#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Until the early 1960s, the kitchens of residential buildings in Norilsk under construction – in the Stalin era houses and even in some of the first Hrushchev era buildings – were first equipped with bulky wood-burning stoves with chimneys. They were heated with wood and coal.
It was inconvenient, because the fuel needed to be stored somewhere, and the cooking process was complicated. That is why the Norilsk residents bought small portable electric stoves instead of stoves.
The massive construction of housing required new approaches to everyday life and improvement. In 1962, the city executive committee issued a decree on the replacement of kitchen hearths with electric stoves in newly built houses in Norilsk.
From that moment, every new house was equipped with domestic Lysva electric stoves free of charge. And in the kitchens they stopped planning niches for hearths, especially since there was no place for them in the Hrushchev stile appartments.
In those years, the life of the Norilsk people began to improve significantly. For example, Norilsk houses were equipped with television antennas for collective use. If there were more than 80 apartments in a building under construction, a playground was supposed to be in the yard. And at each entrance, mailboxes were installed. Norilsk had to wait a few more years for the construction of houses with elevators, and garbage chutes, but the comfort of housing for new settlers in the early 1960s significantly increased.
In the last issue of the History spot photo project we told that the Polar State University began with a technical school.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
