A Petersburg resident who graduated from the Art and Industry College and the Faculty of Architecture of the Leningrad Institute of Industrial Construction Engineers, Vitold Nepokoichitsky arrived in the village at the Norillag in 1939. He came with his wife Lidiya Minenko to create a city that has architecture.
In his memoirs, Nepokoichitsky wrote that as a result of his creative collaboration with Minenko, such memorable ensembles as Gvardeyskaya, Komsomolskaya and Octyabrskaya squares, Southern Line and Sevastopolskaya Street, arose besides a number of projects of individual residential and public buildings that determined the appearance Norilsk.
In 1973, Vitold retired and left Norilsk for the Syasstroy settlement in Leningrad region. Some friends and journalists saw him off (his wife had returned to Leningrad earlier). The meeting was attended by Pavlina Bespalova, the head physician of the Valek sanatorium, a Norilsk resident since 1948. The architectural community was represented by the legendary family friend Mikhail Bitadze, with whom Nepokoichitsky and nine other associates were awarded the Lenin Prize for construction in the Far North.
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Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Nornickel Polar branch archive
