In September, the popular Russian magazine, Vokrug Sveta, had a lengthy profile on Cook and his Mt. McKinley and North Polar expeditions, well illustrated and with further evidence that many in the Polar research community and scientific circles in Russia are looking favorably toward the claims of Frederick A. Cook.

The article is by Dr. Dmitry Shparo, a member of the Polar Commission of the Russian Geographic Society and a colleague of V. S. Koryakin, of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Koryakin has researched the Cook-Peary issues for more than 30 years and was the editor of both the Russian reprints of the Peary and Cook accounts of their respective North Pole expeditions..

For 30 years, Russians have been advocating Cook achievements

Koryakin has also published a biography of Cook and Shparo is scheduled to issue his new work on Cook and Mt. McKinley in 2006. The Russian Mt. McKinkley Expedition last September followed Cook?s Ruth Glacier route, and the same group has tentative plans to scale the mountain next Spring.

The Soviet version of My Attainment of the Pole was published in the USSR in 1987, almost a half century after Peary?s North Pole translation. It followed some 26 years of speculation and publication about Cook?s account in various journals and books, cited by V. S. Koryakin in his paper, "The Russian View of the Cook-Peary Dispute, 1909-1993," prepared for the International Cook Symposium at the Byrd Polar Research Center in 1993.

Society Historian - Sheldon S. R. Cook writes "That the-1988 edition of the Soviet Encyclopedia Dictionary, the last edition of this reference work to be published before the fall of the Soviet regime in Russia, recognizes Dr. Cook as the Discoverer of the North Pole, revising and correcting previous editions. This came in the era of reform, of Glasnost in Russia, immediately preceding the collapse of Communism in Russia. But Glasnost had little or nothing to do with the correction of the historical record in this Encyclopedia."

1988: The last Soviet Encyclopedia gave credit to Dr. Cook

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Copyright 2005 - The Frederick A. Cook Society