Krassin is an Arctic vessel of Soviet and Russian fleets. She was called Svyatogor prior to 1927, after which she was renamed
Krassin to honor a recently deceased Soviet political leader Leonid Krasin.
The icebreaker was built in Newcastle upon Tyne, the United Kingdom, in 1916–1917 on order by the Russian government. She put out to sea on January 3, 1917. The St Andrew’s Cross was hoisted above the icebreaker on March 31, 1917.
The vessel became world-famous when it saved General Umberto Nobile and his surviving crew from the airship
Italia crash site in 1928, and rescued the German passenger ship
Monte Cervantes.
Krassin was awarded an Order of the Red Banner of Labor for that heroic cruise.
During the Great Patriotic War,
Krassin was in the Far East, and traversed the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through the Panama Canal to make it in time for the opening of seafaring in the western sector of the Arctic. In 1972, the ship was given to the Marine Arctic Geological Expedition. She was transferred to the balance of the International Fund for the History of Science in 1989 and sent to Leningrad. Nowadays, the icebreaker is moored near the Mining University on the Lt Schmidt Embankment in St Petersburg. Since 1980s, she has been a floating museum, a branch of the Kaliningrad Museum of the World’s Oceans and Seas.
The postage stamp depicts the
Krassin Icebreaker against the background of an aurora borealis.
Additionally, JSC “Marka” will manufacture an illustrated cover with the postage stamps and first day covers with cancellation (Moscow and St Petersburg) inside.
Design: V. Beltyukov.
Face value: 24 RUB.
Size of stamp: 42×30 mm, size of sheet: 140×175 mm.
Form of issue: sheet with illustrated margins of 14 (3×5) stamps and a coupon.
Circulation: 406,000 stamps each (29,000 sheets).
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