#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The Norilsk preschool teachers also celebrate the 85th anniversary of the city’s entire preschool education this year: the earliest archival document in the Norilsk kindergarten history is dated by 1937.
The first kindergarten was on the town’s Zero Point, but they multiplied quickly: already in 1945 there were three of them. And since Norilsk consisted of many villages built at enterprises, the kindergartens opened in the most remote places: for example, in Medvezhka, Zaozerny, Vostochny, in a distant settlement Chasovnya on the Rybnaya river.
Sanatorium kindergartens for sick and weakened children worked at the Koupets river and near the Zoob mountain.
In Gorstroy (as the current city part was called), kindergarten and nursery were located on the first floors of almost every second residential building. This was a forced step: the funds were allocated mainly on housing, and the architects “dragged” cultural and household services at the expense of housing construction.
True, over time it turned out that in such built-in kindergartens there was high sickness incidence: there was nowhere to walk, no bedrooms, the rooms were small with no way to ventilate them. The authorities with gritted teeth agreed to construct separate buildings, but, again, suggested choosing from middle lane typical projects which were not adjusted for the Arctic. The built-in kindergartens have survived now: on the Komsomolskaya street, 18, a nursery under residential apartments still exists.
However, the current educators’ work differs significantly from the work of their colleagues 80 years ago. Children at that often stayed in the kindergarten for five days, and even for the full week: work and frosts did not allow parents to regularly take their children home. The educators themselves sewed clothes for children, made toys, invented New Year’s gifts – in a word, they were masters of all skills.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we told that Mikhail Gorbachev visited Norilsk in 1988.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
