The size is 3 ¾" x 5 ¾", printed on glossy photo paper. Published by SOYUZFOTO, Moscow, circulation unknown. Postally unused, has two affixed postal stamps with three male profiles which look like propaganda of the union of the working class, army and peasantry under socialist rule. The obverse is a photo montage honoring Ivan Papanin's North Pole - 1 drifting polar station, the famous expedition established for scientific research purposes. It lasted from May 21, 1937 to February 19, 1938. By that time, it had drifted on its ice floe 1,770 miles westward. The Soviet ice breakers the Taimyr and the Murman, took the four polar explorers off the ice close to the eastern coast of Greenland. Ivan Papanin, top photo, was commander of the expedition. In the photos under Papanin are the other members of the expedition: E. Krenkel, radioman; E. Fyodorov, magnitologist and astronomer, and P. Shirshov, hydrobiologist.

In excellent condition. The obverse shows truly minimal wear, and only if the photo is tilted to reflect a bright light. The verso is attractively age-toned and shows a faint fingerprint near the postal stamps.

On the wave of success of the first Soviet drifting ice station, all the participants were met back in the USSR with great honors but it was its leader, Ivan Papanin (Иван Дмитриевич Папанин, 1894 - 1986), who became the face of Soviet polar exploration, at home and abroad. His biography is much more diverse than just this one expedition and is certainly worth mentioning, at least in bullet points.

Son of a retired Russian Imperial Navy sailor, Ivan had very little formal education (four years of parochial school). In 1914 he was conscripted as a sailor into the Black Sea Fleet. After the Revolution of 1917, Papanin quickly attaches himself to the Bolsheviks, participates in the Civil War in Ukraine and Crimea. In 1920, he is already a commissar, and his career is clear and secure. In November 1920 he is appointed commandant of the Crimean Cheka. Papanin personally executed so many captured "white guardsmen" and Crimean civilians whose roots were insufficiently proletarian that he got exhausted by this activity and ended up in a psychiatric clinic.

After that, Papanin's loyalty to the cause of socialism was beyond reproach, and his career really took off. Wherever he was appointed and sent, he was first and foremost, a commissar, a political officer. Several appointments and a few years later, Papanin finishes the Higher Communications Courses, and is sent to the Soviet Far East as deputy leader of the expedition tasked with building a radio station in Tommot, a town in Yakutia.

That expedition tied Papanin to the polar regions and communications. After two stints leading polar stations in the Soviet Arctic North, Papanin was sent to lead the first drifting ice station North Pole - 1 in the Arctic Ocean. For a devoted commissar and professional radioman, this appointment was far from accidental.

The scientific materials obtained by the scientists during the expedition were highly acclaimed by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Papanin, among other participants, was bestowed with PhD in Geography (without a graduate paper to defend) and was elected to the Geographic Society of the USSR as an honorary member.

During WW2, Papanin rose to the rank of rear admiral, working as Director of "Glavsevmorput" (Russian acronym for Directorate for North Seas Navigation) and representative of the State Committee for Defense, supervising all maritime traffic in the White Sea. Even after retirement due to a heart condition, Papanin's devotion to his superiors was not forgotten, and he got several high-positioned sinecure jobs.