All the high-ranking guests of Norilsk were taken on a conducted tour of the Scientific and Technical Library (STL). Alexey Kosygin, Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, was interested in the use of the foreign magazines purchased by the plant for foreign currency. The historical building at 1 Leninsky was also visited by the minister of non-ferrous metallurgy of the USSR Peter Lomako (more than once), pilots-cosmonauts Georgy Grechko and Valentin Lebedev, poets and writers Konstantin Simonov, Robert Rozhdestvensky, David Kugultinov, Mikhail Dudin and many others.
The leaders of the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Combine highly appreciated the role of the first city library in solving production problems, raising qualifications, obtaining vocational education, expanding the horizons of NMMC employees.
In 1963, director of NMMC Vladimir Dolgih and the discoverer of Norilsk Nikolay Urvantsev took part in the jubilee celebrations on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of STL. According to the memoirs of the library director from 1958 to 1993 Tamara Zakharova, the entertainment part was held in the Gornyak restaurant: “Nikolay Urvantsev and his friend Nikolay Zenger sang old Russian songs and danced with us”.
In 2018, the library moved to the Old Town. And the building on Leninsky, 1, will soon be renovated.
For other materials of the photo project, see the tag History spot.
Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Nornickel Polar branch archive
