#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. On February 23, 1939, the plant produced the first commercial fire nickel. Severonickel became the only combine in the country that mastered the large-scale production of pure metal. The defense industry ceased to depend on foreign supplies.
In June 1941, the Germans launched Blue Fox military campaign to capture the Kola peninsula. On June 26, Severonickel received an order to dismantle the equipment in 48 o’clock. The main evacuation points were Dzhezkazgan, Orsk, Norilsk. On June 28, the plant stopped.
Most of the evacuated cargo went to Norilsk by rail – to Arhangelsk, and from there along the Northern Sea Route to Dudinka.
Almost 9.3 thousand tons of equipment from Severonickel came to Norilsk: the filling of the smelting, refining and experimental cobalt shops: three water jackets, five converters, seven melting furnaces, metal structures and a laboratory complex.
Specialists and families also went. The evacuation lasted less than two months. Monchegorsk residents, having arrived in the North, headed construction sites, workshops and factories.
In Norilsk, the evacuees were settled wherever they could: in barracks, in attics, in tents – wherever a stove could be put up. Housing famine was terrible, so they tried to send specialists to the North who had no more than two children.
But the main criterion for selecting specialists was different: out of the six thousand evacuated migrant workers, only 13 percent came to Norilsk, but more than 30 percent of the engineers.
Among the Monchegorians who became Norilskians, there were very big names. Here are just a few: metallurgists Vladimir Daryalsky, Ivan Ievlev and Vladimir Terpogosov, builder Leonid Anisimov, engineer Alexander Vershinin, enrichment chemist Antonina Volkova, Norilsk chief supplier Vladimir Vsesvyatsky, geologist Vladimir Kotulsky, Norilsk chronicler Vladimir Lebedinsky, plant director Alexey Loginov.
Many of the Monchegorsk residents, having arrived in the North, headed construction sites, workshops and factories. Thanks to their efforts, the combine was developed in the most difficult years. Perhaps, if not for the Monchegorsk people, everything would have turned out differently for Norilsk.
The Norilsk people have not forgotten about the merits of the Monchegorsk people. In 1947, one of the streets of the city was named Monchegorskaya. However, it only lasted 13 years. Now it is Kirov street. In 2018, a memorial plaque to specialists from Monchegorsk was installed on the facade of the house on Kirova, 1.
In the last issue of the History Spot photo project we talked about the small village of Listvyanka, which was located at mount Sokol.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
