The article is devoted to the history of the expeditions to the Kola Sami in the 1920s-1930s and is based especially on previously unknown archival materials. Special attention is paid to the correlation between the Sami research program and the internal political life in Russia at the time. The fate of some of the Kola Sami investigators, D. Zolotarev, V. Čarnoluskij, and V. Alymov, is described.