The cold hard stare of Lenin penetrating the icy air is the only thing you’ll come across the vast frozen landscape in this part of Antarctica for hundreds of miles. His plastic bust was left here, erected on the roof of a research station, by the members of the Third Soviet Antarctic Expedition. Today, it is the only visible part of the now defunct station. The rest is buried in snow.

The Third Soviet Antarctic Expedition arrived at this remote location on 14 December 1958. This place is called the pole of inaccessibility because it is the farthest point on the Antarctic continent, in any direction, from the surrounding seas, and hence is far more remote and difficult to reach than the geographic South Pole. Reaching the pole of inaccessibility was an express objective of the Third Soviet Antarctic Expedition.

The world’s loneliest statue: Lenin’s bust at the Pole of Inaccessibility Station in 2008. Photo credit: Stein Tronstad / Norwegian Polar Institute