 1992, the remains of the navigator and unknown sailors were returned to the ground on the territory of Commander Bay.

Memory

• In 1818, the Kamchatka (or Beaver) Sea began to be called the Bering Sea.
• In 1937, geographer Erik Hulten proposed the designation Beringia, which includes the Bering Strait, the Bering and Chukchi Seas, part of Kamchatka and part of Alaska.
• In 1945, a monument to the navigator who founded the city was erected on the territory of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
• In 1957, in the Gulf of the Bering Sea, the village “Beringovsky” was named in honor of the traveler. Before this, the settlement was called “Ugolnoye”.
• In 1970, a documentary film directed by Yuri Shvyrev, “The Ballad of Bering and His Friends,” was released.
• In 2006, Kamchatka State Pedagogical Institute, by order of the Minister of Education, was renamed Kamchatka State University named after Vitus Bering.
• In 2016, in honor of the 275th anniversary of the discovery of the Commander Islands, a bronze life-size sculpture of Bering was installed. The monument is located on the territory of Bering Island (Nikolskoye village).

Vitus Bering's brief biography and interesting facts from the life of the Russian navigator, captain-commander, are presented in this article.

Vitus Bering short biography

The great navigator (life of Vitus Bering - 1681-1741) was born in Denmark, the small town of Horsens in the family of a customs officer. With his cousin and comrade, he sailed on a Dutch ship to the East Indies.

After graduating from school, the young man entered the Naval Cadet Corps. In the period 1695–1696 he took part in the Azov campaign. Soon he was enlisted as a non-commissioned officer in the Russian Navy. And in 1706 Bering received the rank of lieutenant.

Soon, Peter I included him among the commanders of the expedition, which was supposed to pass from the ports of the Azov Sea around Europe to the Baltic under the Russian flag.

On behalf of the emperor, in 1725, Vitus led the first Kamchatka expedition in the Pacific Ocean, the purpose of which was to discover the isthmus between America and Asia. She was quite successful. Vitus Bering's first expedition ended with him being awarded the rank of captain-commander in 1730. Taking advantage of the emperor's favor, he was again appointed leader of the second Kamchatka expedition. It began in 1733. Its result is a survey of Alaska and the mapping of the outlines of the land's shores, as well as the Aleutian and Kuril Islands. In addition, on the way home, the navigator encountered a number of previously unexplored lands. These islands are named after Vitus Bering in today's time, or rather part of them. Here the team stayed for the winter. Most of the sailors died of scurvy, including the commander himself. Vitus Bering's journey ended on December 8, 1741, with his death.

Vitus Bering interesting facts

Bering's parents were quite wealthy people; his two older brothers studied at the university in Copenhagen. Young Bering himself chose a different path and, barely 15 years old, hired himself as a cabin boy on a ship.

From 60 years of his life Vitus Bering 38 was in Russian service. Of these, 15 years were spent on Kamchatka expeditions.

In Russia they called him Ivan Ivanovich.

All domestic sources indicate Bering's date of birth - August 12, 1681. But where this date came from is unknown. After all, from the church books of Denmark it is known that he was baptized on August 5, 1681. Therefore, we can make a more accurate guess about the date of his birth - most likely it happened on August 2, 1681.

He was named after his uncle, his mother's brother: the chronicler of the Royal Court.

In 1713 he married Anna Christina, the daughter of a burgher. It is known that the couple had 8 children, of whom only 4 survived. Due to her husband's duties, the wife also had to get used to seafaring to accompany him everywhere.

An island, a strait and a sea in the North Pacific Ocean, as well as the Commander Islands, are named after Bering.

Bering's merits were not immediately recognized. The first traveler to confirm the accuracy of Bering's research was the English navigator James Cook. It was he who proposed giving the name Bering to the Strait between Chukotka and Alaska.

Russia is the most extraordinary and amazing country in the world. This is not a formula of official patriotism, this is the absolute truth. Unusual because it is infinitely varied. Amazing because it is always unpredictable. The gentle and gentle spring sun drowns in a deadly snowstorm in ten minutes, and a bright triple rainbow shines after the flying away black cloud. Tundras are combined with desert dunes, swampy taiga gives way to monsoon forests, and vast plains smoothly turn into equally boundless mountain ranges. The greatest rivers of Eurasia carry their waters through Russia - no other country in the world has such an abundance of great flowing waters. , Ob, Irtysh, Yenisei, Amur... And the largest lakes in the world - the salty Caspian and the fresh. And the longest steppes in the world - from the banks of the Donets to the Amur region. Matching the geographical abundance is the diversity of peoples, their customs, religions, and cultures. Nenets reindeer herders place their tents next to comfortable high-rise buildings. Tuvinians and Buryats roam with herds and yurts along federal highways. In the Kazan Kremlin, a large new mosque neighbors an ancient Orthodox cathedral; in the city of Kyzyl, a Buddhist suburgan turns white against the background of a golden-domed church, and not far from them, the breeze flutters colorful ribbons at the entrance to a shaman’s yurt...

Russia is a country where you won’t get bored. Everything is full of surprises. The beautiful asphalt highway suddenly gives way to a broken dirt road, which disappears into an impassable swamp. It sometimes takes three times longer to cover the last 30 kilometers of the journey than the previous ten thousand. And the most unexpected thing in this mysterious country is the people. Those who know how to live in the most difficult, even impossible natural conditions: in the mosquito taiga, in the waterless steppe, in the highlands and in flooded valleys, in 50-degree heat and 60-degree frost... Those who have learned to survive, I note, by the way, under the yoke of all kinds of authorities , not one of which was ever merciful to them... Who created a unique culture, or rather, many unique cultures, in these swamps, forests, steppes and mountains. They created the great history of the Russian state - a history also consisting of countless great, heroic and tragic stories.

Architectural monuments are living witnesses of the historical past, the creation of famous, and in the vast majority of cases unknown, Russians. The architectural wealth of Russia is great and diverse. It reveals the beauty of the Russian land, the ingenuity of the mind of its people, and the might of the state, but most importantly, the greatness of the human spirit. Russia was built over a thousand years in the most difficult conditions imaginable. Among the harsh and meager nature, in continuous external wars and internal struggles. Everything great that was erected on Russian soil was erected by the power of faith - faith in the truth, in a bright future, in God. Therefore, in architectural monuments, with all their constructive, functional and ideological diversity, there is a common principle - the desire from earth to sky, from darkness to light.

It is simply impossible to tell in one book about all the wonderful places in Russia - natural, historical, poetic, industrial, memorial. Twenty such books would not be enough for this. The publishers and I decided: I will write only about those places where I have been, which I have seen with my own eyes. Therefore, in our publication the Klyuchevskaya Sopka does not smoke, the islands of the Kuril ridge do not rise from the Pacific waters, the white cover does not sparkle... I have not been to these and many other places, I dream of visiting and writing about them. Many wonderful historical and cultural monuments were not included in the book. St. George's Cathedral in Yuryev-Polsky and St. Sophia Cathedral in Vologda, the Kremlins of Tula and Kolomna, the Vorobyovo estates in Kaluga and Maryino in the Kursk region, the buildings of the local history museum in Irkutsk and the drama theater in Samara, the Saratov Conservatory and the “City House” in Khabarovsk... List infinite.

In addition, we decided not to get carried away with the story of big cities, about megacities with millions of people (limiting ourselves to a selective review of the architectural riches of Moscow and St. Petersburg), but to give preference to distant Russia, living away from the wide public roads and from the noise of business and industrial centers.

; the first of all European navigators visited the Kamchatka and Bobrovskoe seas, later called the Bering Sea, and discovered the chain of Aleutian islands, Shumaginsky, Tumanye islands, the northwestern part of America and St. Elijah Bay.

Here he presented the government with his journal, maps and two proposals, in which, among other things, he expressed his desire to equip a new expedition to explore the northern regions. and north-east coast of Siberia. The Admiralty Board, which examined his journal and maps, although it did not entirely trust B.’s discovery, nevertheless, in view of the “difficulty of the expedition,” requested him the rank of captain-commander and a monetary reward of 1000 rubles. B.’s “proposals” were approved by the Senate and the Admiral College, and this approval was followed (December 28) by the highest permission to appoint a new expedition, known as second Kamchatka expedition. Its goal was to explore the shores of the Arctic Ocean from the Dvina in the east to the strait between the continents and the sea and sail to America. To better achieve this goal, the expedition was divided into several detachments. One of them, under the command of Muravyov and Pavlov, began exploring the shores from the. Dvina to Ob. During 1734-35. they only managed to reach Mutnaya Bay. Next year Muravyov, who was put on trial together with Pavlov for “indecent offenses,” was replaced by Lieutenant Malygin, who in September (?) finally reached the mouth of the river. Obi.

Another detachment, which was assigned to sail from the. R. Ob to the Chukotka Nose, was under the command of Lieutenant Ovtsyn. But the latter was somehow constantly caught by winter at the time of sailing, and during all three years ( - ) he only managed to get up the Ob to 72 ° 30 "N. Latitude. Of the other members of this detachment who acted for independent research, one should point out Lieutenant Pronchishchev, who managed to get to Taimyr (city), Lassenius, who died along with a significant part of his detachment in Kharudy, between Yana and Indigirka (city), and Lieutenant Laptev, who had almost more than all the participants (after Chirikov) of the Second Kamchatka Expedition have the right to remember him as an energetic, active and happy traveler.

Bering's surviving companions honored their commander as best they could: they took his body out of the hole in which he stood, covered waist-deep in sand from the cold, buried him and placed a wooden cross over the grave, replaced in