Arctic and Antarctic Scientific Research Institute

(AANII), a scientific research institution in the USSR (Leningrad), conducting interdisciplinary research on the nature of the arctic and antarctic. Organized on Mar. 3, 1920, as the Northern Scientific-Commercial Expedition under the auspices of the Scientific-Technological Department of the Supreme Council for the National Economy, reorganized in 1925 as the Institute for the Study of the North. In 1930 it was reorganized as the All-Union Arctic Institute. In 1932 it came under the jurisdiction of the Main Administration for the Northern Sea Route. In 1948 the Scientific Research Institute of Arctic Geology (NIIGA) was founded on the basis of the Geology Department of the institute, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Geology of the USSR. In 1958 the All-Union Arctic Institute was renamed the Arctic and Antarctic Scientific Research Institute (AANII). Since 1963, under the auspices of the Main Administration of the Hydrographic and Meteorological Service, under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute organized over 1,000 expeditions to the arctic, including 22 aerial expeditions to the high latitudes, landing 19 Severnyi Polius (North Pole) drifting stations on ice floes of the central arctic. Since 1955 the institute has participated in the organization of arctic research, and since 1958 it has directed the organization and administration of Soviet antarctic expeditions. Since 1968 the regions of the Atlantic Ocean adjoining the arctic and antarctic have become the object of investigations by the institute. The expeditions have made a great number of geographic discoveries in the antarctic. The institute includes departments of ice forecasting, weather forecasting, oceanology, hydrology of the estuaries of arctic rivers, meteorology, geophysics, geography and history, and antarctic research; the laboratories of the institute include a computer laboratory and a laboratory on ship-based and ice-based research. There are also experimental workshops and a museum. Members of the institute include A. P. Kar-pinskii, A. E. Fersman, Iu. M. Shokal’skii, N. M. Knipovich, L. S. Berg, O. Iu. Shmidt, R. A. Samoilovich, V. G. Bogoraz-Tan, V. Iu. Vize, N. N. Zubov, P. P. Shir-shov, N. N. Urvantsev, and Ia. Ia. Gakkel’.

In 1967 the institute was awarded the Order of Lenin. The institute publishes Trudy Arkticheskogo i Antarkticheskogo nauchno-issledovatelskogo instituta, Trudy Sovetskoi antarkticheskoi ekspeditsii, Problemy Arktiki i Antarktiki, and Informatsionnyi biulleten’ Sovetskoi antarkticheskoi ekspeditsii.