#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. In 1942, all the four brothers were arrested, as well as five more of their colleagues in the Spartak sports society. They said that this was Beria’s way of getting back at the team for its victories over Dynamo, the NKVD team. The football players were recognized as “participants of an anti-Soviet group” and became prisoners in various camps. Andrey Starostin ended up in Norilsk. He coached the Norilsk football and hockey team from 1944 to 1954. He published his memories in the book Meetings in the Football Orbit.
“…In an ardent desire to justify the order signed by the Norilsk combine head, General Panyukov, on the organization of a local council of the Dynamo society in Norilsk and the appointment of me as head of the defense and sports department, I rolled up the sleeves of my padded jacket, the usual outfit of many Norilsk residents in good weather, and began to perform my duties.
Pavel Tikston worked in tandem with me, in step and in the same working rhythm. An old friend from the days of the birth of football on Krasnaya Presnya and my teammate in the same team. The first thing was to make a skating rink. We had little practical knowledge, but enough perseverance for a whole brigade. There was no brigade, everyone was busy at production: the front did not wait, it needed not a skating rink, but metal. So Tikston and I stood together on the football field with fire hoses and spewed out an immeasurable amount of water from the fire hoses. We needed to melt half a meter of snow that had fallen and create an ice mirror over the entire space of the football field. The task was complicated by the fact that the difference in the ground slope from gate to gate was one and a half meters. When the captains chose a side at the beginning of the game, they said to the referee: “we are going uphill” or “downhill.” The water, warm compared to the snow, drilled holes in it and uncontrollably rushed down until it froze in the cold in a bizarre form. The matter seemed hopeless. But I have already said about our perseverance – it was enough to win. We managed to melt the snow, level the area and create an ice surface quite suitable for skating. To do that, it took Pavel and me three days of continuous watering, with a short respite in shifts when one of us went to the barracks to thaw out and rest a little.
Pavel stayed to set up the lighting, and I went into the tundra. Only a few hours remained until the scheduled opening of the winter sports festival. I didn’t listen to reasonable advice to wear a pea coat over my padded jacket, and didn’t even lower the earflaps on my hat. Cleverly twisting my fur hat on one side, I jumped into the sledge. My partner, Volodya, a young guy, also from Muscovites, who came to Norilsk as a Komsomol recruiter, slapped the reins on the horse’s croup, and we set off for Valyok. Norilsk residents know this area, located on the near bank of the Norilka river, where coniferous and deciduous forest grows. We finished cutting down the stunted pocket-sized fir-trees, loaded up the full sled, and headed out onto the open road leading through the tundra to the house.
Suddenly the wind blew, growing in strength every second. Less than two minutes had passed when I, pausing to untie the ribbons of my earflaps, shouted in fear: “Volodya!” The fright was caused by a frantic gust of scorching wind, driving snow haze at a speed of thirty meters per second, limiting visibility almost to zero. “Volodya!!!”, I screamed heart-rendingly again. With fear creeping into my soul, I thought that a catastrophic situation was coming up. The cold had already penetrated through the padded jacket. I covered my scorched face and cold hands while fiddling with my hat, turning my back in the direction of the raging blizzard. “Volodya!!!”, I shouted desperately for the third time, realizing that trying to find him was hopeless and that standing still inactively meant dying.
I turned 180 degrees and walked towards the blizzard. Bent over, I led the attack, realizing that this was the only chance of salvation. Air currents driving the snow curtain rushed from the opposite side of the city to Valyok, from mount Schmidtiha, and this was my invisible compass. How important it was to stay the course! I no longer felt my limbs, my knees were numb, and my strength had noticeably decreased. The blizzard took my breath away, and I stopped more and more often, turning my back to the wind.
I clearly understood that I was standing on the brink of death; there, in the tundra, the elements were settling scores with the careless, with those who did not respect its power. And I was no less clearly aware: only movement, only forward, only frontal attack! And when, almost exhausted from the wind and cold, I thought with despair: “Am I moving in the right direction?”, suddenly a saving light flashed ahead, immediately doubling my strength.
Pavel was frightened by the appearance of the half-dead Volodya without me, whom the horse carried by instinct to the stadium. He calmed down only after I fell into the mobile hut, numb from the cold, and, with his characteristic English humor, in order to relieve the dramatic tension, asked me an ironic question: “Sir, why didn’t you go to the tundra in patent leather shoes?”, and began to scrub my frostbitten hands and feet vigorously with alcohol.
I had no time for humor: under the influence of Tikston’s therapeutic measures, my limbs were scorching like fire. My face was painted with red stripes, like an Indian tribe leader’s face. The consolation was the fulfilled duty – the trees were delivered to their destination.
Soon the opening celebration of the skating rink took place. It was a fabulous evening. The ice mirror reflected the bright electric lighting. The Christmas trees, placed along the perimeter of the high snow bank that bordered the stadium, were decorated with garlands of multi-colored flags and pennants. That evening, the polar region rewarded us with wonderful weather and illumination from the sky – the northern lights shone brightly on it.
The whole of Norilsk came to the stadium. The combine’s management appeared in full force. A remarkable feature that had become a tradition: the entire senior command staff was actively involved in sports… After all, in Norilsk you always want to sleep – the polar climate increases drowsiness, especially in winter. Under these conditions, the construction of a skating rink was a very important task. When a brass band burst out from the snow-covered stands and the baritones sounded velvety, the crowd filling the skating rink became animated, as always happens when music comes into play, and the carousel of skaters moved faster along the ice…”
In the History Spot photo project’s previous publication, we told you that in 1944, the American newspaper New York Herald Tribune published an article about Norilsk.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
