#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The ski touring in 1970, of course, was dedicated to the centenary of the Soviet country’s founder, Vladimir Lenin’s birth. This was the reason for the route: from Shushenskoye, the place of the leader’s exile, to Norilsk.
Nine skiers of the northernmost sports club started from the Lenin Museum on the shores of the Shusha river on February 23, so that on April 22, Lenin’s birthday, they would finish at the monument to Vladimir Lenin on Octyabrskaya square in Norilsk. The route was designed for two months, but the Norilsk people covered 2870 kilometers in 41 running days with nine days off. There was no beaten track. Athletes walked from the foothills of the Sayan mountains to the Arctic Ocean through taiga and tundra, bypassing hummocks, along river ice and snow-covered ravines.
History has preserved not only photographs of the marathon participants, but also their names. An electric fitter, a blaster, a drifter, an insulator, an electric welder, a bulldozer driver, an electric locomotive driver passed perseverance, courage, endurance exam perfectly.
On April 22, 1970, as planned, the athletes brought a handful of earth which they took from Lenin’s house in Shushenskoye, to the monument on Octyabrskaya square.
Read other materials of the photo project, in the History spot section.
Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division Archive
