Vorontsova, Liubov [At 81° North Latitude: Notes of a Participant in the 'Krasin' Expedition]. Na 81° Severnoi Shiroty: Zapiski uchastnika ekspeditsii 'Krasina'. 

Series Biblioteka zhurnala "Iunyi proletarii". 
Preface by I. Ivanov.

Leningrad, Izdatelstvo "Krasnaia gazeta", 1929.
8vo, 80 pp., ill.

In original pictorial wrappers.
In good condition, light wear to cover, small cracks to spine.

First and only edition.

On May 25, 1928, the airship Nobile crashed on the Arctic Ocean ice, marking one of the greatest tragedies in aviation history and triggering the first major international search and rescue operation. Responding to the distress call, the Soviet Union, with its excellent resources, dispatched three Arctic icebreakers: the 'Malygin', the 'Sedov', and the 'Krasin'. The 'Krasin' was under the command of Professor Rudolf Samoylovich, an Arctic explorer and a personal friend of Nobile. Despite facing propeller failure, the Soviet icebreaker 'Krasin' managed to successfully rescue the majority of the stranded travelers on July 12.
This book about the operation was written by the female journalist of newspaper 'Trud' (Labor) Liubov Vorontsova (1900-1972). Due to logistical constraints, she earned her place by working as a stoker and assistant radio operator. It's important to note that there were only two women on the 'Krasin': Vorontsova and Kseniia Aleksandrovich, who worked as a cabin cleaner (136 people took part in the expedition). The year before writing this book, Vorontsova published a small essay (only 24 pages) titled 'In the Icy Vastness: The Feat of the Icebreaker 'Krasin''. This is practically all we know about the author, except that in 1957, she published the biography of the pioneer of women in mathematics, Sofya Kovalevskaya, in the series 'The Lives of Remarkable People'.
The book is richly illustrated, including a map depicting the trajectory of the three rescue flights.
Provenance: from the library of the poet and journalist Emily Mindlin (1900-1981), who also participated in the expedition.

OCLC locates one copy of this book in the USA only: in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library. The one copy is in the Bavarian State Library (Germany).