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
Severnaya Zemlya map drawn by the expedition's cartographers showed Severnaya Zemlya to be divided into four main islands. Geographic features of the territory were named after communist organisations, events, and personalities. About Severnaya Zemlya Ushakov wrote: The "Graf Zeppelin" flew over the area during its polar flight of July 1931 and took some cartographic and meteorological data; Hugo Eckener tried to take pictures of the yet unsurveyed western coast, but it was obscured by fog and clouds. Even though German communists had endured great suffering under the Third Reich, following the anti-German sentiment caused by the 1941–1945 Great Patriotic War in the