#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The quarters number 17, 22 and 28, memorable to Norilsk residents with cozy two-story houses with water conduits, looked at the street from the city side. On the other side there were the former barracks of the Gorlag 6th women’s camp department and the children’s labor colony, wasteland and tundra.
Railway tracks ran along the center of the street, and on the site of the current house No. 30 on Talnahskaya street there was the Gorodskaya (eng.: Town) railway station. Freight trains and commuter trains ran along the railway, taking Norilsk residents to Talnah, which was under construction, and its mines.
Residential building No. 30 was built in 1979; on April 30, 1981, supermarket No. 3, the largest self-service grocery store in the city, was opened on its ground floor. In the second wing of this building, the Home Goods shop was placed.
The main difference between the supermarket and its predecessors was the almost complete mechanization of the sellers’ work. The most modern store at that time was equipped with pneumatic lifts that served food to the hall, and electric cars that transported them.
The supermarket was distinguished by its considerable size – 3506 square meters, and the range of food products. According to the Norilsk residents’ recollections, in the 1980s, the city stores sold a lot of canned food, including imported ones: compotes, green peas, condensed milk, canned fish and meat.
The store was state of the art at the time. In 1988, during a visit to Norilsk by general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, in order to communicate with the people in an informal setting, he was taken to supermarket No. 3. The supermarket did not have its own name, until the very closing it had only the number.
In the last issue of the History Spot photo project, we told about the first home-made ice rinks in Norilsk: there was a cult of ice sports in the USSR.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
