many years ago, i think it was 1990, i bought a book about russian activities in the arctic.
The author is a hungarian jounalist, István Kulcsár, the title (free translation) "with the microphone at the northpole".
This book describes in detail the history of the soviet polar research and weatherstations they have had the year around on floating ice ilands up to 70m thick, capable to support even large airfields on the ice and it despribes the life and work of soviet meteorologists and other research stuff on these stations an on land in the high arctic. You have to read it with some filter in mind about propaganda, you know, soviet research is perfectly peacefull, american and european only military.......suck......but....
.......If one would like to know how the ice conditions have been from the 1920ies up to the late 70ies, this book is really a gem.