25 February — a fire broke out at the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow.
The Rossiya Hotel was built in Moscow in 1964–1967 on the site of the old Zaryadye district.
It was the largest hotel in Europe, with 3,182 rooms for 5,300 guests. The first call reporting a fire in the Rossiya Hotel building reached the duty service console at 21:24. Firefighters who arrived at the scene assigned the blaze the highest danger category. The fire covered an area of about three thousand square meters. The blaze spread to the upper floors. The fire blocked the exits from the 17th and 22nd floors. The insufficient length of the extendable ladders complicated the evacuation. About 250 people were cut off from the exits. All possible measures were taken to extinguish the fire. An additional 19 mechanical ladders were brought in from the region. A total of 35 water tank trucks, 97 water nozzles, 61 pump trucks, 8 smoke-diving service vehicles, and 19 special vehicles were used. Even so, forty-three people died. More than 1,000 people were rescued. 188 people were evacuated using manual and automatic ladders.
On 1 January 2006 the hotel was closed, and on 29 March of the same year demolition work began. For a long time the site remained vacant, and in 2012 the government decided that a park would be laid out on the freed 13-hectare area, or a landscaped park zone with an entertainment center would be created.
9 August — the Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika, under the command of Captain Yuri Kuchiev, after refueling its reactors and thorough preparation, departed Murmansk and set course for the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya.
More than 200 people took part in the expedition.
The scientists’ tasks included reaching the North Pole. In addition, it was necessary to test the capabilities of the new icebreaker, launched only five years before the expedition, and its resistance to constant collisions with ice.
On 15 August the icebreaker crossed the 85th degree of north latitude and entered the near-polar region.
On 17 August 1977 at 4:00 a.m. Moscow time, the ship, having overcome a powerful three-meter-thick ice cover of the Central Polar Basin, became the first in the world to reach the North Pole. The expedition participants marked this event with a ceremonial raising of the USSR national flag on a ten-meter steel mast installed on the ice. The nuclear-powered ship spent 15 hours at the top of the Earth. During this time, the scientists managed to carry out a set of critical studies and observations, and before leaving the Pole they lowered into the waters of the Arctic Ocean a commemorative metal plaque bearing the image of the USSR state emblem.