The State of Soviet Geography

papers were read on physical geography, geomorphology, paleogeography, biogeography, economic geography, cartography, ethnography, history of geographical knowledge and historical geography. About 2000 delegates and guests from all parts of the U.S.S.R. came to Moscow for the Congress. Foreign geographers were represented by delegations from eleven countries (Albania, Bulgaria, China, Czecho? slovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, India, Korea, Mongolia, Poland and Romania). The Congress was mainly concerned with making known the major achievements of Soviet geography in the seven years since the last con? gress; to reach agreement on the main theoretical problems of geography in dis? pute ; and to define the most important tasks of future geographical research. The most noteworthy geographical discoveries made recently by Soviet geo? graphers have been in the central part of the Arctic Ocean and in the North-west Pacific. Arctic explorations have been conducted by a number of expeditions fitted out by the Arctic Research Institute together with other scientific institutions. The important results of these explorations were reported by V. F. Burkhanov, chief of the 1954-5 expedition, in hi& paper: the latest geographical discoveries in the soviet arctic, and by Professor Y. Y. Gakkel, who read the paper: relief of the bed of the central part of the arctic ocean. Much information emerged during the exploration of the ocean bed north of the New Siberian Islands to the North Pole and further on to the Lincoln Sea (which washes the extreme north-east of the Canadian Archipelago), and from this line in the direction of the Pacific Ocean. Explorations were started there in 1948; this year, a party of the expedition of the Arctic Institute headed by Y. Y. Gakkel, drifting on an ice floe, found at a point lat. 86? 26' N. and long. 1540 33' E., a depth of no more than 4332 feet, instead of the greater depths expected. Numerous soundings taken in the adjoining areas, and Y. Y. Gakkel's comparisons of various oceanographical data collected by the expedition in 1948 and by earlier expeditions, indicated that a solid underwater mountain ridge had been discovered extending along the meridian of the New Siberian Islands to the Pole and beyond it towards Lincoln Sea. Comparisons of oceanographical data available for adjoining areas and for the whole central part of the Arctic Ocean suggested that this ridge cuts across the entire central part of the ocean, dividing it into two deep isolated depressions. This conclusion was based on the predominance of cold bottom waters of Atlantic origin on the Atlantic side of the ridge and on the Atlantic character of the rich zooplankton at great depths in this part of the ocean, whereas on the Pacific side of the ridge the bottom waters are noticeably warmer, and the zooplankton is poorer and of a Pacific character. Investigations conducted by the Arctic Institute in 1949 found a depth of 3297 feet along the extension of this ridge, named by the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences the Ridge. Investigations organized by the Arctic Institute in 1950, under the direction of M.M. Somov, on a drifting ice floe in the central part of the Arctic Ocean on the Pacific side of the Lomonosov Ridge (i.e. north of Wrangel Island), led to the discovery of a new, lower elevation of the bed running parallel

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