#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. One of its earliest mentions can be found in the project of the future hospital campus, drawn up in 1952. It listed the lines limiting the future 20th block: Pionerskaya (B. Hmelnitsky street), Monchegorskaya (Kirov street), as well as two nameless streets “limiting the block from the southeast and northwest”. On the future Pavlov street they planned to build (and later built) a children’s somatic building of the hospital campus.
The first houses on Pavlov street were erected in the mid-1950s. House No. 3 was built in 1957. It is this construction that we see in the archival photograph.
Pavlov street apparently got its name in the first half of the 1950s. But no documentary evidence – the corresponding order – has been preserved about this. Therefore, there is no confirmation of who Pavlov street was named after. Considering the hospital town being built in this area, it might be the famous physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Moreover, in 1949 the centenary of his birth was celebrated. But there was also Pavlov in Norilsk: Boris Pavlov, a prisoner permafrost geologist, ally of Mikhail Kim. Perhaps he is no less worthy of having a street in our city bear his name than the famous academician of the same name, who has nothing to do with Norilsk. Be that as it may, Pavlov street was officially assigned its own name only in 2012, when they put things in order in Norilsk toponyms and approved all the names that did not have official orders.
Another interesting mystery is connected with the name of Pavlov street, which is still not fully solved. In 1959, an order on the naming of new city streets was issued. Here is its text: “In connection with the wishes of citizens and public organizations, the executive committee of the City Council decided to name the street between blocks 29, 30 and 38, coming from Sovetskaya street, Zavenyagin street. Call the street running parallel to Pavlov street from Stalin prospect (now Leninsky prospect) to Monchegorskaya street (now Kirov Street) Zapolyarnaya street.
If everything is clear with Zavenyagin street, then where Zapolyarnaya should be is unclear. What did they mean, what line runs parallel to Pavlov street? Let’s look at the map. Lomonosov street is not suitable – its name was already on the general plan in the 1940s, and the city planners never brought it to Leninsky. On the other side, Sovetskaya street runs parallel to Pavlov, but it is mentioned under its own name in the same order. But if we remember that they started building Sovetskaya from Komsomolskaya street to the prospect, we can assume that they wanted to call the second part of Sovetskaya – from Leninsky downwards – Zapolyarnaya. This area was just being built up in those years. But this is just a guess.
Coincidentally, in both photographs of this couple, construction is underway. The archival photograph was taken in 1974, when the house with the address Pavlov street, 23 was being built. It was one of the last three Hrushchev era buildings erected in Norilsk. As you can see in the photo, the building was built from aerated concrete panels, the service life of which is only 25 years. Therefore, in 2000, due to significant sedimentary deformations, as well as because the ‘shelf life’ had expired, it was demolished. For more than 20 years, its grillage was empty. The examination showed that its load-bearing capacity was also exhausted, so the base was also dismantled. A new building is currently being built there. It will be a two-entrance, six-story residential building with two- and three-room apartments, elevators, common areas, as well as technical premises on the ground floor. The design of the new building includes a Smart Home system.
And if you dig even deeper into history, in the 1940s and 1950s, in this place – at the intersection of current Pavlov and Laureatov streets – there was a brick factory No. 2. Around it there were auxiliary workshops and workshops of the construction industry. And they were served by workers from two forced labor camps and even a children’s labor colony – the latter, fortunately, was not in Norilsk for long. The Gorlag camp barracks stood exactly on the site of the current residential courtyards of Pavlov, Laureats and Talnahskaya.
In this photo, the construction of two buildings of house No. 12 on Pavlov street, which were built on the site of two-story houses, is nearing completion. Comfortable nine-story brick buildings were put into operation by the end of 1986. And on their first floors there is a post office, a savings bank and the Mosaic cafe.
In old photographs you can also see two now demolished Stalin era buildings: Pavlov, 8, and B. Hmelnitsky, 14. No matter how much Norilsk residents hoped for their restoration, the houses were demolished in 2022.
In the History Spot’s previous column, we talked about how Lomonosov street changed.
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