#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. At that time, not only the road to Talnah, but even the first floating bridge across Norilka did not yet exist. As there was no suitable concert venue in the village of Geologists, they performed right on the street, since it was August.
But the head of the Zapadno-Haraelah geological exploration party, Alexey Prohorov, did his best to get Zykina’s four-member concert group to perform in front of geologists and builders. Here is how the geologist Vladlik Kurgin recalled that:
“Aleksey Vladimirovich brought the artists to Valyok (water port), where I was waiting for them on a boat. First, about an hour, down the Norilka river to the Pyasina river, we had a transshipment base there. Then on the all-terrain vehicle GAZ-47 another hour through the tundra to the village of Geologists. All the guests, of course, were seasick. More than two hundred people gathered at the impromptu stage. The performance was a great success. Everyone was grateful to the concert team for their little feat”.
This story had a sequel. The Talnah ex-mayor Yury Luks spoke about it:
“Lyudmila Zykina came to Talnah with a concert in the late 1980s. I was also at that show. And the next day, the combine’s director called me and said that the singer asked him to find one miner. It turned out that after Zykina performed in a tent settlement in the 1960s, one Talnah resident followed her around the Soviet Union for ten years in a row. He always sat in the front row and each time after the concert presented her with a huge bouquet of scarlet roses. But so many years passed since then, and Zykina did not remember the name of that miner. So I didn’t find it. It’s a pity of course”.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we told that for geologists Norilsk was the place of start, finish, and often the only stronghold of civilization.
Follow us on Telegram, VKontakte.
Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
