HISTORY OF RUSSIA THROUGH PHOTOARCHIVE MATERIALS OF THE EARTH SCIENCES MUSEUM OF MSU: SPITSBERGEN
In the archive of the MSU Earth Sciences Museum there is a collection of photographic materials built by D.N. Anuchin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Of 3649 units of storage 36 pictures are dedicated to one of the largest scientifi expeditions at the turn of the 20th century - a joint Russian-Swedish expedition in 1899-1901 dedicated to the grade measurements of the meridian arc on Spitsbergen. Th polar expedition of Russian geodesists made history of the Arctic research, as according to the data obtained it became possible to determine the size of the earth ellipsoid and the magnitude of its compression. Th Svalbard meridian arc (Spitsbergen) served as the initial network of modern cartography of the Arctic.