The book includes articles devoted to the problems of the Russian presence in the Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen. The author reflects on the history of the archipelago, where the Russian Pomors were the first to arrive, about the life of Russian miners on it, extracting coal in the harshest conditions of the Arctic, about the difficult relations with the Norwegians, whose number on the archipelago is constantly growing, while the number of Russians is noticeably decreasing, which is why there is a danger of losing our presence on it. The book tells about tragedies that, unfortunately, are very common in such a remote piece of Russian land.