Malasai Vitalii Pavlovych

Was the first to map the Anabar River; one of its most difficult rifts is given his name.

Vitaly Pavlovich was born on March 21, 1913, in the village of Svatova Luchka, Kupiansk District, Kharkiv Province, into a family of a railway driver. The marriage of his parents did not work, the mother and younger brother left for Chertkovo, and Vitalii, as an older child, was left under his father’s care.

In 1929, the young man graduated from the Svatove Seven-Year Railway School and entered the FZU at the Locomotive Repair Plant in the city of Izium, Kharkiv Oblast. After graduating from FZU in 1931, he worked as a locksmith at the Locomotive Repair Plant. Later, in 1934, as an assistant driver at the Svatove Station Depot. Since May 1934, he worked as a surveyor at the Levshyno Station of the Perm Railroad.

In the same year, Vitali Malasai entered the Leningrad Institute of Economics and in May 1935 was transferred to the Hydrographic Institute of the Main Sea Route and qualified as an engineer and hydrographer. After graduation, he was sent to work in the Main Hydrographic Sea Route Department. On February 20, he was transferred to the position of senior hydrographer of the Anabar Buoy Boats. The section of the Northern Sea Route entrusted to him worked non-stop. Vitalii Pavlovych mapped a river that had not been previously explored. Since that time, the pioneers of Anabar began to call one of the most difficult rifts of the river by the name of Malasai.

In 1942, an expedition led by the famous polar explorer Baronov explored the Cape Horgo. V. Malasai also participated in this expedition. During one of the winter sledge routes, Vitalii tragically died, having got into a snowstorm with his comrade and lost his group. According to researchers and by the Decision of the Executive Committee of the Archangelsk Council No. 651 of August 26, 1963, the cape on the island of Nansen, which is part of the archipelago of Franz Josef Land, was given his name.