#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Now the question of why the Great October Revolution anniversary was celebrated on November 7 may confuse young people, but everything is simple: the dates shifted when the calendar switched to a new style.
Popular parades in the country took place on November 7, and Norilsk was no exception. But in the North, November is a winter month. Often people marched through the city in a terrible blizzard, when the wind tore the banners from their hands, or in a forty-degree frost – when the procession slipped through Leninsky prospekt in half an hour. But attendance at the parade was compulsory and did not depend on the weather.
Until the 1950s, festive parades took place along the streets of the Old town: Gornaya, Zavodskaya, Octyabrskaya, and the Trud stadium was the place of the solemn meetings.
Later, it was Octyabrskaya Square. And in the 1960s, the parades moved to Leninsky prospect with its Gvardeyskaya square.
The organization of festive processions was a citywide affair. The entire population of Norilsk was divided into 15 or more columns according to the work or study organization. The information about the meeting place, the order and sequence of the procession was published in advance in the city newspaper.
At the finish line, the procession was greeted by the combine and the city’s first persons from the central rostrum. A tribune was erected on Octyabrskaya square at the monument to Lenin, and on Gvardeyskaya square, on the porch of the hotel, where the combine’s management office is now.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
