#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. On the other side of lake Dolgoye, there was an industrial zone, that is, the main jobs for Norilsk residents.
And Gorstroy – the territory in which we live now – was only a small residential site.
The city under construction was separated by three kilometers from the main village with all its infrastructure. For all its first inhabitants there was one bus, which worked only in summer. Most often they had to walk to work in the industrial zone. A Norilsk resident Vladimir Lebedinsky recalled how that happened.
“On May 9, 1944, a black blizzard began in Norilsk at night, the strength of which Norilsk residents had never seen before. Wind gusts reached 40 meters per second. Snow fell from above and picked up from below.
Having seen the white milk of the whirling snow through the window in the morning, my wife and I decided to go to work an hour early. Along Sevastopolskaya street, the wind carried mountains of snow towards us, covering our eyes, nose and mouth. We were dressed in raincoats with hoods, two pants (one of which was over felt boots), and masks were put on our faces so that only our eyes remained open. A few minutes later, wandering through the loose snow, we came across a man who, bent double, was walking towards us. A huge scarf was wrapped comically around the man’s head; the cloak-hoodie reached to his toes. That entire “structure” had a large windage and moved with the wind. By his figure and scarf, we recognized the man as our neighbor – the architect Kashin. When he saw us, he was terribly happy: he wore glasses, but they were so covered with snow that he couldn’t see anything. Having learned that we were just a few steps from our house, Kashin was surprised and upset: he had been “going to work” for half an hour! It is clear that he was simply spinning in one place. “Will we ever get there?” he said pessimistically.
But we moved forward! Some kind of spirit of fighting with the nature force gave us strength. Where house No. 2 now stands on Sevastopolskaya street, the wind became especially raging, and after a short time all three of us found ourselves thrown into the snow. Kashin and my wife almost cried, and we decided that they wouldn’t make it anyway and it would be wiser to return. After guiding them around a bit and providing them with all sorts of advice, I finally went to work. Soon a line of two women and six men huddled tightly together crossed my path. They, too, like Kashin, “went to work,” but in a direction perpendicular to the correct one. If we accept the current landmarks, then they walked towards the Dolgoye lake, to where the Arctica sports palace now stands. We argued with them for some time, but they stubbornly believed that there were eight of them, and I was one, and they were right, like any majority.
According to unofficial and incomplete data, eight people died that day, and all my life I remember that group: maybe they were the ones who died”.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we talked about the geologist Domarev.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
