Hiding the locomotive from vandals
In July Norilsk will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of its foundation. This town, disposing of a short, but quite unusual history, was built on the bones of prisoners.
According to inofficial data about 1.700.000 people went through the Norillag between 1935 and 1956, among them some of the most wellknown representatives of Soviet science and culture: one of the very first discoverers of the Norilsk copper and nickel deposits – the scientist and geologist Nikolai Urvantsev, the son of Anna Akhmatova – the historian Lev Gumilev, the famous folklorist of the USSR – Georgiy Zhzhonov, the poet Osip Mandelstam and many, many others. But in spite of the fact that Norilsk, applying historical standards, was built not so long ago, there are almost no memorial places, no keepsakes from that time. Even the barracks, which is always shown to tourists as a relict from GULAG times, was built – according to the words of Stanislav und Larisa Striuchkov, both deeply engagegd in local history, only much later and was rather used for the lodging of criminals.
The bridge once built by prisoners has fallen into desrepair
The one and only object from the time, when they began to built town and combine, which was constructed by the hands of prisoners and has been preserved until nowadays, is the narrow-gauge railway bridge not far from the entrance into town. As soon as they had begun to construct the new branch, the former narrow-gauge GULAG tracks were disassembled and removed, whereby the bridge, as witness of the 1930s, remained untouched. In the 1990s it was already acknowledged as cultural inheritage. Until not so long ago there was a locomotive standing near the bridge, exactly the one which used to regularly cross the bridge at those times. The Norilsk railroad company had obtained it from the Ukraine. And now they permuted it to one of the train stations downtown, pretending to protect it from vandalism.
- But we are, in fact, rather talking about the bridge than the locomotive. This bridge is the very last memorial evidencing what prisoners created by their own hands, - says Larisa Striuchkova. – Now, however, it is all abandoned..
As long as the old locomotive was standing beside, the bridge was kept under a certain supervision, as well, although the Norilsk railroad company did not show any responsibility for it. Nowadays this ruined historic object is exposed to the forces of nature and vandalism. State authorities are not concerned with its restauration, and it does not belong to the Norilsker railroad company or the Norilsk nickel combine, either. Even though, and this is at least the opinion of the townspeople, the money spent to permute the locomotive from its original place to the station, might have been sufficient for the restauration of the historic bridge object.
Larisa REPINA
Photos by the author
“Arguments and Facts at the Yenisey“, 7th July 2010