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traces: a powerful wave of sound carried across all Siberia, forests were felled over hundreds of square kilometers, and there was a huge flash of light and an earthquake, recorded by an impartial seismograph in the basement of the Irkutsk observatory. The meteorite was seen not only by thousands of illiterate and superstitious inhabitants of eastern Siberia but by completely civilized people looking out the window of a train near Kansk — with whom I have had lengthy discussions. To summarize the accounts of eyewitnesses, it can be confidently stated that a huge meteorite fell in Siberia, probably one of the largest that has ever plummeted to earth. But twenty years ago meteorite studies had not yet won irrefutable rights to citizenship as an independent science. Meteorites were studied not only by scientists but by blatant charlatans, who introduced many lies and much confusion into the story of the Tungus meteorite. To the shame of our native science, no one even tried to organize an expedition in the hot traces, literally speaking, of the meteorite: the whole thing ended with a dozen newspaper articles and pseudoscientific publications. And it was only under Soviet power that your humble servant was able to organize the first meteorite expedition, in the difficult year of 1921, thanks to the personal support of People’s Commissar Lunacharsky. Comrade Lunacharsky got the necessary sums of money through Narkompros, and NKPS — the Commissariat of Communications — sent a train car for the expedition and provided the necessary equipment. Nikolai Savelevich Trifonov, who is here with us, is the next-to-the-last of the Mohicans of that legendary expedition — en route he will tell you in more detail about the first campaign for the Tungus marvel. The first expedition didn’t find the meteorite, but was able to precisely define the area of its fall: the basin of the Stony Tunguska River, or Katanga as the Evenki people call it. Having systematically analyzed the eyewitness evidence of the fall, I came to the conclusion presented in my article for the journal
Earth Science
: a meteorite of colossal size fell in eastern Siberia in 1908. Unfortunately, for a number of objective and subjective reasons, one of which was NEP, the next expedition was able to leave Leningrad for Siberia only last year. This time we were aided by the academician Vernadsky and by Comrade Bukharin personally. Expedition No. 2 almost made it to the place where the meteorite fell. But ‘almost’ doesn’t count in science, comrade meteorologists. The mistake of the second expedition was in its choice of time. In order to get through the swamps of the taiga, we decided to leave for Katanga in February, when the ice would establish a natural means of access across the bogs. On the one hand, this helped; on the other, it hindered us. The horses couldn’t make it from Vanavara along the deer trails to the place where the forest had been felled: there was too much snow. Making an agreement with the Evenki, Trifonov and I traveled on reindeer, sending the whiners and panic-mongers back to Taishet. Alas, not every scientist is prepared to suffer in the name of science! After three days of the most difficult route across the snow-covered taiga, our indefatigable Evenki guide, Vasily Okhchen, brought us to the edge of the collapsed forest. When Nikolai Savelevich and I climbed a hill and saw the felled, broken trees stretching to the very horizon, we felt genuine terror and joy: such a phenomenal destruction of the taiga could have happened only by the volition of an enormous meteorite! What an incredible spectacle! Centuries-old trees had been snapped like pencils! That was the power of a messenger from space that fell to earth! No wonder that the Evenki refused to go farther — the shamans forbade them to enter the ‘accursed place.’ When the meteorite fell, some of them had deer that perished there and tents that burned. Okhchen will forever remember