#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Four years later he went to work at the Copper plant as a shift foreman and quickly rose to the plant’s senior manager of the. In 1967 Kolesnikov became the Nickel plant’s head, then he became the Combine’s chief engineer. In 1973 Boris Kolesnikov became the Norilsk Combine’s head. He had been working in this post until 1988 for 15 years, a record for this position. After that Kolesnikov left for Moscow and became the Deputy Minister of Nonferrous Metallurgy of the USSR.
The years of Kolesnikov’s management are called the golden era. Under him the Talnah concentrating plant and the Kureyskaya hydroelectric power station were built, the plant’s transition to gas was completed, and the Oktyabrsky and Taimyrsky mines were put into operation. Under Kolesnikov Vanyukov furnaces and year-round navigation were introduced. His main brainchild is Nadezhda metallurgical plant. In 2003 after the Kolesnikov’s death the Nadezhda metallurgical plant was named after him. Today Kayerkan gymnasium No. 11 also wears his name.
But Kolesnikov was not only for production, but also for the social program:
To briefly describe the time when I was the head, I would call it a period of great construction … For a number of years five kindergartens, two schools, 200 thousand square meters of housing were commissioned annually.
During these years, the Oganer hospital and Oganer himself, the idea of which belonged to Kolesnikov, a new theater, a meat and a dairy processing plants, an air terminal in Alykel, a cinema, a ski base, skating rinks, numerous camp sites were built… The microdistricts for Norilsk residents began to appear on the ‘mainland’, and the sanatorium “White Lake” was built under Kolesnikov.
Boris Kolesnikov was very fond of a bath with herbal decoctions and a temperature of over 100 degrees. The duty car’s driver who had to take the heads to saunas recalls that he had taken Kolesnikov to the bathhouse only twice in ten years of his work. And it was the ordinary city bathhouse where he washed with everyone. And that was only because Kolesnikov fell ill: he usually went to the bathhouse on foot.
In the History Spot photo project previous publication, we told about Ivan Iyevlev who was the first to touch the pure Norilsk nickel
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
