#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. With the acceleration of construction in November 1935, a horse-drawn road was laid along this route with stopping points in the area of lake Boganidskoye, at the 50th kilometer and on the Ambarnaya river.
In the summer, this route was mixed, on foot and by water: goods and people were first sent by swimming – by barges along the river from Dudinka to the transshipment base on lake Boganidskoye, and from there on tractors, horses and deer they traveled to the future Norilsk. The books preserve the memories of those who were among the first to follow this path. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the book Trains Go East by Czech correspondents Stanislav Oborsky and Zdenek Nogac. Journalists visited Norilsk in 1960 and met with the first builders.
“…The meeting took place in the small office of the director of the Norilsk Technical Museum. They sat anywhere: on the desk, on a low bench, even on the wastepaper basket. There were people around us in their forties and fifties. Miners and engineers, railway workers and mechanics from the power plant. They came, some in elegant coats, some in heavy overalls. From offices and from quarries. There were different people there, but we felt that they were connected by a long-standing and strong friendship. These were participants in the march of one hundred builders who laid the first stone of Norilsk.
On July 1, 1935, they left the ship in Dudinka. We took with us a supply of food, light tools, sleeping bags and hit the road. We walked. It was one hundred and twenty kilometers from Dudinka to the construction site of the future city. It was summer. The snow has already disappeared, and the tundra is covered with lakes and swamps. It was impossible to even think about taking the cart with us – just outside the city it would have remained stuck in the swamp. However, the melting tundra was also an unreliable support for the legs. One careless step is enough, and a person falls waist-deep into the quagmire.
Gradually we were forced to leave our backpacks with food behind. It was impossible to walk with such weight. Each one put a couple of crackers in his pocket. What’s next? What awaits them in the next kilometer? Nobody knew this. But no one thought about returning either. It was the third day of the journey. The last food supplies finished. But in the evening a small plane appeared above the group. He circled over our heads. It was clear that the pilot was ascertaining the situation. He probably realized that they had nothing to eat without seeing the backpacks on their backs. However, they tried to explain their situation with gestures. About an hour later the plane appeared again and dropped them a bag of food. The bag, fortunately, fell on more or less solid ground.
Then it became the rule. The plane appeared every day and followed them the rest of the way. So they came to the Norilsk mountains. There was a wooden house there, left over from the last geological expedition. This was the beginning of the present city. The storytellers fell silent. We closed our notebooks.
…Even at the beginning of our conversation, architect Lazarev, one of the first builders of the city, told us: “If you ever write about our conversation, don’t write only about us. There are ten of us here. There were a hundred of us then. We are all the same, no one has done more or less. Write about these hundred. About those who came first. We were strong because we thought about everyone, and not just ourselves…”
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we talked about the airport memories of Norilsk residents.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
