#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. It was not the eldest in the Norilsk press family; its predecessors were the Norilstroyevets newspaper, the Stalinets party press, the Za Metal newspaper, the Metal Front and Metal to the Motherland bulletins.
Journalism in Norilsk was very specific at that time. It was impossible to openly call enterprises by their names; they had to resort to euphemisms: “The foreman comrade Ivanov’s basic profession workers’ division from the enterprise, which is headed by comrade Petrov, completed the task…” This is how state secrets were protected in the press.
Moreover, the journalists of those years signed a non-disclosure agreement that their today’s colleagues have never dreamed of: “I swear to keep state and party secrets and to be vigilant, not to disclose the names of the authors and the content of unpublished materials, operational plans and editorial assignments. Otherwise, I will bear criminal responsibility in accordance with the current legislation”.
In its first issue, the newspaper published poems for Stalin’s birthday, talked about the conversations taking place in the city in his memory, and cultural events were not omitted: a seminar on the enterprises’ economics, movie premieres (Vassa Zheleznova, Tarapunka and Shtepsel under the Clouds) and theater (Your Personal Business play), as well as a chess radio match between Krasnoyarsk and Norilsk.
In the last issue of the History Spot photo project, we told that area between Komsomolskaya street and Solnechny passage had to be a new public center.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
