Review of Arctic scientist, Gulag survivor: the biography of Mikhail Mikhailovich Ermolaev, 1905–1991, translated and edited by William Barr

Abstract

Mikhail Mikhailovich Ermolaev (pronounced Yermolayev) —a Russian pre- and post-war geographer and geologist—is not a well-known scientist, neither in an international nor a Russian context. But he was an outstanding person in the lives of the many people he met during his long academic career. His difficult life in many ways reflects Russian scholarship during all stages of the Soviet era, from the Bolshevik Revolution to its dissolution, including the terrible years of Stalin’s reign of terror against academic society.