#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Two factors justified such “independence”: the remoteness from Norilsk and the sufficient number of inhabitants. But the latter – nearly five thousand people – was reached taking into account not only the population of Kayerkan itself, but also residents of nearby villages and railway stations.
Thus, in the late 1950s, Kayerkan, like Norilsk, consisted of settlements scattered around the district and at enterprises, construction sites and transport hubs. In Norilsk in those years there were over 30 villages. There were six more points in addition to Kayerkan: the village of Kalargon, the railway stations of Vologochan, Ambarnya, Alykel and Daldykan, as well as the exploration party in the area of the Kayerkan village. This is how they were described in the documents of those years:
Residents of houses and “individual buildings” (home-made huts) along the railway, on the nameless travels, also fell under the Kayerkan jurisdiction. What did this population do? It served passing trains, monitored the railway switches and semaphors serviceability, cleaned the paths, worked in a depot on the repair of rolling stock. They had to get to the store, to school, to the hospital – on foot or on a passing train – to Kayerkan, or even to Norilsk or Dudinka.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we told that the Norilsk combine active construction went on during the war years.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
