#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. It has the richest history, dating back to 1935, when a primary school was opened under the trade union committee of the Norilskstroy management. The school moved at least three times: first there was a barrack at the Zero Point, in 1939 it was rebuilt and expanded into a two-story building, in 1946 a new building was built for it on Octyabrskaya street – in the so-called Social City (Sotsgorod, the old part of Norilsk – editor.), and finally in 1949 the current building was built, by the way, the first one on Komsomolskaya street. There are a lot of memories of the school graduates. Here is an excerpt from the notes of Vladimir Verevkin, a 1954 graduate and the son of one of the first directors – Haritina Verevkina.
“In September 1947, when our family arrived from Vladivostok to Norilsk, I became a 4th grade student at school No.1. I, a village boy, was surprised by the houses, living conditions and Norilsk itself. I liked the class staff, however, at first I was teased as a samurai for wearing a Japanese hat, but after the new hat everything somehow calmed down. When we started learning English, I took a nickname for myself – Rope’s – from the English word ‘rope’ which is ‘verevka’ in Russian. Therefore, Verevkin became Rope’s. This nickname accompanied me even after school. The girls called me gently – Ropsik.
Getting to school was quite difficult. First, we walked from the ravine in the camp where we lived to the train stop with open carriages. My brother Boris, my mother and sister Lena, and I climbed into the dump car and drove to the place where a convenient descent from the mountain began. For some reason the lift was temporarily not working. There was already snow, so we had to use whatever we could to get down the mountain. At the bottom we had to take the funnel, which took us to the Zero Point. From there we went by a city bus, which at that time was no more comfortable than a funnel, to Sotsgorod, where school No. 1 was then located.
We were lucky, quite quickly my mother was given a room in a three-room communal apartment in a two-story building at the very end of Sevastopolskaya street. Further from our house there was, it seems, a railway, and behind it one could see the Ievsky’s vegetable gardens and greenhouses (named after the state farm director). Still, the journey from home to school and back was quite unpleasant for us, especially in cold weather. Boris and I managed to wrap our faces in newspaper in a blizzard, punch holes in it for the eyes, and put a hat on top of the newspaper, tying the earflaps ribbons tightly. And so we walked through the snowstorm. When our school moved to a new building, where the children still study now, it became much closer for Boris and me (and my mother) to get to it. And when we moved into a new apartment on Sevastopolskaya street, 2, we could see the school from our house window.
Boris and I acclimatized quite quickly, soon dad brought us skis and sleds (in my opinion, prisoners made them for dad at the mine), and we, despite any frosts and snowstorms, were skiing for our own pleasure. On February 23, there was a costume party at school, and my dad brought from the mine a model of a Maxim machine gun – like a real one, only made of wood and with a wooden ratchet that imitated machine gun fire.
From the first year of study in Norilsk, the Pushkin ball remained in my memory. Quite successfully, in many places of the school, silhouettes cut out of paper based on Pushkin’s drawings were hung. Schoolchildren recited Pushkin’s poems and acted out skits.
From 4th to 10th grade we took exams at the end of the school year. Thus, I passed at least thirty exams at school. All students wore uniforms. Junior schoolchildren wore gray uniforms, and high school students wore black with shiny buttons. The girls wore brown dresses with black aprons. On holidays they wore white aprons. The quality and cost of the material for the uniform depended on the wealth of the parents. Low-income students were given uniforms free of charge. At that time, education in schools and universities was paid, the amounts were insignificant, rather symbolic, but in Norilsk the combine paid for everything. Even at school we were given student cards. All students of Norilsk schools had them, and they were our main document during studies at school.
At school, all students were given several cans of condensed milk every month, and my dad was also given condensed milk at work, so in Norilsk I literally ate it for the rest of my life.
The Norilsk cultural environment contributed to my intellectual development. School teachers were highly qualified teachers who had worked in large cities before Norilsk. Their husbands were repressed, served their sentences in camps and were left in permanent settlement.”
In the History Spot photo project’s previous publication, we told about Nikolay Urvantsev.
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Text: Denis Kozhevnikov, Photo: author
