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Bruce,
you are probably right! (I understood from the very beginning
that the "lunars conjecture" was not plausible:-).
But maybe not land-based (which can be done with a more
precise instrument, theodolite),
but ICE-BASED.
The Soviets were always very much involved in Arctic
activities. They really used commercially the
Northern Sea Way as a way to ship loads from European Russia
to the Far East. This was always an enormous problem for Russia,
to communicate with its Far East. The attempts to build a railroad
were only partially successful. Even now they have essentially
only one
branch to Pacific (letting one train at a time)
and this branch was
built
in 1890-s. Great investment in another branch in 1970-s
was a faillure, if I understand correctly.

So they were always interested in convoys, led by icebreakers,
through the Northern Sea Way. They had the largest icebreakers
fleet in the world, including several nuclear-powered ones.
It was impossible to make the whole passage
in "one navigation", that is in one summer.
The ships of a convoy had to stop and spend winter somewhere,
frozen into ice. Only once they claimed a "world record",
when an icebreaker made it in one summer.

In the World atlas, published in 1959 which I had in my childhood
they even had the boundary of the Soviet union extended
to the North Pole and enclosing 1/2 of the Arctic Ocean.
This half of the ocean was oficially called "The Polar Possessions
of the Soviet Union".

The practice of claiming these "Polar Possessions" ended,
if I understand correctly,shortly after the first US nuclear
submarine "Nautilus" made a trip to the North Pole under ice:-)
Which happened in the end of 1950-s, if I remember correctly.


On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Bruce Stark wrote:

> I'm wondering if, for some reason, they had land-based
> observations in mind.
>

   

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