Severnaya Zemlya Severnaya Zemlya Severnaya Zemlya ( (Northern Land), ) is a archipelago in the Russian high Arctic. It lies off Siberia's Taymyr Peninsula, separated from the mainland by the Vilkitsky Strait. This archipelago separates two marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean, the Kara Sea in the west and the Laptev Sea in the east. Severnaya Zemlya was first noted in 1913 and first charted in 1930–32, making it the last sizeable archipelago on Earth to be explored. Administratively, the islands form part of Russia's Krasnoyarsk Krai federal subject. In Soviet times there were a number of research stations in different locations,
Environmental inequality in Europe by the Russian Empire to prevent Norwegian expansion. The traditional Nenets name for the archipelago, which lies within European continental borders, is Edey Ya. According to the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, during the Cold War approximately 500 Indigenous persons were relocated from Novaya Zemlya to make way for nuclear testing. The reindeer living on the island either died or were relocated to the mainland. Between 1954 and 1990, 132 nuclear test explosions, ninety four percent of the aggregate yield of nuclear testing in the former Soviet Union, were conducted on the islands. On October 30, 1961,