#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. It was a sports, cultural, and administrative center. In the 1940s, meeting were held there, solemn rallies took place at the first Norilsk stadium on this street, and the Victory in the World War II on May 9, 1945, was also celebrated there. Octyabrskaya street acquired its name in 1938, along with its neighbors – Gornaya, Zavodskaya, Ozernaya, Pyasinskaya and Melnichenko streets.
In the 1950s, Octyabrskaya street was also the longest one in Norilsk. Starting from Zavenyagin square, it ran along the Dynamo stadium, through the Sotsgorod (the city’s old part), turning into Octyabrskoye highway, passed through the Dolgoye lake dam and flowed into the ceremonial Octyabrskaya square. The Norilsk combine’s first administration office, the post office, the printing house, and the hospital for free people were located on this street. The first hotels, first sports facilities, and shops were here.
The main building and the center of attraction on Octyabrskaya street was the DITR – the legendary House of Engineering and Technical Workers. It was the cultural center of Norilsk. Not converted from a camp canteen or a residential barrack, but a specially designed and built Palace of Culture with the first real stage and cinema. And at that time, DITR was an urban planning miracle, against the background of the barracks it looked like a palace, and, of course, all residents of the Norilsk settlement wanted to get there. This was the first example of high classical architecture in Norilsk, abundantly decorated with, as they later said, ‘architectural excesses’ – capitals and pilasters, false columns and false balconies. The stucco required skilled execution, so a sculpture workshop was specially organized during the DITR construction, where workers were taught by Vitold Nepokoichitsky himself – the architect who designed this building.
In 1944, the first real hotel was built on Octyabrskaya ctreet. But the comfort, service and housing shortage in the village led to the fact that it was gradually transformed into permanent housing – a hostel for engineering and technical workers. The guests stayed in Norilsk for a long time, and they had nowhere to move, and sometimes they simply did not want to, even when they were given the required, but poorly equipped rooms. For example, Nikolay and Elizaveta Urvantsev lived on the third floor of this building for quite a long time.
In 1947, another hotel was built opposite the first one in a twin building. Both three-story corner buildings were rare examples of classical architecture at the time, and they say that the imprisoned architect Gevorg Kochar worked on them.
This was also classical architecture, and it combined many stylistic phenomena characteristic of Soviet construction during the Stalin period. Both hotels had the same name – Polar. On the first floor of the first hotel there was later the famous Zavodskoy grocery store, and in the second – a canteen. Those buildings, even having changed their purpose, have not lost their strict chic over many years. For this we should thank their current ‘guests’ – the chief mechanic’s office and the chief power engineer’s office.
The small two-story building on the left in this photo is the former Norilsk post office. Not long ago, this building burned out from the inside, and now its appearance and, probably, its future fate, are unenviable. Meanwhile, this modest but elegant example of architecture was once included in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia as an example of the architect Gevorg Kochar’s work.
The sculpture of a girl standing near Octyabrskaya street is one of the first examples of Norilsk sculpture. But the girl we see today is yet another of her ‘reincarnations’. This is a mysterious and multifaceted sculpture. Even her popular names are like nicknames for a favorite child in a large family: geologist, teacher, sniper, Komsomol member, Norilsk woman – all these are nicknames of the statue’s real prototype. There was a version that the sculpture was nothing more than a test of the of gypsum-cement mixtures strength. Some eyewitnesses recalled that the girl once had a rifle over her shoulder, others saw a book in her hands. Even the year of her appearance varies – either 1939 or 1941.
It is known for certain that the statue was sculpted by the imprisoned sculptor Moisei Zaitsev. He called his two-meter sculpture a sniper girl who defended the Motherland – and therefore 1941 is more likely. The ‘Norilsk girl’ has fallen from its pedestal more than once. At least twice – in 1967 and 1985 it underwent a complete reconstruction. As a result, its pedestal changed, and something similar to a paper scroll appeared in its hand. But neither the book nor the rifle are visible in historical photographs. Norilsk residents fell in love with the girl, the famous poet Vsevolod Vilchek even wrote a poem about her: “There stands a girl – the youth of Norilsk – the keeper of its fortitude”. In 1989, the Norilsk girl disappeared, it would seem, forever: the bosses from the central autonomous area committee said that she would not survive another restoration. But she never left the city’s memory. That’s why her third ‘reincarnation’ in 2010 could not but please. This time, cast in durable bronze rather than fragile plaster, the statue was a gift to the city residents from the Nornickel’s Polar Division for the combine’s 75th anniversary. The ‘father’ of the new Norilsk statue is the Krasnoyarsk sculptor Konstantin Zinich.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we talked about Zavenyagin square.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Olga Zaderyaka, Norilsk residents and Nornickel’s Polar Division’s archives
