Nina Petrovna Demme (Russian: Нина Петровна Демме; 1902 – 16 March 1977) was a Soviet polar explorer, biologist, and ornithologist. She was one of the first women to explore the Arctic and have charge of a polar expedition. Raised in an polyamorous household in Kostroma, she attended the first women's gymnasium in Russia from 1907 to 1914 and then studied to become a teacher. After taking workers courses under Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, she taught collectivism in the Ufa Governorate before settling in Leningrad in 1921 to study at the Geographical Institute. For eight years, she studied geography and biology, participating in numerous field trips on polar research. Graduating in 1929, Demme went to work at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute and participated in a two-year expedition to Franz Josef Land, during which she was the only woman in the group. Chosen to lead an expedition to Severnaya Zemlya, known then as the Kamenev Islands, she and her team of three men mapped the western part of the archipelago and conducted research on the plants and animals. Returning to Leningrad in 1934, she researched the commercial collective farming potential of animals of the north and for several seasons studied black foxes and the possibilities of breeding eiders. Earning her Candidate's Degree in biology in 1946, she became a professor but was discontent to remain in the classroom and continued to make research trips until she retired in 1959. In her retirement, she painted, and planted a large garden of flowers and trees, which she maintained until her death in 1977.
Early life Nina was born in 1902 in Kostroma in the Russian Empire to Maria Ivanovna Ryabtsova and Ludwig Fedorovich Demme. She was an illegitimate child of a polyamorous household which was made up of her father's first wife and nine children, and her mother's five children. Her half-siblings were Valya and Kolya named after her mother's first husband, a German surnamed Huber. Nina, Julia, and Seryozha were full siblings from her mother's relationship with her father. Because her blood siblings were all illegitimate, they were registered with the family patronymic Petrovna, after her godfather Petr Ryabtsov, and with their mother's surname, Ryabtsov. Forged papers, showing her name as Nina Petrovna Demme-Ryabtseva, allowed Demme to be the only child to carry her father's surname or enter high school (gymnasium). Her father was a German noble, originally named Ludwig von Medem, who changed his surname to Demme and arrived in Russia where he ran a bicycle shop in Galich. Soon he relocated to Kostroma and began a relationship with Ryabtsova, who managed a brewery left to her by her first husband. After he had sent for his first family in Germany, the blended families rented the house which would later become the Pushkin Library in Kostroma. Ryabtsova, Ludwig, and her children occupied the top floor of the building, and his first family lived in the garden house. Later, he built a house for the mixed family at #23 Pastukhovskaya. The relationships between his wives and children were friendly and they all worked together on the farm, which produced poultry, as well as fruits and flowers for local sale. Ludwig Demme was fond of birds and raised several rare breeds of pigeons, for which he was widely known.
Education After completing her primary education, Demme entered the private Grigorov Female Gymnasium (Russian: Григоровскую женскую гимназию), the first women's high school in Russia. The school was funded by nobles from the Kostroma Oblast, but because her documents listed Demme as the daughter of a peasant, she was ridiculed. Girls who attended the school were preparing to become teachers and studied dance, music, and needlework, as well as French, German, and Russian languages; geography; literature; mathematics; physics; and religion. She graduated in 1914 and then entered the teacher training seminary in Kostroma. In 1917, while participating in a community mowing project during her schooling, Demme learned of the Bolsheviks and quickly became a founding member of the Komsomol in Kostroma. By 1919, she was a leader in the Komsomol, entering the labor school commune and participating in the provincial committee. In 1920, she went to Moscow to take workers courses under Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, and studied collectivism. When she completed the courses, she was sent to the Ufa Governorate in the Ural Mountains to pass on the information to the masses. In 1921, Demme moved to Leningrad to study at the Geographical Institute. Among her instructors were Lev Berg, Alexei Bialynitsky-Birulya, Białynicki-Birula Vladimir Bogoraz, Alexei Borisyak, Yakov Edelstein, Boris Fedtschenko, Alexander Fersman, Dmitry Nalivkin, and Sergey Neustruev. For eight years she studied at the institute, which later became the geography department of Leningrad University. During research trips, she participated in expeditions to the Caucasus and Crimea and worked on projects including road construction in Leningrad and dog training along the railway from Termez to Dushanbe. In 1926, Demme led an expedition to the Kara Sea; in 1927, she conducted research in the Urals; afterwards, she completed field work in Central Asia around Amu Darya to prepare for land reforms. While she was in school, she met and married fellow student and polar explorer Ivan Markieltevich Ivanov. Her husband had been part of the rescue attempt in 1928 to save Umberto Nobile, an Italian polar explorer, and his crew after they crashed their dirigible balloon.
Career
Arctic exploration
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