#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Housing construction was a priority in the Soviet Union time, and almost no money was allocated for social and cultural life. Therefore, halls with high ceilings, a spacious foyer with stucco, a main staircase with columns, a reading room and an auditorium were built into an ordinary-looking residential Stalin type house.
However, the House of Technical Propaganda was not immediately opened in its premises. First, a polyclinic took its place: there was not enough free space, and health was more important. As a result, the House of Technology opened its doors only six years later, in 1960, and became a popular attraction.
There the Norilsk people and visiting tourists were given a detailed and, most importantly, visual representation of mining, enrichment, metallurgy, energy and construction on permafrost.
In the House of Technology there was a hall of builders, a hall of geology, a hall of history, on the basis of which the city museum was revived after the closure. They demonstrated models of Norilsk inventions.
Lectures and seminars, scientific and technical conferences were also held here, the University of Technical Progress and Economics worked. Popular science films were shown free of charge. It was the center of technical thought of the city, which was visited by 50 thousand people annually.
Today, this building houses the House of Creativity for Children and Youth, but traces of its predecessor remain. For example, four plaster recreated bas-reliefs hang on the walls of the conference hall. They show four profiles.
If Avraamiy Zavenyagin is well known to the Norilsk people, then the other three names – Skochinsky, Baikov and Mostovich – say little to contemporaries. And they are the USSR academicians, metallurgy and mining luminaries in the 1940s-1950s. And their profiles, of course, looked very logical on the walls of the Technical Propaganda House.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we said that self-service stores in Norilsk were the forerunners of supermarkets.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
