On November 18, the members of the Youth Club of the Russian Geographical Society in Malta met with Maksim Polyakov, a traveler and explorer, director of a documentary with the working title "Classified ALSIB". During the event organized by the Kostroma Branch of the Russian Geographical Society and the director of the Russian House in Valletta Irina Pereverzeva, the young people learned a lot about the history of the legendary Alaska–Siberia Air Route and about the expeditions of the Russian Geographical Society dedicated to its study.
ALSIB (abbreviated name of the Alaska–Siberia Route) was an air corridor connecting the Soviet Union and the United States during World War II. Under the Lend-Lease agreement, the Western Allies supplied fighters and bombers to the USSR, for which a year-round air route was necessary. Since 1942, Soviet pilots had transported 8,094 aircraft to the front along the ALSIB.
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The meeting was held at the Russian boarding school "Malta Crown" in St. Julian's. Maksim Polyakov told the members of the RGS Youth Club about the creation of a new documentary and showed fragments of the future film. The young people were the first viewers to see the footage on screen.
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The heroic ALSIB Air Route is one of the main themes of the local history expeditions of the Russian Geographical Society. In 2021, the RGS’s team explored airfields that served as transit points of the air corridor from the USA to the USSR. Specialists from the Center for Contemporary History studied the condition of 11 runways of the Great Patriotic War period in the Far East and Siberia.
During the expedition, archival data was collected for each airfield, the locations were photographed and filmed, and the crash sites of the found aircraft were mapped. The memory of the pilots who died while ferrying the winged machines is perpetuated.
Helicopter pilots of the Russian Aerospace Forces, servicemen of the Eastern and Central Military Districts, the Pacific Fleet, and the 21st Central Research Institute of Military Vehicles of the Russian Ministry of Defense provided assistance to the search specialists.