International conference in honor of the 80th anniversary of the Northern convoys was held in St. Petersburg

The scientific and historical conference "The History of Arctic Convoys: Dialogue through Time and Space" was held on September 1, 2021 in St. Petersburg in a mixed format. The conference was organized by the Northern Convoys International Centre, the St. Petersburg Committee on Arctic Affairs and the Maritime Council under the patronage of the Government of St. Petersburg.

Participants and guests of the conference were greeted by Minister Counselor of the Russian Embassy in the Netherlands and management representatives of the St. Petersburg Committees on Arctic Affairs and on Social Policy. Vladimir Solomonov, Director of the Northern Convoys International Centre read out welcoming speech on behalf of the Consul General of Russia in Edinburgh.

The conference participants represented different countries - Russia, USA, UK, Australia, Denmark – as well as different approaches to the study of the history of Northern convoys and various ways of preserving historical memory. Scientific reports on the history of convoys were presented by Mikhail Suprun, head of the Laboratory of History and Sociology of World War II in the Arctic (NArFU, Arkhangelsk); Sergey Shulinin, scientific director of the Arctic Necropolis project (Salekhard); Roman Larintsev, teacher of special disciplines at the Technical School of Shipbuilding and Mechanical Engineering (Severodvinsk) and Morten Bach, representative of the Danish Allied War Sailors Association.

The experience of museums on preserving memory of the Northern Convoys was presented by Vitaly Bronnikov, researcher at the “Krasin” Icebreaker Museum, Andrew Choong Han Lin, curator, Historic Photographs & Ship Plans, Royal Museums Greenwich (UK) and David Sutton, Senior Historian, Australian War Memorial.

It is of great value that the conference was attended by the sons of veterans from Great Britain and Denmark - Adrian Wait and Arne Woythal. The latter also is the author of a book on the Northern Convoys while the former is the creator and moderator of the Facebook project “Arctic Convoys – Forgotten Heroes”. The authors of books on convoys from the United States and Northern Ireland, William Geroux and Keith Newman, also joined the conference with reports.

Due to possibility to follow the conference via online platforms, the conference was joined by viewers and guests from different countries: Great Britain, USA, New Zealand, Netherlands, Iceland.

The Northern Convoys International Centre expresses gratitude to all the participants of the conference. We are confident that the International Conference "The History of Arctic Convoys: Dialogue through Time and Space" will become a new stage in international humanitarian and cultural cooperation, which becomes more and more important.

The online recording of the conference can be viewed on the YouTube channel at the link.

The photos were provided by the St. Petersburg Committee for Arctic Affairs.