On the eve of the “golden age of geology”: Documentary evidence of the first field studies fulfilled by the Lena Expeditionof NIGRIZoloto-TsNIGRI.On the 90th Anniversary of the Central Research Institute of Geological Prospecting for Base and Precious Metals

In the year of the 90th Anniversary of TsNIGRI, the institute that made a significant contribution to researching the gold-bearing potential of the Patom Highlands in Eastern Siberia, we present archival materials on the commencement of field studies in the Lena region, on the work of the institute's geological-geomorphological parties and the petrographical one in the basins of the Kadali, Bodaibo, Aunakit, Anangra, Vacha, and Nygri rivers, conducted in 1939. The documents cited include, in particular, critical reviews of the geological reports of NIGRIZoloto specialists, presented by Academician V. A. Obruchev and Professor D. I. Shcherbakov, as well as the personal diaries of writerP.N. Luknitsky, who was then a Senior Collector of one of the parties and who recorded the objective difficulties of the fieldwork. The published materials allow us to reconstruct the historical context of the geological exploration at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s and to analyze the prerequisit for the rapid growth of professional skills of the first generation of geologists at NIGRIZoloto-TsNIGRI.