#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The nineteen-year-old deputy company commander, who went to the front in 1941, was wounded in a counteroffensive near Moscow. The second wound did not allow Vladimir Dolgih to return to the front, and he took to textbooks to finish school, and then the Irkutsk Mining and Metallurgical Institute.
In February 1958, 15 years after the battle, which put an end to the biography of a front-line volunteer, Dolgih was appointed chief engineer of the Zavenyagin Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Combine. When he turned 37, he became the seventh director of the future giant of the domestic metallurgy. Vladimir Dolgih received his first Hero of Labor star in Norilsk and for Norilsk, or rather, for his work on the development of the Talnah deposit, the development of the city and the combine. This award was captured by the camera of the famous Norilsk and Krasnoyarsk photographer Vladimir Chin-Mo-Tsai.
After Norilsk, Vladimir Dolgih was in the ranks almost until the very end – he died on October 8 last year. That half a century included the management of the Krasnoyarsk region as the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU and the entire heavy industry of the country as the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU and a candidate for the Politburo.
After retirement, the honorary citizen of Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk region, Moscow, his native Ilansk, twice Hero of Socialist Labor headed the Krasnoyarsk community in Moscow and the capital’s Council of Veterans. In 2006, 82-year-old Vladimir Dolgih was awarded the Moscow Mayor’s prize with the telling name Legend of the Century.
Read other materials of the photo project in the History spot section.
Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
