Artur Chilingarov was an Armenian Russian polar explorer, a scientist, and a longtime vice-president of the Russian Duma (Parliament).
He was born on September 25, 1939, in Leningrad (nowadays St. Petersburg) and grew up in an Armenian family. In 1963 he graduated from the Arctic faculty of the S.O. Makarov Leningrad Higher Marine Engineering School. As an engineer-oceanographer, he was directed to the Tiksi observatory of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. In 1971 Chilingarov was the head of the Bellingshausen Station of the 17th Soviet Antarctic Expedition.
Between 1974 and 1979, he worked in the Western sector of the Arctic Ocean as head of the Amderma Administration of hydrometeorology and environmental control. He summarized his experience in navigational support on the Northern Sea Route in his dissertation for Ph.D. in geographical sciences. He obtained his second Ph.D. in 2003. He published 50 scientific papers and was later elected corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In 1985 he headed the special expedition to rescue the research vessel Mikhail Somov, which was ice-blocked in the Antarctic Ocean. He was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union the next year for successfully performing the rescue operation in extreme conditions and for his display of organizational abilities and courage.
Chilingarov was a member of the State Duma (1993-2011, 2016-2024), where he was elected to post of deputy chairman. “I don’t look at my Armenian roots from a narrow perspective,” he explained during an interview to AGBU News in the early 2000. “I am a Russian Armenian and Russia is my country, just like the United States is for American Armenians. I will serve both as best as I can,” he said. In 2000 he received the Anania Shirakatsi medal and in 2008 the order of St. Mesrop Mashtots from the Republic of Armenia. He was elected foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (2003) and received the title of honorary citizen of Gyumri in 2015.
In January 2002 he was the first Armenian to reach the South Pole with a team of scientists who flew in an Antonov An-3 biplane piloted by Ukrainian-born Sergei Tarasuk, whose mother is Armenian. In an interview to AGBU News, he declared:
“As much as I was part of a Russian expedition, I was still an Armenian there. My colleagues found it very amusing when I put up a wooden marker with the distances from where we were to the cities representing the origins of team members. The marker, which is still there, clearly says Yerevan, 16,116 kilometers. Of course, it also gives the distances from Moscow and Kiev, and St. Petersburg, my birthplace. I also took a bottle of Armenian brandy with me as a gift to the American team which was also involved in the expedition,” Chilingarov said in the interview with a huge smile on his face. “As an Armenian, I cannot celebrate an important occasion without some Armenian brandy,” he said.
In January 2007, he led a helicopter expedition to Antarctica, and in the same year he joined the Russian North Pole expedition, during which he descended to the seabed 13,980 feet below the North Pole. Om 2008 he was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation for this last feat.
Artur Chilingarov passed away in Moscow on June 1, 2024, at the age of 84.