#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. A year later the polar combine caught up with the Uralians, and in 1945 it exceeded their indicators by more than two times. The Red Banner of the State Defense Committee was left forever at the Norilsk combine.
Contributors to the history of the metallurgical Norilsk were the authors of the photographs who filmed the first melts of the Big Metallurgical Plant, as Nickel one was called until 1948. The former repressed cameraman Viktor Glass was sent to the Metallurgstroy office by Zavenyagin in 1939. In 1926, Victor Glass took part in filming on the legendary icebreaker Krasin, worked at film studios and newsreel studios in Novosibirsk, Magnitogorsk, and Habarovsk. Most of the BMP photographs in the early 1940s were taken by this photographer. But the name of the author is mentioned very rarely.
The footage of pouring metal into molds and the construction of the main building of BMP was made by Victor Glass in 1945. That year, on April 19,the prisoner from the Norillag began working in the photolaboratory of the combine on a free hiring. His photographs were used to illustrate the first book about Norilsk – Northern Lights – by Yevgeny Ryabchikov. Glass, as a cameraman, also took part in the filming of the Giant of the Arctic film in 1946.
Read other materials of our photo project in the History spot section.
Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
