It was built in Denmark in 1933 by Burmeister and Wain (B&W, Copenhagen) and named after the 18th century Russian polar explorer Semion Ivanovich Chelyuskin.

The aircraft pilots who took part in search and rescue operations were the first people to receive the newly established highest title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Those pilots were Anatoly Liapidevsky, Sigizmund Levanevsky (who crashed en route to the camp, but survived), Vasily Molokov, Mavriky Slepnyov, Mikhail Vodopianov, Nikolai Kamanin and Ivan Doronin.

Two American air mechanics, Clyde Goodwin Armitstead, and William Latimer Lavery,[3] also helped in the search and rescue of the Chelyuskintsy, on 10 September 1934, and were awarded the Order of Lenin.

Nine days after the two Soviet cameramen aboard reached Moscow, their footage was developed, edited and released as a feature documentary motion picture.

In 1970, East German television produced Tscheljuskin, a film about the ship's voyage, directed by Rainer Hausdorf and featuring Eberhard Mellies as Prof. Schmidt, Dieter Mann as the surveyor Vasiliev and Fritz Diez as Valerian Kuybyshev.