The paper presents the Cenozoic history of the topography of the South Kara shelf. It represents a peripheral part of the West Siberian plate submerged beneath the Kara Sea. The principal morphostructures are remnants of the South Kara arch, the Baidaratsk foredeep, and the East Novaya Zemlya trench. Structural‐denudational levels are identified as having been formed during regressive episodes in the Late Oligocene, Late Miocene, the Late Pliocene/Pleistocene, the late Middle Pleistocene, and at the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary. Submarine erosional‐depositional levels were formed during transgressive epochs during the Early/Middle Miocene, Pliocene, Early/Middle Pleistocene, Late Pleistocene, and Holocene.