S.I. Chelyuskin

Obverse

in the center — the Emblem of the Bank of Russia (the two-headed eagle designed by I.Bilibin), the letters under it indicate the metal sign, the fineness, the mint trademark and the fine metal content. The inscriptions along the rim framed by a circle of dots: at the top — «3 РУБЛЯ 1995 г.» (3 RUBLES 1995), at the bottom — «БАНК РОССИИ» (BANK OF RUSSIA).

Reverse

at the top to the left - portraits of the Russian Arctic explorers, participants in the Great Northern Expedition: Stepan Malygin, Dmitri Ovtsyn, Semyon Chelyuskin and Khariton and Dmitri Laptev, in the centre to the right - the wooden coast-dweller sailing-rowing vessel, to the left - a dog-gear with travellers, below - a map of the Siberian coast, to the right - two dates in two lines "1733-1743 гг.". The inscriptions along the rim: at the top — «ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ РУССКОЙ АРКТИКИ" (EXPLORATION OF RUSSIAN ARCTIC), at the bottom - "ВЕЛИКАЯ СЕВЕРНАЯ ЭКСПЕДИЦИЯ" (THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPEDITION).

Authors

The artist: A.V. Baklanov
The sculptors:A.A. Dolgopolova, A.V. Baklanov
St. Petersburg Mint (ЛМД)
The edge: 300 corrugations

The Arctic, or the Northern polar part of the Earth, has attracted courageous seafarers and naturalists from time immemorial, but its intense exploration began in the late nineteenth century. Important oceanological observations were made by Fridtjof Nansen's expedition of Norwegian North Pole explorers on the sailing ship Fram (1893-1896) and the expedition of Roald Amundsen on the ship Mod (1918-1920). In 1926 the latter directed the first ever flight from Spitsbergen to America via the North Pole on the dirigible Norway. The commander of the airship was the Italian engineer Umberto Nobile. In 1928 Nobile led the Italian expedition to the North Pole on the dirigible Italia, which broke and crashed. The Russian icebreaker Krasin took part in the expedition to rescue Nobile and his team. In 1933 the Russians made an attempt to sail from Murmansk to Vladivostok along the North Sea Route within one navigation period on board the steamship Chelyuskin (named after the 18th-century Russian North Pole explorer Semyon Chelyuskin), but in February 1934 the ship was crushed by the ice in the Chuckchee Sea and the participants in the expedition were rescued by aircraft. In 1937 Russia set up the first drifting research station, North Pole-1, in the North Pole, on which Ivan Papanin, Yevgeny Fedorov, Petr Shirshov and Ernst Krenkel worked. In 1937 Russian pilots Valery Chkalov, Georgy Baidukov and Alexander Belyakov made a non-stop flight from Moscow to Vancouver through the North Pole.