The June photo of 1960 shows contemporaries of the legendary Norilsk Combine head: Sergey Agafonov and Vladimir Daryalsky. The first Hero of Socialist Labor in the city who built the cobalt plant, and the winner of the Stalin’s (now State) Prize for the development and implementation of pure cobalt production at the plant. A year later, in 1961, Sergei Agafonov, the head of the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Capital Construction Department, was sent to Leningrad, and the former chief engineer of NMMC Vladimir Daryalsky became the first rector of the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals in 1962.
Civil engineer Sergei Agafonov began his Norilsk biography under Zavenyagin, in 1939. The construction of the plant according to the Zavenyagin’s plan was on his account. Monchegorsk citizen Vladimir Daryalsky became a Norilsk one in 1941, he contributed to the first Norilsk nickel being obtained.
They were always in touch. It was Zavenyagin who laid the foundations of the Norilsk Combine, and, therefore, Nornickel within three years, from 1938 to 1941.
The decision to install the Abraham Zavenyagin’s bust in Norilsk and give his name to the combine was adopted immediately after his death on the 31 December night, 1956. A bust of black marble, characterized by a striking resemblance, was performed by the representative of the famous dynasty of Russian-Soviet sculptors Yuri Neroda.
A bust of Zavenyagin stood on the square named after him until 1993. Now Zavenyagin Square is decorated with a copper copy of a scaled-down sculpture, and the original moved from the Old Town to Gvardeiskaya Square.
Text: Valentina Vachaeva, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
