Reindeer in Russia Reindeer in Russia Reindeer in Russia include tundra and forest reindeer and are subspecies of "Rangifer tarandus". Tundra reindeer include the Novaya Zemlya ("R.t.pearsoni") and Lapland ("R.t. tarandus") subspecies and the Siberian tundra reindeer ("R.t. sibiricus"). The subspecies of reindeer, the Novaya Zemlya ("R.t.pearsoni"). on the islands of the Novaya Zemlya, were herded by the Nenets. Novaya Zemlya is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the North of Russia and the extreme Northeast of Europe, the easternmost point of Europe lying at Cape Flissingsky on the Northern island. The indigenous population (from 1872 to the 1950s when it was
Novaya Zemlya lost more than three-fourths of the merchant ships committed to the convoy — more than one fourth of the losses to American shipping in all convoys to northern Russia. The destruction of PQ-17 significantly affected the people dependent on supplies carried by the ill-fated merchant ships. Karlo Stajner, a Gulag prisoner in Norilsk in 1942, wrote “the German cruiser’s attack on Novaya Zemlya and the sinking of the food transports had catastrophic consequences…the population was left without provisions…supplies in the warehouses of Norilsk [were] distributed among the NKVD, the guards, and the few free civilians that lived in the town.”