Karelin, V. Russian business interests on Spitsbergen in the early twentieth century: Pavel Weymarn and Russian Spitsbergen Company // Norway and Russia in the Arctic : conference proceeding from international conference «Norway and Russia in the Arctic», Longyearbyen, 25-28 August 2009 / S. Bones, P. Mankova. – Tromso, 2010. – S. 19-27. – (Speculum boreale. The Publication Series of the Department of History and Religious Studies University of Tromso ; № 12).

question the legality of Russian companies’ rights to their property. Special maps issued for shareholders of “Norsk Store Spitsbergen Kul Kompani” had the Russian lots marked as though they were Norwegian-owned ventures. This provoked the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikolay Pokrovsky to issue a special note in January 1917, addressed to the Norwegian authorities. The Russian envoy in Kristiania, Konstantin Gulkevich, made a protest to K. Thorkildsen who represented the Norwegian company. A few weeks’ later Chief Executive A. Virt, on behalf of the Norwegian company, forwarded to Gulkevich the idea of merging the Norwegian and Russian companies. He explained that the Norwegian company faced problems with the recruitment of a labour force in its own country and imagined it might be easer and cheaper to invite workers from the Russian mainland. Norwegian experts probably also took into consideration the promising prospects of the Russian market. The railway routes from Petrograd to Murmansk and from Archangelsk to Vologda alone demanded 160,000 tons of coal per annum. Besides this, Murmansk sea port and the naval base in Kola Bay, which were under construction at that time, also required huge amounts of coal. In a telegram to Petrograd Gulkevich considered the Norwegian business proposal to be a good base for negotiation, offering the prospect of eventually reaching a mutually beneficial agreement. Meanwhile, von Weymam’s Russian Spitsbergen Company and the owners of the joint stock company Grumant had failed to attract Russian investors to Spitsbergen. Using the fuel crises in Russia, they tried to put pressure on the government to obtain subsidies from state funds. They even openly threatened to sell their assets to foreign companies if they did not receive financial compensation for developing coal production. This critical state of affairs worried the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Navy and Parliament. Finally, after a long period of deliberation, they reached a decision in February 1916 to support both Russian companies financially; this decision was made by a special state committee charged with the responsibility for maintaining coal production in Russia. The committee recommended granting huge subsidies to the Russian Spitsbergen Company and joint-stock company Grumant (3.3 million roubles out of a total of 6 million roubles were allocated to von Weymam’s company). However, the official decision and numerous bureaucratic procedures that followed in its wake were not concluded until 8 February 1917, when imperial Russia was already on eve of revolution. In fact, von Weymarn 26