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).

Russian business interests on Spitsbergen in the early twentieth century: Pavel Weymarn and his Russian Spitsbergen Company Vladimir Karelin M urmansk S tate P edagogical U niversity These days, only a few specialist historians know the name of naval attache and businessman Pavel Petrovich von Weymarn.1Lieutenant Pavel Petrovich von Weymarn was Imperial Russian Naval Attache in Christiania during the First World War. He arrived in the Norwegian capital in the autumn of 1916. By the time the Russian Provisional Government was about to fall in Russia, he had been already working in Norway for one year. During the period of the Civil War, von Weymarn established contact with leaders of the White movement and remained in charge, representing Admiral Kolchak2 in Norway and carrying out his commissions. After the Bolshevik revolution in late 1917, von Weymarn claimed he could never remain under Soviet Government ruling power and following the decline of the Whites he shared the fate of the White emigres. This article mostly covers his activity as a businessman whose undertakings turned out to be closely affiliated to Russian diplomatic actions concerning the Spitsbergen question. On the eve of the First World War, he established with his Russian partners a joint- stock coal company known as the Russian Spitsbergen Company. Together with another Russian company Grumant (established as a result of Vladimir Rusanoffs expedition to Spitsbergen in 1912), they represented Russian economic interests on the archipelago. 1(or Paul von Weymarn was bom in Svcaborg, 1882, died in Canada in 1975) 2Admiral Kolchak, leader of the Russians White Armies in Siberia (1919-1920), who ruled by dictatorial and terrorist methods, launched an offensive against the Soviet government in 1919 that ended with a crash, and was executed early in 1920 in Irkutsk. Weymarn had been acquainted with Kolchak since their naval service on the Baltic Sea Fleet staff in 1914-1915. It is known that during the Civil War, Weymarn co-operated with an illegal naval intelligence organization (named O.K.), which collected strategic information about Red Army for Kolchak’s staff 19