Its chief was the former director in charge of the lighthouses and navigation of the Baltic Sea, Vice Admiral R. Bazhenov, who was also the chairman of the Maritime Scientific Committee —Морского учёного комитета.

The Ubek regulated the particular hydrographic zone —in Arkhangelsk for example it was 'Ubek-North'— as part of the unified local authority directly responsible to the central Soviet government.

Emperor Nicholas II Land first partially charted by Boris Vilkitsky in 1913, but still not fully surveyed when it was renamed Severnaya Zemlya by the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR in 1926,[11] was the last blank area on the vast map of the Soviet Union.

[12] Finally a hydrographic expedition of the Arctic Institute of the USSR led by Georgy Ushakov and Nikolay Urvantsev thoroughly surveyed the large Severnaya Zemlya archipelago in 1930–32, making it the last sizable territory on Earth to be put on the map.

In postwar times, after the initial period of reconstruction was over, the Soviet Navy began the challenging task of creating an oceanic fleet carrying nuclear weapons.

During this period the need for innovative and detailed survey and mapping of the Earth's geophysics, including gravity and magnetic fields, became of the utmost importance for the Hydrographic Service of the Soviet Union.

At that time, using its survey vessels, the department spearheaded a comprehensive study of large areas of the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, as well as of the then little explored Southern Ocean off the coast of Antarctica.

As a result, a huge volume of data on bottom topography, physical fields, and hydrophysical characteristics of the water masses, among other pioneering oceanographic information of the oceans, were collected.

[3] In 1972, owing to Cold War dictated priorities, the Hydrographic Office of the Navy was overhauled and transformed into the 'General Directorate of Navigation and Oceanography of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR' —Главное управление навигации и океанографии Министерства обороны СССР (ГУНиО МО).

In 1992 the service was renamed as the 'Main Directorate of Navigation and Oceanography of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation' —Главное управление навигации и океанографии Министерства Обороны Российской Федерации (ГУНиО Минобороны России).

These ships were usually renamed and overhauled or transformed before being put into use, for example the GS-13 small hydrographic vessel that had been launched in 1986 in Soviet Lithuania became the Pereyaslav (U512) when it was made part of the Ukrainian Navy in November 1995.

Russian military presence in Arctic waters resumed in the summer of 2013 when Hydrographic Service vessels belonging to the Northern Fleet sailed to Rudolf Island in Franz Josef Land.