#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. In different years, this place had different names: Rudnichny settlement, Avariyny settlement, Gornozavodsky district. And its center, according to the architects, was Zavenyagin square.
The center of the current Old town, which now bears the name of Avraamy Zavenyagin, began to be designed in the early 1940s. The architects of its development were Lidiya Minenko, Vitold Nepokoichitsky, Fyodor Usov and Gevorg Kochar. This square was first unofficially called Predzavodskaya, then – Administrative. In the early 1950s, the plant’s communications shop, the central chemical laboratory, and the geological department were located there, and the plant’s office moved there.
In fact, in the 1950s and 1960s, this was the production, administrative, and scientific center of Norilsk. The Norilsk combine’s office moved there from Octyabrskaya street, where it was located in a small two-story building. The combine’s directors worked there until the mid-1980s, when the plant’s management moved to Gvardeyskaya square, to the former building of the Norilsk hotel.
Although all four buildings surrounding the square had an industrial purpose, their exterior was not inferior to the best examples of architecture of those years. For example, the porticoes with square columns on the buildings of the communications shop and the chemical laboratory – similar architectural techniques, according to current architects, can be seen in Moscow, near the Lenin library building. According to the original project, there were also supposed to be two buildings with porticos like ours on the square in front of the library. And the architect who built these two buildings and designed this square was obviously familiar with that project and decided to implement it in the Arctic.
In the summer of 1960, Norilsk celebrated the combine’s 25th anniversary. In those years, its birthday was considered to be June 23, 1935, that is, the date of signing the order on the of the Nornickel combine construction. The opening of a monument to Avraamy Zavenyagin on the Administrative square was scheduled for that day. But for some reason they did not make it to the date itself – they postponed it for a month. On July 23, the bust of Zavenyagin was ceremoniously unveiled. In September of the same year, the Administrative square was renamed in honor of Avraamy Zavenyagin.
The bust of Zavenyagin for Norilsk was made at the art casting plant in Mytishchi. The author of the monument is Yuri Neroda, a representative of a famous dynasty of sculptors. In Norilsk, this was the first monument in honor of a person ‘from ours’; before that, the city had erected monuments only to Lenin and Stalin. In 1993, Zavenyagin’s bust was moved to the foyer of the Nornickel administration on Gvardeyskaya square. The regional monument is still there, only in the pass office, where it is available for viewing to anyone who wants to. And now there is a smaller copper copy of it on the square.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we talked about what was planned to build on Metallurgists square.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Olga Zaderyaka, Norilsk residents and Nornickel’s Polar Division’s archives
