Ilya Ginzburg. Bust of the Polar Explorer Rudolf Samoylovich

This plaster bust portrays Rudolf Lazarevich Samoylovich (1881–1939), a polar explorer and native of Azov. It was made in 1930 by the sculptor Ilya Yakovlevich Ginzburg (1859–1939), a pupil and friend of Mark Antokolsky, a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts and the author of monuments to Gogol, Aivazovsky and Mendeleev, as well as many statuettes of figures of Russian culture.

Samoylovich was born in Azov in 1881 and began his clandestine revolutionary work here. He graduated from the Freiberg Mining Academy, took part in an expedition to Spitsbergen in 1912, and then headed the Northern Scientific and Commercial Expedition and the Institute for the Study of the North. In 1928 he led the expedition on the icebreaker "Krasin" that rescued members of Umberto Nobile's airship "Italia" flight, and in 1931 he led the scientific part of the flight of the airship "Graf Zeppelin". In 1938 Samoylovich was arrested, in 1939 he was shot, and in 1957 he was posthumously rehabilitated. In 1981 a memorial museum opened in Azov in the house where he had lived.

The bust was made in Moscow: the plaster was cast in a mould and painted. The Azov Museum also keeps Samoylovich's writings and literature about him.