#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. But it did not stop at the stage of ‘red tents’ where brave polar explorers spend the winter. The goal was to provide Norilsk residents with the same level of everyday comfort as in any city on the mainland. The most obvious step in this direction was the city swimming pool.
The construction of the Norilsk swimming pool was finished by the October holidays of 1959. On 6 November it was accepted by the state commission, and a day later the grand opening took place, which became a big city-wide event. Tickets for the holiday were distributed among the enterprises. Only 400 people could fit on the stands, but many more people gathered.
“On the 8th of November, from early in the morning, a string of Polar explorers came here. They couldn’t wait to see the beautiful pool”, wrote the city newspaper. “Everything was unusual here. The air was warm as in the subtropics, the water was greenish-transparent and as warm as in the sea, small waves were beating against the tiled shores. The bright light of spotlights from high balconies flooded the ten-metre tower and the bath of the swimming pool, holding a million litres of water”, recalled Iskander Faizullin, its first director.
This event was so important in the life of Norilsk that journalist Anatoly Lvov in his book The Sporting Climate of Norilsk gave a detailed account of what it was like.
“I don’t remember already how that day entered the weather reports, it seems that it was sunny, that rays were beating through the glass… The pool was full. The tiles of the seemingly huge bathtub glistened in the spotlight. The blue water was calling to itself, illuminated, glistening, warm….
Dmitry Muravyev, the head of Gorstroy (Norilsk construction enterprise) and a sportsman, is dressed, I notice, not according to the situation. Everyone around him is dressed up, solemn, wearing ties, as at a theatre premiere, and he, somewhat dapper even in his own office, – suddenly in beach trousers, without a jacket, in a white shirt, but with the collar unbuttoned, in sneakers… Will he judge the first swims? He is a judge of the all-Union category, it is known, but not in swimming? How can there be a swimming judge in Norilsk? Muravyev has been a Norilsk resident since before the war, straight from the institute he came here to the Arctic Circle. I saw him jumping on skis in an old photo, and now he is still a skier. It is known for sure that he was Norilsk’s gymnastics champion. Suddenly several guys lift Muravyov in their arms, carry him to the board, he does not resist. It’s clear! Someone whispered to him in advance: we will not do without the swim, you can, of course, come in a tuxedo, but we will throw you into the water for sure – as the head of the construction site and as an athlete who will not drown… A sound splash, a fountain of splashes, sympathetic laughter of the tribune. Seconds pass, the ‘victim’ swims out and, barely feeling the solid ground under his feet, thanks for the right of the first swim”.
“…And today I have a double celebration – finally the youth of Norilsk got a swimming pool. I rejoice not only as a builder who erected this building with his own hands, but also as a sportsman. Back in my school days, I started was fond of athletics and swimming. I did not give up sports when I worked at the cloth factory in Tbilisi. More than once I had to perform there for the honour of my team. In Norilsk I had to say goodbye to swimming. Of course, on warm summer days I never missed an opportunity to swim. But we can talk about swimming as a sport only now when we have a swimming pool. Thus, I can return to my favourite sport again. My workmates dream of the same. Our swimming pool is a marvellous facility. A large water field, two towers, six lanes, beautiful finishing inside. And for me, it looks better than others, probably, because I participated in its construction’, said E. Davitaya, Gorstroy plasterer.
The water mirror area of the Norilsk swimming pool is 25×15 metres. The towers were installed: first ten metres high, then three and five metre high ones were added, plus springboards. However, the towers had to be dismantled in 1976 due to corrosion of the structures. For regular preventive irradiation, the pool also had a photarium – the forerunner of today’s solariums. Norilsk doctors have long known that light starvation causes vitamin D deficiency and disrupts phosphorus-calcium metabolism. And the necessary level of solar radiation in the Far North is excluded from September to May, either because of the polar night or because of the cold climate – after all, outer clothing is also an obstacle to tanning.
The Norilsk swimming pool remained the only one in Big Norilsk for a very long time – a quarter of a century. In the 1980s, it worked 18 hours a day with a break for one or two summer months. The townspeople who wanted to buy a season ticket for the next month would wait for the beginning of sales, stand outside the pool in queues, burning fires to get warm. One swimming pool was never enough for a city like Norilsk. Since the 1960s, small pools appeared in kindergartens. In December 1982, the building of the Volna swimming pool with two baths was commissioned in the Talnah district. In 1987, the third swimming pool in the Norilsk industrial district was built in Kayerkan.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we wrote about snowfighting in Norilsk.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Olga Zaderyaka, Norilsk residents and Nornickel’s Polar Division’s archives
