#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The exhibition was made possible thanks to the invaluable help of the day hero’s daughter Natalya Vladimirovna, who donated a large collection of her father’s personal belongings to the Norilsk museum. Now our city can boast of perhaps the largest collection of the Vladimir Dolgih foundation in the country.
Natalya Fedyanina, the Norilsk Museum complex’s director, says that this is a great success. Previously, the museum had relatively few materials dedicated to the personality of one of the Norilsk combine’s directors, the man who allowed Norilsk to get a second wind. These were mainly scattered items dedicated to him as the head of a huge enterprise. The new materials will allow us to see Vladimir Dolgih as an ordinary person who had his own habits and hobbies. Over 200 items have been donated to the museum’s collection. The museum specialists explain that before visitors see the items, they have to go a long way: it is important to establish their history, dates, accept them into the funds and enter them into state catalogs.
“Not only our museum, but also Norilsk, the region and the whole country are preparing for the 100th anniversary of Vladimir Dolgih’s birth. Our city has become a very important milestone in his biography, and we are pleased to present a special project dedicated to the hero of the day. It is called Vladimir Ivanovich’s Long Twelve Years”, said Natalya Fedyanina.
The exhibition will cover the Norilsk period of his life. It was decided that the entire exposition will be built on the features of that time, the so-called Thaw Period, a golden time for Norilsk and the whole country, an era of great opportunities, when the wildest dreams could be realized.
For this purpose, the walls in the hall of the museum’s second floor, where the exhibition will be located, were even repainted, and the site’s development will be slightly changed. 12 years will be shown on the portal screens, and viewers will also see photographs and, most importantly, what the museum is now proud of – Vladimir Dolgih’s personal belongings.
“This became possible thanks to the connection with his family: some time ago, Vladimir Mehanik introduced us to Vladimir Ivanovich’s youngest daughter, Natalya. We established contact that allowed us to replenish the collection with his things. We started working last September, visiting the Dolgih family dacha near Moscow. This is an extremely valuable addition: before that, we had very few of his images and personal belongings, but now we have one of the largest collections in the country”, added the Norilsk Museum’s director.
Her deputy Natalya Boyarkina notes that the process of reaching an agreement was not simple: it was difficult for Vladimir Ivanovich’s daughter to part with her father’s things, which she had carefully kept for many years. But the spirit of a Norilsk woman still won out in her:
“She came to the northern city as a two-year-old baby and recalls her Norilsk childhood with pleasure: how she and her family lived in a house on Leninsky prospect, 1, how she went sledding, attended the music school. Natalya still feels like a Norilsk woman and could not refuse her city. In addition, she understands that Norilsk remained her father’s main achievement, he always had a heart for it”.
Unfortunately, the family did not preserve all the things that belonged to the hero of the day: according to his younger daughter, she did not even imagine that they could be so valuable. But what eventually went to the city museum is priceless in its own way.
“These are things that allow you to get to know Vladimir Dolgih as a person. For example, his hobbies: it turns out that he was fond of skiing, taking photos. We were pleased by how many items were related to Norilsk, although this period of his life lasted no more than 12 years. Natalya Vladimirovna gave us her father’s albums with photographs illustrating the city in different years, although not his authorship, but from his personal collection, says Natalya Boyarkina.
She sorts through the things that Norilsk residents will soon see with their own eyes: the drape coat that Vladimir Ivanovich wore, the suitcase with which, presumably, he arrived in Norilsk, an interior panel made of reindeer skin, popular among Norilsk residents in those years. Here is also a heavy writing set that stood in his dacha office, a camera, glasses in a case, a folder with which he went to meetings, a briefcase, photographs, a wristwatch, badges and a number of congratulatory cards…
“All this was kept very carefully. Although it is obvious that the things were used – the briefcase, for example, has a worn handle. The reindeer skin panel is especially nice to see, which means it was valuable to Vladimir Ivanovich as a memory of Norilsk”, they say in the museum. “We also brought a notebook that served as a diary for the hero of the day in his last years. In it, he filled out his plans for the day with his own hand. Despite his rather advanced age, Vladimir Ivanovich was active, his day was busy, which is evident from the notes. This notebook allows us to understand what he thought about, how he constructed sentences, how he organized his day. In it, he even wrote down in outline what he had to tell someone, what idea he had to convey to the audience”.
The museum adds that the main advantage of the donated items is that they allow us to see a simple man in a person of such scale, who worked incredibly hard, but found time for skiing trips with his family, and was keen on chess:
“His daughter recalled that her father came home from work at midnight, and worked almost without days off. That is why they all really valued the moments when they could spend time together, as a family”.
It is interesting that there is another thing that the museum is eager to bring to Norilsk, but it is not easy to do:
“The piano which Vladimir Ivanovich’s youngest daughter learned to play is still kept at the dacha, and sometimes she played together with her father, who, it turned out, was rather good at it. This piano traveled with the Dolgih family to Krasnoyarsk from Norilsk, and then to Moscow. We hope that it will soon make a return trip to the northern city”.
Let us add that the exhibition Vladimir Ivanovich’s Long Twelve Years will open on the anniversarian’s birthday – December 5.
Earlier, we reported on the anniversarian’s life path in Norilsk.
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Text: Maria Sokolova, Photo: Nikolay Shchipko
