#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The first deputy people’s commissar of heavy industry was approved as the Norilsk nickel combine construction head in 1938, and already in 1941 Zavenyagin left Norilsk, becoming deputy people’s commissar of internal affairs of the USSR. Nevertheless, those three years have remained in Norilsk history as the main years of the NMMC and the city formation.
1957 was the beginning of the people’s construction movement, a popular mass hobby.
The idea of such construction projects came from the mainland, from the city of Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod), and was simple: local authorities allocated a site for the construction of an apartment building, enterprises sent experienced engineers, foremen, craftsmen to the construction site and built residential buildings on their own.
Work at the people’s construction site was not paid, but the most active participants were given apartments in the built house. To do this, it was required to work at a construction site for at least 300 hours – after the main work, of course.
In addition, it turned out that the quality of public construction was higher than that of professional builders. No wonder – they built apartments for themselves. By the way, in the same year, one of the most famous people’s construction projects started in Norilsk, though they were building not a residential, but a sports facility – a city swimming pool.
In the same 1957, the Research Institute of the Far North Agriculture moved to Norilsk from Leningrad in full force. They did that to bring theory closer to practice: since scientists studied the reindeer herding problems, they had to live closer to the objects under study.
In the History Spot photo project previous publication, we told that the first Norilsk recipes were borrowed from the Taimyr indigenous peoples’ cuisine.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
