#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The team consisted of only three people, so they had to work 16-18 hours a day. At the age of 17, he went skiing to Igarka, to the military enlistment office, asking to go to the front. He was not taken, although he threatened to write a complaint to Stalin.
At the age of 18, among the first students, Chalkin entered the Norilsk Mining and metallurgical technical school. In 1948, the young metallurgist came to the Plant No. 25 (the future Nickel plant’s chlorine-cobalt workshop), and the next 40 years of his life were associated with it.
Chalkin worked as a smelter, foreman and shift supervisor. In 1955, the Central Committee’s plenum decided to send 30 thousand specialists to leading work in the country’s agriculture, and Izosim Chalkin, among them, left for one of the Krasnoyarsk collective farms. Under his leadership, the Way to Communism farm paid off large debts and in two years became one of the leaders in the industry, received a bronze medal at VDNKH in Moscow.
Chalkin returned to Norilsk in 1960: he worked at the Sinter plant, then as the trade union committee’s chairman, the Nickel plant’s deputy director for general issues.
In 1977, at the Norilsk Combine’s director Boris Kolesnikov’s suggestion, he began to manage the chlorine-cobalt workshop (CCW). Under Izosim Alekseevich, the CCW secured the title of one of the Combine’s advanced workshops. So he became the first who achieved the right to bear the title of Team named after the Combine’s 50th anniversary.
When Chalkin became the CCW’s head, the first thing he did was to set up the chlorine compressors’ production at the Mechanical plant and in the shortest possible time provided his employees with protection from chlorine.
Chalkin was the many social objects’ creation’ initiator: the Blue Lakes camp site (one of the houses was called Chalkinsky), gyms at the plant’s workshops. Chalkin considered the best rest to be ‘a ride with the breeze on a boat to Lama, without stopping anywhere’. At the same time, he repeatedly emphasized that Lama should become a national park.
In the History spot photo project previous publication we told about the high-speed melting inventor.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
