Russian Empire Bolsheviks followed in 1918. The administrative boundaries of European Russia, apart from Finland and its portion of Poland, coincided approximately with the natural limits of the East-European plains. In the North it met the Arctic Ocean. Novaya Zemlya and the Kolguyev and Vaygach Islands also belonged to it, but the Kara Sea was referred to Siberia. To the East it had the Asiatic territories of the Empire, Siberia and the Kyrgyz steppes, from both of which it was separated by the Ural Mountains, the Ural River and the Caspian Sea — the administrative boundary, however, partly extending into Asia on
Novaya Zemlya left a hundred dead and wounded. Whether the attack on Menshikov’s battery occurred on Dikson Island or on Novaya Zemlya, Stajner’s account illuminated the fate of a Soviet officer imprisoned by his countrymen for the “crime” of suffering defeat at the hands of the enemy. Not surprisingly, Menshikov’s arrest was never announced in the Soviet press. In August 1943, a German U-boat sank the Soviet research ship "Akademic Shokalskiy" near "Mys Sporyy Navolok", but the Soviet Navy, now on the offensive, destroyed the German submarine U-639 near "Mys Zhelaniya". In July 1954, Novaya Zemlya was designated the Novaya Zemlya Test