#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The Central Committee of the CPSU decided: “…Starting in 1958, in residential buildings being built both in cities and in rural areas, provide for economical, well-appointed apartments for single-family occupancy. Construction is to be carried out according to standard designs”. This decision abolished the author’s approach to architecture and launched the era of Hrushchev-type buildings.
A technical revolution began in the Norilsk construction industry in the late 1950s. At that time, they moved from pits to pile foundations, from author’s designs to standard ones, from manual labor to industrial methods. In 1959, the first Hrushchev-era buildings were built in the courtyards between Leninsky prospect and Zavenyagin street. These were standard five-story brick buildings of the all-Union series 447. It cannot be said that the new buildings were more beautiful, but they were definitely built faster and easier.
They played an important role: to alleviate the acute housing shortage in Norilsk, which was achieved due to the high speed of construction. Compared to the designer Stalin-era buildings, which took a year or more to build, one Hrushchev-era building made of brick blocks took only five to six months. And from 1961, when a series of houses made of concrete panels were introduced, it took even four months. This photograph shows a memorial panel with a snowflake on the end of building No. 3 on Leningradskaya street, which marked the beginning of large-panel construction in Norilsk.
Thanks to the Hrushchev-era buildings, it was possible to quickly begin to relocate Norilsk residents from communal apartments and barracks to small, but separate apartments. In 1958, the city newspaper described the advantages of such housing as follows: “And what our apartments will be like! In two or three years, most Norilsk residents will forget that three or four families once shared one corridor and one kitchen. Each family will get their own well-appointed apartment. You won’t have to drag a jar of sour cabbage out the window – it will be stored in a spacious built-in refrigerator. The kitchens will have everything a housewife could dream of: built-in furniture, cabinets, shelves, sinks…”
However, in reality, the Hrushchev-era buildings’ first new residents’ joy from separate housing was often overshadowed by the first problems associated with the implementation of the standard all-Union project in the Far North. At first, the Norilsk authorities tried to settle people in Hrushchev-era buildings not by family, but by room. That is, they created communal apartments again, but with worse conditions: in small walk-through rooms and with combined bathrooms. This was only escaped by referring to the relevant government decree.
In addition, the kitchens of the very first Hrushchev-era buildings still had wood-burning stoves. But the ventilation was not adapted to them, and the upper floors residents found themselves in smoke. Another problem was the locally produced furniture, not intended for small apartments. Non-detachable tables and wardrobes did not fit through the doors, and they were brought in through the windows, and in the rooms they ate up precious square footage. In the first Hrushchev-era buildings, the bathrooms were not heated, and it was very cold in the bathrooms on the lower floors. In order to take a shower, residents had to drain the hot water first.
Nevertheless, Hrushchev-era buildings in Norilsk were built during 15 years. And the growth rate of Norilsk, thanks to them, was increasing: residential buildings were erected from piles to finishing not in months, but in days. For example, the construction of the residential Hrushchev-era building on Begichev street, 22, took only 21 days in November 1968, although that doesn’t include the time spent on driving piles.
The last examples of these series in our city were erected in 1974: these are buildings No. 22 and 23 on Pavlov street, building No. 5 on Anisimov street. After that, only nine- and twelve-story buildings of comfortable series were erected in the city.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we told about what it was like to be a driver in Norilsk.
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