#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Its very first inhabitants – 15 drillers – settled in five mobile houses and two tents in the summer 1960. By the spring 1962, 400 people lived in the Geologists settlement at the Harayelah mountains foot.
In April, the first builders came: their main aims were the mine, warehouses, roads, power lines and the village wooden houses.
At the same time, they were looking for a place for the future Talnah. In 1962, the designers reported: “The site has been chosen. The forest is around. The soils are thawed. There will be a club, a canteen, a shop”.
Since that time, the Norilskaya river right bank was divided into a temporary Geologists settlement and a permanent settlement – Talnah.
In the spring 1963, the first brick five-storied building construction began in Talnah. It was settled on January 22, 1964. On the first floor there was a canteen, a post office, a savings bank, an ambulance station, a city food factory, on the second floor there were family and women’s dormitories, on the third one – men’s dormitories.
At first, there were no streets in Talnah, and the houses were called by building numbers: the first, the second, the third.
The Norilsk Builder newspaper wrote in 1963:
“House after house, the Talnah street is growing. The first… the fifth… the eighth… and now ten corps are standing in the forest. The eleventh and twelfth ones are under construction. They will be ready by January 31, so the first week of February will be housewarming week. The houses in Talnah are wooden, not at all like the six-storied central streets’ bulks. But the Talnah people are satisfied with these houses. There are warm and cozy flats, not much different from city ones. The village construction continues. Spring will come, the snow will melt, and it will become clear how much has already been done where only a clearing was cut last year”.
In the last issue of the History Spot photo project, we told about the first largest Norilsk grocery store – Yenisey.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
