#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Of course, every Norilsk author remembers his time. But everyone has a story to tell. Norilsk resident Evgeniy Karpuk (I don’t dare call him a former one) in the book The City Where Trees Don’t Grow recalls his childhood in the 1960s.
“We lived in Norilsk in a cramped room, built in a former camp (Norillag forced labor camp. – editor) barracks. But with my birth, my father was given housing, and we soon moved to a new five-story brick house at 32 Komsomolskaya street, into the most spacious room in a communal apartment. The house had central heating, but I remember well that in the kitchen we had a stone stove with a chimney piled up, which was never heated, and three housewives used it as a countertop for electric stoves.
There were many children in Norilsk! All ages, from newborns to high school students. There were six or seven first grades in each school. Norilsk courtyards were enclosed along the perimeter of the buildings (they had arches and walk-through entrances) and were divided inside into several ‘age-specific’ areas. In one corner kids played chizh (and old Russian kids’ game – editor), in another they played burnout, in the third they played football. In almost every yard there was a constant fire burning, with children also hovering around it, and it was always lit by adults. Chickens brought to Norilsk were poorly plucked, and the housewives singed them over the fire before frying them or throwing them into a pan.
The snow covered the city in early October, and with the beginning of serious drifts and blizzards, a bulldozer came to each yard, raked the snowdrifts into the center into a high mountain, and this man-made hill, covering a quarter of the space, served as a playground for small children. They went sledding from it, played hill (they captured a strategically important height and resisted the enemy attacking it), and inside they dug caves and set up headquarters for ‘warring’ factions in them.
And the conditions in Norilsk were terrible! I remember February 1977. Temperature on the board was minus43 and wind 25–30 meters per second. The streets and courtyards were empty, and the rare passers-by bowed to the ground when faced with an oncoming gust and cover their faces with a mittened hand. Or rather, the cracks left for viewing between the frost-covered fur hats, scarves and eyelashes. In such severe cold it was impossible to stay outside for more than five to seven minutes. Rare passers-by hurrying about their business sometimes jumped on the nearest bus, regardless of the route, or ran into shops to ‘thaw out’ a little and then continue on their way.
I remember once, after persistent frosts of minus fifty, new taxis with peeled hoods were running around Norilsk. The factory paint could not withstand the temperature difference between under the hood and outside and flew off at speed. The side windows of cars were covered with solid ice, and after a couple of hours of working on the route, taxi drivers returned to the taxi depot and warmed them up.
A black blizzard was also common in Norilsk – a powerful snowfall with strong winds, which claimed many human lives, including children’s ones. Those who were quickly found and rescued always told the same story in hospitals: you get tired, wading through deep snow, you decide to take a little rest and as soon as you sit down, you immediately feel yourself in your own bed or bathroom, and a pleasant warmth spreads through your body… So people quickly fell asleep, froze and often died. When I was ten or eleven years old, I experienced this myself.
At first, it’s okay, you walk through the snowdrifts easily, even excited: there they are, the nearest houses, not so far away… But soon each step is difficult, the impression is that it’s not snow at all, but some kind of sucking swamp: the leg falls into it to the knee, and it becomes more and more difficult to remove it from the snowy mess… The headwind throws stinging grains in the face, pierces through the clothes, knocks them off their feet and holds them in place. The realization of the full danger of the situation comes belatedly. Then you rush to overcome it, which aggravates the situation and quickly leaves you exhausted. Panic begins… Your legs no longer obey… You try to crawl, but your elbows fall into the snow, and you understand the futility of this technique. Despair and resentment set in: houses are visible, there are people in them, but they don’t know that you are dying very close to them, and therefore they will not come to help you… I still tried to fight, turned over, rolling closer to the housing, and it seemed to work, but soon I realized that I was floundering in the same place… Some younger guy saw me. As it turned out, there was a short distance to the houses to overcome, but I wouldn’t have done even that short gap, because I was completely exhausted, I just lay there and cried.
The boy immediately ran away, but soon returned with some man, who grabbed me and brought me to the nearest store. The small line at the counter gasped! Everyone rushed to save my legs: maybe I wasn’t completely frostbitten yet… They took me to a warm utility room, instantly undressed me and put me in a bucket of cold water. And they did it very wisely! If they had started with an ambulance, no one knows how it would have ended, but I probably would have lost my feet, at least my fingers…”
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we told that Norilsk residents’ literary sketches left traces in its history.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
