Norilsk, Russia

With the discovery of massive deposits of nickel in the 1920s, slave labor camps to mine these reserves soon followed, and the city of Norilsk was born. Officially founded in 1935 as the Norilsk Combine, for decades the city was a key island in Stalin's industrial gulag archipelago. The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (or NKVD) was given responsibility for construction of Norilsk as a test of its ability to manage large projects that relied on prison labor. Today, with a population of approximately 135,000 people, Norilsk, which is located on the Taimyr Peninsula, is the world's second-largest city (after Murmansk) above the Arctic Circle.

Mining remains the primary industrial activity and source of employment in Norilsk, as the world's largest nickel deposits, almost all of Russia's platinum group metals (platinum, palladium, and rhodium), and half of the country's copper can be found within the city's environs. These reserves are exclusively controlled by the multinational firm Norilsk Nickel. Because of the decades of heavy metal mining and processing that took place at its outdated smelting plants, Norilsk has the dubious distinction of regularly being recognized as one of the world's most polluted cities.

At its peak in 1951, Norillag, or the Norilsk Corrective Labor Camp, had 72,500 prisoners. Norillag was tasked not only with mining the deposits but also with all labor-intensive spheres of economic activity: building bridges, roads, and settlements, and even fishing and hunting. The city these laborers built is in typical Soviet geometric style, with the geometric structure of long avenues punctuated by large symbolic squares. The harsh weather (gale-force winds, heavy snowfall, and permafrost) necessitated some architectural ingenuity, including driving steel pilings deep into the soil to ensure the structural integrity of buildings. Residential blocks also included closed courtyards to avoid windblown snowdrifts.

The Taimyr Peninsula remains the home of the Nenets, Enets, Dolgan, and Nganasan peoples, some of whom continue to herd reindeer along the vast stretches of tundra. However, forced Soviet-era collectivization policies, coupled with the lure of high wages in the mines and smelting factories, led many to abandon their nomadic lifestyles, as in many other regions of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless the region around Norilsk, at least on [Page 349]paper, enjoyed special autonomous status as the Dolgano-Nenetskii (Taimyrskii) Autonomous Okrug from 1930 to 2007 because of the large percentage of “native” groups (approximately 20 percent of the total population by the 21st century). However, the administrative center was Dudinka, the port that serves Norilsk, whereas the city of Norilsk itself paid taxes to Krasnoyarskii Krai, not the Okrug, rendering it relatively powerless. In 2007, the Okrug was formally dissolved and all administrative and territorial duties were handed over to the Krai.

For much of the 20th century, Norilsk was only accessible by traveling up the Yenisei River. Residents speak of traveling to and from “continent,” and many still view the city as a temporary location, where one makes money and then moves on. Nevertheless, some residents have developed a strong sense of place. Despite a program to resettle residents of the Russian north, many have resisted leaving, even those who no longer work. This poses problems for the Russian government, as the cost of providing services for a resident of the polar region is four times higher than the average in Russia.

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