#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The whole city took part in the construction of the complex on Sevastopolskaya street: the Norilsk residents worked on weekends that spring in order to transfer the money they earned to the monument construction fund.
At the same time, the city executive committee named the section of Sevastopolskaya street between the three-storey buildings No. 8 and No. 10, the area of Memory of Heroes.
The monument was made by local architects and artists of the combine’s art-production workshop Rahim Seyfullaev, Valery Bandyakin and Boris Paley.
The monument parts were made at the Norilsk enterprises. For example, the Star of the Eternal Flame was cast in bronze at the Mechanical plant.
But if you look at the old photographs, you will notice that first, there was no star framing the fire, it appeared only in the late 1970s. In the early years, the flame was crowned with cubic metal structures.
For the 65th anniversary of the Victory, in 2010, the reconstruction of the Heroes’ Memorial Square was carried out. Norilsk received its own open-air exhibition of military equipment.
The first exhibits – howitzers of 1941 and 1944 – took part in the battles of the Great Patriotic War. One gun fought as part of the Voronezh Front, the second was in service with the Trans-Baikal one.
In 2012, a third exhibit was installed at the memorial – the T-62 tank. It also took part in hostilities, but not on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, but in Afghanistan. It was made in 1970 at the Nizhniy Tagil plant.
In 2013, the fourth vehicle, the BMP-1, was brought to the square. Made in 1975, it was in service with the 272nd Motorized Rifle Regiment of the Siberian Military District, guarding the eastern borders of the country.
In the last issue of the History spot photo project, we talked about the Arctica sports palace construction: it was originally planned as a small indoor pavilion.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
