#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. For a correspondent, a city full of polar exoticism was a prize. As an example, a quote from the book of the writer Boris Petrov, where the chapter about us is called: “A city in which everything is northernmost”.
“…On the map that hangs in my room, this city is located right next to the ceiling. So high that not everyone can reach it even with a pointer, because it is much further than the Arctic Circle. It is also amazing because it is the snowiest city in the world. During the winter, so much snow accumulates there that special vehicles barely have time to push it out. As a result, the ramparts of a medieval castle seem to grow around the city. If you climb onto this shaft, you can look into the windows of the third floor. Winter there lasts 250 days. It’s freezing and night snowstorms are blowing. The ski season begins only in March, but skiing is especially good in April. This city is Norilsk. And the people who live there not only don’t notice the hardships of the North, but even seem to be proud of them.
“You know, our swimming pool is the northernmost in the world!” they will notice, as if by the way, in a conversation. “And the northernmost railway…” And one day they told me a story about the northernmost in the world… sparrow. One Norilsk resident decided to give a gift to the children from the kindergarten and brought it from Dudinka – who do you think? – a living sparrow! (They traveled to Dudinka along the Yenisei, on barges with grain.) The children happily adopted the feathered miracle: after all, the little Norilsk residents had never seen such a curiosity before, because sparrows do not live there.
The city newspaper even published about the “northernmost sparrow in the country”. But soon the editor received a letter from one worker, and she wrote that several feathered guests had settled in their food warehouse even earlier. The kindergarten pupil had to part with the laurels of the first feathered “hero of the North”. A Moscow newspaper correspondent immediately reported this to the whole country.
But the story didn’t end there either. Another letter arrived, this time from the miners of Talnah. “A sparrow is, of course, also great, but now even a crow spends the winter here! It’s also the northernmost,” they proudly reported. It’s as if the winter on Taimyr became warmer because of several dashing sparrows and one sluggish crow, which missed the flight of its friends or was too lazy to flap its wings a thousand kilometers – they brought such joy to the northerners!
The main thing for Norilsk residents is their city and the combine. A modern multi-storey city and a huge metallurgical combine that grew up in the tundra to supply the country with the most important non-ferrous metals.
…The Norilsk combine has operated for 25 years, and metallurgists turn to geologists with alarm: “Will we really have to close the plants soon? Are there really no other deposits in Taimyr?”
The discovery of Talnah changed the entire fate of the city and the combine. Following the new mines, it was necessary to build a new processing plant, new workshops of the copper and nickel plants. The combine grew like a hero and demanded more and more energy. To feed it, it was necessary to find Messoyaha gas and lay a gas pipeline to Norilsk. Because of this, a power plant was urgently built on the Hantayka river. All because of Talnah! In the area of the old Nadezhda airport, which had long served its purpose, a flat site was found for the construction of a new giant of non-ferrous metallurgy – the Nadezhda plant, which is growing near Norilsk…
I think when this book comes out and Norilsk residents read the lines I wrote, someone will definitely remark with a smile: “But not everything is told about our “northernmost”! Why didn’t you mention Imangda?” Which Imangda? What is it? Today it is just one of the names on the maps of Norilsk geologists. After all, they don’t stop, they move on. Today, for example, they are interested in Imangda and Mikchangda. Perhaps these words will remain unknown, and perhaps their glory will outgrow the today’s glory of Talnah. Anything is possible. Anything can happen in Norilsk”.
In the History Spot photo project’s previous publication, we told about New Year’s bazaars in Norilsk stores and about Imangda too.
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Text: Denis Kozhevnikov, Photo: author
