Sovetskaya street is Norilsk architecture rubicon

#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. This street was built in the second half of the 1950s, when the trend towards simplification in construction had already begun. And the houses on Sovetskaya look much more modest than the first Stalin buildings.

In this photo from the mid-1950s, house No. 8 is being built on Sovetskaya street. This is one of the first buildings on this street: a four-story (which is rare) residential Stalin era building. The apartments in these buildings, like many others in the historical part of the city, were originally communal apartments. Here, each room housed a separate family, and the hallways, kitchens with wood stoves, and ‘conveniences’ were common areas. In the spacious and tall Stalin buildings, this did not cause so much discomfort. It was better to live like that than in tiny huts or barracks. True, at first the Norilsk authorities also tried to populate the Hrushchev houses not family by family, but room by room. That is, communal apartments were created there too, but with worse conditions: small walk-through rooms and shared bathrooms. Fortunately, Norilsk architects opposed it, citing the relevant government decree.

Sovetskaya street was a kind of rubicon, a watershed for Norilsk. It is here that the historical part of the city ends and the standard building blocks begin – this is where the Hrushchev architecture era of the 1960s began. Only a few Stalin-type houses were able to ‘cross’ the border of Sovetskaya street: for example, the house in this photo is Sovetskaya, 1, as well as the Gornyak department store’s house and several other buildings on Komsomolskaya and Kirov streets. And permafrost experts say that the reliable rocky foundation ends at Sovetskaya, and a swampy plain with a wide layer of permafrost begins.

At the end of the 1950s, the fight against so-called architectural excesses began at the state level – builders had to set a course for mass, cheap, accessible, but, alas, typical housing. “…Starting from 1958, residential buildings built both in cities and in rural areas will be provided with economical, comfortable apartments for single-family occupancy. Construction will be carried out according to standard designs”, the CPSU Central Committee decided. This decision abolished the author’s approach to architecture and gave rise to the Hrushchev era. This affected Norilsk in the most direct way. In 1957–1958, the last Stalin buildings with the most unpretentious decoration were commissioned: Sovetskaya, 14, Leninsky, 26, Kirova, 25 and 29.

For the next 15 years, Norilsk was built with the same standard Hrushchev buildings – first brick, and then panel ones. This greatly depersonalized urban development, but speeded up construction time. The use of standard designs made it possible to reduce the construction period of each building from 10–12 months to 5-6, and sometimes to 4-5 months.

There was another, very significant plus. Norilsk residents could finally move from huts, barracks and communal apartments to small, but separate apartments. In 1958, a city newspaper described the advantages of future housing like this: “What will our apartments be like! In two or three years, most Norilsk residents will forget how three or four families once shared one corridor and one kitchen. Each family will receive its own comfortable apartment. You don’t have to drag a barrel of cabbage out the window – it will fit in a spacious in-wall cold-storage facility. The kitchens will have everything a housewife could dream of: built-in furniture, cabinets, shelves, sinks…”

At the end of 1958, an order was issued for the Norilsk combine, where the “widely practiced construction of foundations in the form of individual pillars” was recognized as too labor-intensive and not suitable for accelerated construction methods. This order gave the go-ahead for the transition to pile foundation. And specific objects were named from which it was necessary to start: residential buildings, kindergartens, shops and schools in block 30–38. This building number meant the courtyards between Sovetskaya and Zavenyagina streets and Leninsky prospect.