#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. In 1957, after graduation, Gorodnitsky joined the Yenisey geological exploration expedition, where he led surveys on the right bank of the Yenisey, in the area of Igarka and Norilsk. At that time, Gorodnitsky worked with many well-known geologists in Norilsk, including the Norilsk ore discoverer Nikolay Urvantsev. The first songs of Gorodnitsky the bard were written precisely on those expeditions, as he himself spoke about in his memoirs – Atlants. My Life Around the World.
“Having received a diploma, I got a job at the Research Institute of Arctic Geology, located on my native Moika street. I was hired there as a geophysical engineer for the associated search for uranium, which in those years, according to the strict order of the Minister of Geology, was carried out on all expeditions during any geological survey. NIIGA, as the institute was called for short, was at that time a rather unique organization, relatively recently transferred to the Ministry of Geology from the Northern Sea Route system… The scientific council in the late 1950s consisted mainly of old polar explorers, which included such famous geologists as Nikolay Urvantsev, who discovered the Norilsk copper-nickel deposit in 1921 and then was prisoned in the camp from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, doctors of science Atlasov, Saks, Markov – and not only them.
At first, I ended up on the Yenisey expedition, where my duties included leading the searches for uranium during geological surveys on the right bank of the lower reaches of the Yenisey, in the area of Igarka and Norilsk. So in the summer of 1957 I first found myself in the Far North, with which I was associated for more than seventeen years. I still remember the feeling of incomparable pride when I brought home the “polar uniform” given to me at the institute’s warehouse, which consisted of an old stag jacket, two pairs of boots – tarpaulin and rubber, a raincoat and a sleeping bag. A real cavalry carbine with two clips of cartridges was also a source of special pride. The fact is that, according to the instructions that existed at that time, secret materials – and those included all the maps that geologists worked with when surveying in the Yenisey taiga – were supposed to be given out to the First Department of the Institute only along with weapons “for their protection”.
Tired of the earthly route,
In the darkness of the evening minutes,
I remember you again
My Arctic Institute.
Still not willing to give up,
I remember, although with difficulty,
That old one on the Moika, one hundred and twenty,
A house painted ocher.
We were perky guys
And everyone was loved by fate.
The mosquito net made it impossible to breathe,
The carabin was rubbing my shoulder.
A cheerful crowd of ragamuffins
We walked along the rivers.
Professor Urvantsev was with us,
A gray-haired and honored prisoner.
And if we drowned and if
We found another shelter,
A shrill chorus of mosquitoes
Sang funeral songs to us.
I didn’t perish in the water and didn’t drink to death,
Catching that experience on the fly,
But the taste of diluted alcohol
Remains in my mouth to this day.
And the riffles roar again,
Where the boat is tossed by the current,
I’m making my way somewhere again
Clutching a hammer in my hand,
Without worrying about the future,
In that long ago happy year,
When the compass convinced me,
That I’m walking the right path.
…According to my position, I had to go around all the field parties of the expedition working in the taiga and tundra (and there were eight or ten of them), and check the condition of the equipment for searching for uranium, as well as the results of the searches themselves. It was 1957. I remember one fine morning, while in one of the parties on the Kulyumba river, I suddenly discovered that all our dosimeters were out of order – they went off scale when turned on, showing the highest radioactivity. I, of course, decided that all the instruments had broken down, and immediately reported this to the expedition base in Igarka. However, the same messages arrived there from all parties without exception. A day later it turned out that it was not a matter of the instruments at all – ours just exploded an atomic bomb nearby, on Novaya Zemlya – at that time it was simple. For more than a week, especially after the rain, we could not work due to the huge radioactive background…
…In the early 1960s, I had the opportunity to lead a large geophysical team that worked on the Suhariha river, not far from Igarka, where copper ores with rare metal mineralization were discovered, and it was necessary to trace the ore bodies using electrical prospecting for subsequent exploratory drilling… Having no experience, I with the naivety of a schoolboy believed in the power of geophysics, which, as it turned out later, was completely in vain. Fools, however, are lucky. In 1995, Yuliy Kim and I were members of the jury at the art song festival in Norilsk, where I had not been for more than thirty years. As an honored guest, I was invited to the Norilsk complex geological expedition, where I was solemnly presented with a sample of cuprous sandstone and shown my long-standing report on the work of Suharihinskaya geophysics in 1962, carefully preserved in the collections.
It turned out that one of the wells I had set up many years ago had apparently “foolishly” discovered an ore body. So, unexpectedly for myself, I became one of the discoverers of the Igarsky copper ore field”.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we talked about how school No. 1 was remembered by its first students.
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Text: Denis Kozhevnikov, Photo: author
