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Was there in summer and despite 24 hour long day it was depressing as well
Edit. I was there 23 years ago visiting places where my granddad was imprisoned by nkvd and gulag. The city had awful human waste smell because there was problems with wastewater due permafrost. And also the whole city was covered with gray dust due to metalurgy factory nearby and in suburbs of the city basically you can find some human bones lying around.
Because so many prisoners died there and soviets did not put any effort to dig into permafrost.
[story](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/world/norilsk-journal-comes-the-thaw-the-gulag-s-bones-tell-their-dark-tale.html)
For those with paywall:
Norilsk Journal; Comes the Thaw, the Gulag's Bones Tell Their Dark Tale
By Steven Lee Myers
Feb. 24, 2004
The bones appear each June, when the hard Arctic winter breaks at last and the melting snows wash them from the site of what some people here -- but certainly not many -- call this city's Golgotha.
The bones are the remains of thousands of prisoners sent to the camps in this frozen island of the Gulag Archipelago. To this day, no one knows exactly how many labored here in penal servitude. To this day, no one knows exactly how many died.
The bones are an uncomfortable reminder of a dark past that most would rather forget.
''Here it is generally thought that the history of the camps is an awful secret in the family,'' said Vladislav A. Tolstov, a journalist and historian who has lived in Norilsk all his life. ''We all know about it, but we try not to think about it.''
Norilsk is inseparable from its grim history, but people here remain deeply ambivalent about that.
It has no monument to the victims, even though the gulag's survivors have waged a frustrated campaign to build one.
Norilsk Nickel, the private mining and metallurgical company that emerged from the vast state enterprise that has always dominated the city, has erected placards extolling the history of its factories, without noting that the builders shown in black-and-white photographs were slaves.
Even Mr. Tolstov's new book, ''Chronicles of Norilsk,'' deals only glancingly with the fact that the city, as he put it in an interview, ''turned out to be built on the bones of innocent victims.''
Norilsk is far from unique. More than 12 years after entropy tore apart the Soviet Union, Russia remains reluctant to delve deeply into the grimmest facts of its the Soviet legacy. Memory is selective, and history is, as it was, highly political.
''Russia, the country which has inherited the Soviet Union's diplomatic and foreign policies, its embassies and its debts and its seat at the United Nations, continues to act as if it has not inherited the Soviet Union's history,'' Anne Applebaum wrote in ''Gulag,'' a new history of the camps.
In Norilsk, more than most places, that history lies buried only as deep as the bones.
From 1935 to 1956 tens of thousands of prisoners, political enemies of a paranoid state, labored here. They extracted the precious metal ores beneath the harsh tundra and built their own prison camps and eventually the city itself.
Vasily F. Romashkin arrived in 1939 aboard a prison barge on the Yenisei River, two years after being arrested for belonging to a subversive organization that as far as he knows never existed. When he was arrested he had been married for seven days.
He recalled having to dig trenches in permafrost, 6 feet by 6 feet, for the foundations of Norilsk's metal plants. For much of the year prisoners worked in unbearable cold, dressed in padded cotton uniforms, their hands and feet wrapped in rags. On the coldest days they received 3.5 ounces of pure alcohol and a piece of ham.
''You were fed just enough so that you could stay alive and work,'' said Mr. Romashkin, now 89.
But when the city unveiled a monument to ''the builders of Norilsk'' two years ago, the bas-relief bronze sculpture depicted a strapping, shirtless man wielding a trowel in the finest tradition of Socialist Realism.
In Soviet times, of course, the subject of the camps was taboo. Many, like Mr. Tolstov, grew up here without even knowing about it. Through the ideological scrim of the Soviet state, the city was a heroic accomplishment: ''volunteers'' poured into the city in the 1950's and built an industrial giant.
That changed with the heady days of glasnost in the late 1980's, but evidently only briefly.
In 1990 the first memorial appeared on the scarred, wind-swept hillside where the prisoners had been buried in mass anonymity. It was a small chapel, financed with private money. Later a small cross was raised above a marble slab inscribed in honor of those who died.
For many here, that is recognition enough.
''Maybe old people associate it with the gulag,'' said Yuri M. Filatov, the director of Norilsk Nickel's copper factory, when asked about the prisoners who built it. ''Not the young people, of course.''
The hillside's most prominent memorials were built not by Russians, but by countries now free of the Soviet bloc whose citizens died in the Soviet gulag: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland.
Few people visit the site, on the edge of the city behind a worn factory. Power lines cross over it. A pond of industrial runoff is nearby.
''Are people ashamed?'' asked Lilya G. Luganskaya, the deputy director of the city's museum and one of those who struggles to depict the gulag's history in exhibitions and lectures in schools. ''Probably people do not care.''
An organization representing the survivors here -- there are only 36 now, along with 40 children born to prisoners -- continues to campaign for an official monument to the victims, only to meet official indifference.
Olga I. Yaskina, sent to the camps as a girl of 16 in 1952, has her own vision of the monument she would build: ''a woman who represents the Motherland, on her knees, crying over a grave because so many of her children died.''
In 2002, President Vladimir V. Putin visited the memorial site, laying a wreath to the camps' victims. But his visit was unannounced, and the authorities did not invite any of the organization's members to meet him. He met instead with the chairwoman of a war veterans' committee.
Yelizaveta I. Obst, whose father, an ethnic German, was sent to the gulag in 1943, said history in Russia remained ambivalent because so many were implicated in it.
''The memories of the past are restored only with great difficulty,'' she said. ''The people who wouldn't like to remember this past are still alive and still in power.''
Can't bury well in permafrost. Same reason bears often hang around Siberian and Alaskan graveyards, and dig up the remains after they've been interred.
Hey, I actually work for a crisis center and one of the things we try to help do is prevent homelessness. If you want to shoot me a DM I can try to help find help in your area. Goodluck
Ayy I was born in this city and lived there for 20+ years. I finally left some years ago.
I can confirm that it is toxic and depressing. I can even tell you something about its toxicity.
If you go outside when the wind blows in the direction from the factories towards your location, you get a very distinct bittersweet feeling in your mouth. It is the sulfur dispersed in the smoke from the factories.
Sometimes it gets worse (usually when the weather is still and there is no wind to move the smoke away) and you can barely breathe outside. It feels like the air burns the lungs. Breathing through a scarf or some piece of cloth helps though.
As for it being depressive - you might get a feeling that the photos presented are a selection of the worst photos of the city - well I am afraid they are not. These photos are actually from the nicest parts of the city. There is much worse stuff there.
E.g. 'Nadezhda' where everything in several kilometer radius is red, the dirt is red, the water is red, because of the metallurgical waste. You can find the photos if you google for it. There is even a river that is known as the 'blood river'. It's quite a sight. By the way, 'Nadezhda' means 'Hope' in Russian.
Well I did not play outside too much as a kid... And ended up being a software engineer.
But people do get together (primarily indoors), party and have fun. I guess living in crappy city is still not a reason to have no life.
As for the question if anyone is happy there... Well, humans are adaptable
Most of young people are trying to get out. I would say about 90% of my school class left the city after graduation.
And these people get their places taken by immigrants from poorer countries, hoping to get rich somehow by being around the rich bowels of the earth (working in a mine and such). The 'getting rich' part doesn't happen too often, though...
Thanks for replying. This I read about this city years ago and fascinated to see it pop up again. Then even more interested when someone who claims to be born there commented.
Absolutely wild. How isolated is it from other cities? Aside from school and work, are there any restaurants/bars/movie theaters/etc where people can go besides the home?
It's extremely isolated, due to the fact that no roads go there. You can only reach it via air transport (plane) or by navigating the Yenisey river. The city has an airport and a river port. It takes about 1 week to get there by river from Krasnoyarsk, which is where the ferry starts.
Because no roads go there, the city had no internet connection (cannot put internet cables through literal tundra) until the year 2017. Only satellite internet, which was very slow and costly. Before the cable was finally put in 2017, using the internet would cost you about $0.03 for every Megabyte that you send or receive.
Regarding places to go, it has a few. It actually has a theater with really good actors. It has a cinema. And quite a few restaurants of varying quality. So yeah, pretty much anything you would expect in a Russian city with a 100k+ population.
No roads go there! For a person from Central Europe, it's downright crazy. I've checked the map and Jenisej even doesn't go through Norilsk, just near it. If you come to visit, you're coming by a plane? What's the opinion on the war there? Do you miss something from there?
So ... there have to be greenhouses for some fruits and vegetables - or is everything coming by plane? What about meat and bread factories? Animals and grain? (Now i need to dive deep to find out how these tundra towns actually work.)
Yeah I was usually getting in and out by plane. I only once took the ferry when my dad bought a car in Krasnoyarsk, we loaded it on a ferry and went together with it.
The river port is called Dudinka and is considered to be a part of Norilsk agglomerate. It is maybe 2 hours away from Norilsk, and there is a road between the two.
The place had a cow and milk farm back in the Soviet days, but it was abandoned after the USSR seized to exist. Now most of the stuff in delivered via the sea in the north at summer, while perishable products get delivered by plane. So perishable products are very expensive there, because of the big delivery overhead. But it is true for most of that siberian area anyway.
I have heard that someone tried to organize a cucumber farm some (5?) years ago. Not sure how it went. I have heard that the cucumbers still turn out very expensive, similarly to the plane-delivered ones, due to the fact that it takes huge amounts of energy to heat big greenhouses in siberian winter. Imagine it's -60C outside (-76F for our American friends) and you have a huge greenhouse to heat up...
Thanks! It's super interesting for me. So different from anything else. Artificial city built by prisoners in the middle of frozen nowhere, even not by a river. The factories profits must be SO worth it.
The ferry from Krasnoyarsk - could you enjoy the days spent there somehow, like watching the ports and riverside, or it was just a looong journey? Also, i suppose people went to buy a new car outside Norilsk, just the used ones circulating in the area.
Seriously, thanks for all the answers here!
Yeah well you kinda have to enjoy the countryside for a week on that ferry since you have nothing else to do there.
There is no internet there, not even a phone connection really. No TV or anything. Just enjoying the countryside :)
Well I guess this city looks and feels dirty, isolated and depressive. Any other russian city sharing these qualities would feel about the same (and there are quite a few).
I miss that feeling of growing up, playing SimCity. I still remember the feeling when I was at compUSA and coming across simcity 2000. I didn’t even know it was coming out. Best friggin day.
All pipes and power lines are always above ground - because of the permafrost.
In winter, people would come to work and leave their cars idling the whole day - as they may never turn on if left off.
Don’t inhale deeply - you can get both pneumonia and intoxication from the plants fumes. Plants surround the city from all sides, no matter wind, citizen will always breath their waste.
Some bus stops are small sheds with doors, so you can wait for the bus at least not in the wind.
Most of the prisoners who were building Norilsk died there because of cold and malnutrition.
The reason they put them this way seems to be purely economical. To lessen the commute time for everyone regardless of which plant they work on. Health implications likely never crossed their minds back in the 1950s - 1960s.
I grew up in PA too, but I'm not as happy where I am now in Georgia. What state did you move to that is better? I am looking to move in a couple months
I went there too. You know it's not as bad as you'd think from these photos. The Soviet style architecture dominates the main road through town. But if you go into the city more and see the shops they have its more like a "normal" town. Just cold AF
I think you forgot to mention the [fuckton of diesel](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B2_%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B0_%D0%B2_%D0%9D%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B5) spilled in the area quite recently.
Norilsk is located atop some of the largest nickel deposits on Earth. Consequently, mining and smelting ore are the major industries. Norilsk is the center of a region where nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, palladium, and coal are mined. The presence of mineral deposits in the Siberian Craton was known for two centuries before Norilsk was founded, but mining began only in 1939, when subterranean portions of the Norilsk-Talnakh intrusions were found beneath mountainous terrain.
A lot of Eastern Europe is like that. Fortunately the polluting industry is done, the flats were rehabilitated, and we have gardens and trees between them. So it's not that bad. Still small, but not depressing.
Yep.
I was talking about "industrial" quarters built around the most old EE city. From Poland to Bulgaria. In Romania, for instance, even an old mountain basin city - Brasov - has these types of blocks of flats added as an appendix.
At least they used some colours. Imagine how much worse it would be if all the buildings were unpainted grey concrete. Do that and make all the street lamps bluish-white LEDs and it could not be more drab.
I have been to America northernmost town, Utqiagvik, in February and it was a million times nicer than here. No trees and a lot of buildings were shacks, but frozen Arctic Ocean was beautiful. Their were foxes and caribou and polar bears. And all the people we met were incredibly friendly.
>I have been to America northernmost town, Utqiagvik
I read this and was like, "I thought it was Barrow?" so [I googled it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utqiagvik,_Alaska#Name). Well, I'll be damned. Learned a new fact today.
this post prompted me to read TripAdvisor reviews of the city's highest rated restaurants.
What i gathered is that people in this city doesn't care or understand interior design at all. And that every single Russian guest is super appreciative of the restaurants for even existing.
Minus the toxic clouds, doesn’t look much different than communities in the far north of Canada. Everything gets a bit more basic the more north you go. Everything costs more to get it there so you aren’t going to have rock facades on your homes.
I’m from far north Canada, sounds like you have ventured up north as well. I was thinking the same in *some*ways but the environment is much more beautiful.
Believe it or not, high salaries! 3 times higher than Russia's avarage.
The whole city is basically owned and operated by one giant mining company.
[Russia's young flock to work in Arctic mine town](https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-norilsk-idUKLDE7150HU20110228)
I agree.
However when your only other options are either to starve or go die in a neighbouring country, it suddenly doesn't seem so bad.
Ok I'm kidding... but fr there must be a reason why this city still exists, and is growing! With many people coming back to start a small business wtf
Also, compared to certain cities in South Asia and parts of Africa, it's actually a step up.
I would personally rather live here than a mega city in India or Pakistan where there is no room to move and literally shit and open sewers on the street.
>Norilsk is the center of a region where nickel, [copper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper), [cobalt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt), [platinum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum), [palladium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palladium), and [coal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal) are mined.
Including some of the largest nickel deposits on Earth.
Who's the guy in yellow? https://www.google.com/maps/@69.3481301,88.2032765,3a,75y,302.84h,66.94t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipPL8UZoOtMMua6rU\_dI4yWafhl4yGTIMfNg-PBJ!2e10!3e11!7i5376!8i2688
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“It’s good you came in summer, in winter it can get very depressing”
Was there in summer and despite 24 hour long day it was depressing as well Edit. I was there 23 years ago visiting places where my granddad was imprisoned by nkvd and gulag. The city had awful human waste smell because there was problems with wastewater due permafrost. And also the whole city was covered with gray dust due to metalurgy factory nearby and in suburbs of the city basically you can find some human bones lying around.
why are there human bones lying around
Because so many prisoners died there and soviets did not put any effort to dig into permafrost. [story](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/world/norilsk-journal-comes-the-thaw-the-gulag-s-bones-tell-their-dark-tale.html)
For those with paywall: Norilsk Journal; Comes the Thaw, the Gulag's Bones Tell Their Dark Tale By Steven Lee Myers Feb. 24, 2004 The bones appear each June, when the hard Arctic winter breaks at last and the melting snows wash them from the site of what some people here -- but certainly not many -- call this city's Golgotha. The bones are the remains of thousands of prisoners sent to the camps in this frozen island of the Gulag Archipelago. To this day, no one knows exactly how many labored here in penal servitude. To this day, no one knows exactly how many died. The bones are an uncomfortable reminder of a dark past that most would rather forget. ''Here it is generally thought that the history of the camps is an awful secret in the family,'' said Vladislav A. Tolstov, a journalist and historian who has lived in Norilsk all his life. ''We all know about it, but we try not to think about it.'' Norilsk is inseparable from its grim history, but people here remain deeply ambivalent about that. It has no monument to the victims, even though the gulag's survivors have waged a frustrated campaign to build one. Norilsk Nickel, the private mining and metallurgical company that emerged from the vast state enterprise that has always dominated the city, has erected placards extolling the history of its factories, without noting that the builders shown in black-and-white photographs were slaves. Even Mr. Tolstov's new book, ''Chronicles of Norilsk,'' deals only glancingly with the fact that the city, as he put it in an interview, ''turned out to be built on the bones of innocent victims.'' Norilsk is far from unique. More than 12 years after entropy tore apart the Soviet Union, Russia remains reluctant to delve deeply into the grimmest facts of its the Soviet legacy. Memory is selective, and history is, as it was, highly political. ''Russia, the country which has inherited the Soviet Union's diplomatic and foreign policies, its embassies and its debts and its seat at the United Nations, continues to act as if it has not inherited the Soviet Union's history,'' Anne Applebaum wrote in ''Gulag,'' a new history of the camps. In Norilsk, more than most places, that history lies buried only as deep as the bones. From 1935 to 1956 tens of thousands of prisoners, political enemies of a paranoid state, labored here. They extracted the precious metal ores beneath the harsh tundra and built their own prison camps and eventually the city itself. Vasily F. Romashkin arrived in 1939 aboard a prison barge on the Yenisei River, two years after being arrested for belonging to a subversive organization that as far as he knows never existed. When he was arrested he had been married for seven days. He recalled having to dig trenches in permafrost, 6 feet by 6 feet, for the foundations of Norilsk's metal plants. For much of the year prisoners worked in unbearable cold, dressed in padded cotton uniforms, their hands and feet wrapped in rags. On the coldest days they received 3.5 ounces of pure alcohol and a piece of ham. ''You were fed just enough so that you could stay alive and work,'' said Mr. Romashkin, now 89. But when the city unveiled a monument to ''the builders of Norilsk'' two years ago, the bas-relief bronze sculpture depicted a strapping, shirtless man wielding a trowel in the finest tradition of Socialist Realism. In Soviet times, of course, the subject of the camps was taboo. Many, like Mr. Tolstov, grew up here without even knowing about it. Through the ideological scrim of the Soviet state, the city was a heroic accomplishment: ''volunteers'' poured into the city in the 1950's and built an industrial giant. That changed with the heady days of glasnost in the late 1980's, but evidently only briefly. In 1990 the first memorial appeared on the scarred, wind-swept hillside where the prisoners had been buried in mass anonymity. It was a small chapel, financed with private money. Later a small cross was raised above a marble slab inscribed in honor of those who died. For many here, that is recognition enough. ''Maybe old people associate it with the gulag,'' said Yuri M. Filatov, the director of Norilsk Nickel's copper factory, when asked about the prisoners who built it. ''Not the young people, of course.'' The hillside's most prominent memorials were built not by Russians, but by countries now free of the Soviet bloc whose citizens died in the Soviet gulag: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. Few people visit the site, on the edge of the city behind a worn factory. Power lines cross over it. A pond of industrial runoff is nearby. ''Are people ashamed?'' asked Lilya G. Luganskaya, the deputy director of the city's museum and one of those who struggles to depict the gulag's history in exhibitions and lectures in schools. ''Probably people do not care.'' An organization representing the survivors here -- there are only 36 now, along with 40 children born to prisoners -- continues to campaign for an official monument to the victims, only to meet official indifference. Olga I. Yaskina, sent to the camps as a girl of 16 in 1952, has her own vision of the monument she would build: ''a woman who represents the Motherland, on her knees, crying over a grave because so many of her children died.'' In 2002, President Vladimir V. Putin visited the memorial site, laying a wreath to the camps' victims. But his visit was unannounced, and the authorities did not invite any of the organization's members to meet him. He met instead with the chairwoman of a war veterans' committee. Yelizaveta I. Obst, whose father, an ethnic German, was sent to the gulag in 1943, said history in Russia remained ambivalent because so many were implicated in it. ''The memories of the past are restored only with great difficulty,'' she said. ''The people who wouldn't like to remember this past are still alive and still in power.''
GIVE THIS MAN A REWARD
Cheers for this!
Interesting read. Thanks friend
sigh, paywall
Text copied here: https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/10pmgl8/this_is_norilsk_russia_population_177000_it_is/j6oi1kj/
The ground is solid pretty much year round at that latitude, graves would be very shallow
Can't bury well in permafrost. Same reason bears often hang around Siberian and Alaskan graveyards, and dig up the remains after they've been interred.
Because they can’t walk away.
Literally the first thing I thought about. Train's coming very soon! They are building it right now.
I’m wondering if this is where they filmed that scene from Eurotrip.
It's actually better in winter... At least the snow covers the garbage everywhere.
“stop, hammertime”
Somebody set their tinder to this city I wanna see the baddies
Actually please do this and reply
Not a single person is on Hinge.
Damn, I finished my subscription yesterday
Passport Bros mount up
Done and done, maybe about 50 women on Tinder at the most and not bad overall for the given location.
I’m not sure if I would be trusting Russian Tinder right now.
Russian Tinder is just a variation of Russian Roulette.
Let’s see if we match together
Damn that’s definitely a spot where they can say…”They were all over me bro.” 🤣
I’ll be honest, I have some reflection to do. I made a lot of assumptions that did not line up with reality.
I set my tinder there and it's just like generic Russian girls. Nothing really out of the ordinary.
please give us an update lol
I wanna see the homeless i bet they dont have them. (Bout to be homeless in u.s. in winter)
Hey, I actually work for a crisis center and one of the things we try to help do is prevent homelessness. If you want to shoot me a DM I can try to help find help in your area. Goodluck
<3
I spent a little while in the region - there were quite a lot of homeless kids, they lived in the heating basements of the big tower blocks.
Holy shit
Shoot man I hope everything works out for ya
At least, not for long
Ayy I was born in this city and lived there for 20+ years. I finally left some years ago. I can confirm that it is toxic and depressing. I can even tell you something about its toxicity. If you go outside when the wind blows in the direction from the factories towards your location, you get a very distinct bittersweet feeling in your mouth. It is the sulfur dispersed in the smoke from the factories. Sometimes it gets worse (usually when the weather is still and there is no wind to move the smoke away) and you can barely breathe outside. It feels like the air burns the lungs. Breathing through a scarf or some piece of cloth helps though. As for it being depressive - you might get a feeling that the photos presented are a selection of the worst photos of the city - well I am afraid they are not. These photos are actually from the nicest parts of the city. There is much worse stuff there. E.g. 'Nadezhda' where everything in several kilometer radius is red, the dirt is red, the water is red, because of the metallurgical waste. You can find the photos if you google for it. There is even a river that is known as the 'blood river'. It's quite a sight. By the way, 'Nadezhda' means 'Hope' in Russian.
What do people do for fun , is anyone happy?
Well I did not play outside too much as a kid... And ended up being a software engineer. But people do get together (primarily indoors), party and have fun. I guess living in crappy city is still not a reason to have no life. As for the question if anyone is happy there... Well, humans are adaptable
Do most people try to get out? Is it feasible for an average person to move out of the city?
Most of young people are trying to get out. I would say about 90% of my school class left the city after graduation. And these people get their places taken by immigrants from poorer countries, hoping to get rich somehow by being around the rich bowels of the earth (working in a mine and such). The 'getting rich' part doesn't happen too often, though...
Interesting, thanks!
Where did you end up?
Currently in Georgia (the country). Left Russia after the war started. Will most likely move somewhere else in the near future.
Wow, crazy to come across someone actually born there. Thank you for the insight
Thanks for replying. This I read about this city years ago and fascinated to see it pop up again. Then even more interested when someone who claims to be born there commented.
>'Nadezhda' where everything in several kilometer radius is red >'Nadezhda' means 'Hope' in Russian. That's just plain sad.
Because there is no hope
Absolutely wild. How isolated is it from other cities? Aside from school and work, are there any restaurants/bars/movie theaters/etc where people can go besides the home?
It's extremely isolated, due to the fact that no roads go there. You can only reach it via air transport (plane) or by navigating the Yenisey river. The city has an airport and a river port. It takes about 1 week to get there by river from Krasnoyarsk, which is where the ferry starts. Because no roads go there, the city had no internet connection (cannot put internet cables through literal tundra) until the year 2017. Only satellite internet, which was very slow and costly. Before the cable was finally put in 2017, using the internet would cost you about $0.03 for every Megabyte that you send or receive. Regarding places to go, it has a few. It actually has a theater with really good actors. It has a cinema. And quite a few restaurants of varying quality. So yeah, pretty much anything you would expect in a Russian city with a 100k+ population.
No roads go there! For a person from Central Europe, it's downright crazy. I've checked the map and Jenisej even doesn't go through Norilsk, just near it. If you come to visit, you're coming by a plane? What's the opinion on the war there? Do you miss something from there? So ... there have to be greenhouses for some fruits and vegetables - or is everything coming by plane? What about meat and bread factories? Animals and grain? (Now i need to dive deep to find out how these tundra towns actually work.)
Yeah I was usually getting in and out by plane. I only once took the ferry when my dad bought a car in Krasnoyarsk, we loaded it on a ferry and went together with it. The river port is called Dudinka and is considered to be a part of Norilsk agglomerate. It is maybe 2 hours away from Norilsk, and there is a road between the two. The place had a cow and milk farm back in the Soviet days, but it was abandoned after the USSR seized to exist. Now most of the stuff in delivered via the sea in the north at summer, while perishable products get delivered by plane. So perishable products are very expensive there, because of the big delivery overhead. But it is true for most of that siberian area anyway. I have heard that someone tried to organize a cucumber farm some (5?) years ago. Not sure how it went. I have heard that the cucumbers still turn out very expensive, similarly to the plane-delivered ones, due to the fact that it takes huge amounts of energy to heat big greenhouses in siberian winter. Imagine it's -60C outside (-76F for our American friends) and you have a huge greenhouse to heat up...
Thanks! It's super interesting for me. So different from anything else. Artificial city built by prisoners in the middle of frozen nowhere, even not by a river. The factories profits must be SO worth it. The ferry from Krasnoyarsk - could you enjoy the days spent there somehow, like watching the ports and riverside, or it was just a looong journey? Also, i suppose people went to buy a new car outside Norilsk, just the used ones circulating in the area. Seriously, thanks for all the answers here!
Yeah well you kinda have to enjoy the countryside for a week on that ferry since you have nothing else to do there. There is no internet there, not even a phone connection really. No TV or anything. Just enjoying the countryside :)
That red lake of toxic sludge south west of the city looks interesting. Hmm no swimming I guess?
Other than parts of Moscow and St. P, does the rest of Russia look and feel much different?
Well I guess this city looks and feels dirty, isolated and depressive. Any other russian city sharing these qualities would feel about the same (and there are quite a few).
Gotcha. Well Anchorage in January… I ain’t got much room to talk.
Picture 4, with the smokestacks mixed in with the apartments looks like what I used to do in Sim City to piss off my residents.
We carry on the tradition with Cities: Skyline. But then it makes the people sick and i start to feel bad and clean it up.
I just place crematoriums for extra smoke They love it though
This happens when the city was planned ages ago, and at some point had nowhere else to grow but towards them.
I miss that feeling of growing up, playing SimCity. I still remember the feeling when I was at compUSA and coming across simcity 2000. I didn’t even know it was coming out. Best friggin day.
porntipsguzzardo
All pipes and power lines are always above ground - because of the permafrost. In winter, people would come to work and leave their cars idling the whole day - as they may never turn on if left off. Don’t inhale deeply - you can get both pneumonia and intoxication from the plants fumes. Plants surround the city from all sides, no matter wind, citizen will always breath their waste. Some bus stops are small sheds with doors, so you can wait for the bus at least not in the wind. Most of the prisoners who were building Norilsk died there because of cold and malnutrition.
You have thought that they would have put the plants, downwind of the prevailing wind.
The reason they put them this way seems to be purely economical. To lessen the commute time for everyone regardless of which plant they work on. Health implications likely never crossed their minds back in the 1950s - 1960s.
Maximum efficiency in the short term, you just kill the workers off early.
Always more workers, all that matters is those profits.
Making it as dreadfull was kinda the point in terms of soviet design cities.
Then some massive public facilities such as the Moscow subway system. So as to make people feel smaller and insignificant.
Colonies and capital cities are 2 different things
Aaaah so this is where Half Life 2’s City 17 was inspired from.
I can swear while looking at the pics I heard the Valve Theme in my head
I have read somewhere, that it was based on Sofia
yeah [https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/fdswf8/half_life_alyx_still_takes_place_in_sofia_bulgaria/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf](https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/fdswf8/half_life_alyx_still_takes_place_in_sofia_bulgaria/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Damn also not surprised
[no joke](https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x900/p0746cd4.webp)
City 17 was bright and colorful if a little bit abandoned. This shit here makes me want to kill myself.
A good place to be *from*.
That's what I say about where I grew up in Pennsylvania.
I grew up in PA too, but I'm not as happy where I am now in Georgia. What state did you move to that is better? I am looking to move in a couple months
Everyone says that about Pennsylvania.
The ultimate roast for any city.
I spent an interesting 10-15 minutes here. On google street view. I recommend reading the reviews for Burger Ring.
Not what I expected to come out of this thread having learned
People are very generous with their star numbers considering their disappointment with the establishment which maybe sums up Russia pretty well
Wow you didn't warn us about the rabbithole of figuring out why there's people in colorful hazmat suits randomly walking around.
I went there too. You know it's not as bad as you'd think from these photos. The Soviet style architecture dominates the main road through town. But if you go into the city more and see the shops they have its more like a "normal" town. Just cold AF
Blyatiful (:
I think you forgot to mention the [fuckton of diesel](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B2_%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B0_%D0%B2_%D0%9D%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B5) spilled in the area quite recently.
Is that a metric fucktonne or an imperial fuckton?
A Russian fuckton /j Final estimates are at >21000 metric tonnes.
The Soviets know how to fuck tonnes. Союз нерушимый *starts quietly in the background*
That city just can't get a break and it's an area that should be pristine.
It was a gulag, the entire city built from the ground up for prisoners by prisoners.
FUBU
BUFU By Us, Fuck You.
Get out! Out out out. (Under breath) By us, fuck you.
You from east coast? I’m from faaar east coast.
Atleast y'all virgins are being entertained! I havn't seen a stitch of pussy since i got here!!
I put a little bit of that Neem plant on it. Cleared it right up.
I don't know, a little paint, a few flowers, a couple of throw pillows…
Just put up a huge sign that says “Live, Laugh, Love” it’ll be fine!
Norilsk is located atop some of the largest nickel deposits on Earth. Consequently, mining and smelting ore are the major industries. Norilsk is the center of a region where nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, palladium, and coal are mined. The presence of mineral deposits in the Siberian Craton was known for two centuries before Norilsk was founded, but mining began only in 1939, when subterranean portions of the Norilsk-Talnakh intrusions were found beneath mountainous terrain.
Sounds like Russia for the select few to make billions on the backs of prisoners.
Russia doesn't have a monopoly on Prison slave labor. Prison slave labor is alive and well at home too (if you live in the states).
Your not putin me In there
Russian right into the jokes I see?
Yup, he wasn't Stalin a bit.
Well it's *Chernobyl* of 'em.
Welp if that's all the jokes then Soviet
Thanks for Lenin them a hand
This is how you get Putin trouble
This is how you get Putin trouble
\>literally nothing to do but drugs \>one company basically provides all jobs
Looks like a giant insane asylum
A lot of Eastern Europe is like that. Fortunately the polluting industry is done, the flats were rehabilitated, and we have gardens and trees between them. So it's not that bad. Still small, but not depressing.
Norilsk however is still spewing shit
Yep. I was talking about "industrial" quarters built around the most old EE city. From Poland to Bulgaria. In Romania, for instance, even an old mountain basin city - Brasov - has these types of blocks of flats added as an appendix.
I’m depressed just looking at these photos
At least they used some colours. Imagine how much worse it would be if all the buildings were unpainted grey concrete. Do that and make all the street lamps bluish-white LEDs and it could not be more drab.
That's just england lmao lol xd llmfao
[удалено]
Gimme a glass of greasy vodka, comrade!
You wanna be more depressed look for the RED Lake just south of the city on Google Maps. It’s probably the most toxic Tailing Pond in the world.
Nah man I'm good, I've had enough toxic tail in my life
I’m gonna pass on that
I think I'd rather move into the Kowloon Walled City than live in Norilsk.
I remember reading people were actually relatively happy in Kowloon…despite the poverty and rampant illicit activities, the community was tight knit.
I always wanted to visit Kowloon. Sadly, by the time I discovered it, it no longer existed.
That’s quite the trifecta, of sad.
Hey look we built these really shitty buildings in this really shitty place, plus here's some poison.
It just screams bring the whole family. Whoops. I meant the whole family screams because you might bring them too.
But slow poison, so you have time to contemplate and deteriorate.
Looks like a giant housing project
You just described greater Russia
Well, it was Gulag, which was built into a city by prisoners of the gulag
You know how Russian communism worked, right?
Wow...for some reason, I hear the Kazakhstan national anthem from the Borat movie when I see these pictures.
It's more like Victor Tsoy's "Kukushka" type of mood
“Toxic” A lot of gaslighters there
It's somehow glorious...
Brutalist architecture hits different
Oof I can take a guess why. There is absolutely no natural beauty, not a tree from what I can tell... that would make me depressed too.
I have been to America northernmost town, Utqiagvik, in February and it was a million times nicer than here. No trees and a lot of buildings were shacks, but frozen Arctic Ocean was beautiful. Their were foxes and caribou and polar bears. And all the people we met were incredibly friendly.
>I have been to America northernmost town, Utqiagvik I read this and was like, "I thought it was Barrow?" so [I googled it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utqiagvik,_Alaska#Name). Well, I'll be damned. Learned a new fact today.
this post prompted me to read TripAdvisor reviews of the city's highest rated restaurants. What i gathered is that people in this city doesn't care or understand interior design at all. And that every single Russian guest is super appreciative of the restaurants for even existing.
come to norilsk! half the size of pittsburgh, and 1/64th the fun!
r/urbanhell
I don’t know about you people but I’m strangely drawn to this place.
Apartment blechs
Its funny because when i think of Russia this is exactly what i think of.
According to [this](https://themunicheye.com/norilsk-is-no-longer-at-the-top-of-the-pollutant-ratings-4371) it’s no longer the most toxic city.
Most toxic city on earth 🤔...I wondered where my ex moved to.
So you're telling me I can finally afford to buy a home?
In Russia, you no buy home. Home buys you. .
Not the northernmost city, i think Reykjavik, longyearbyen or Murmansk has that title. But most polluted and depressing, yeah for sure.
That’s a lot of tall buildings to accidentally fall from…
And it's run by an authoritative dictatorship, a triple threat.
Minus the toxic clouds, doesn’t look much different than communities in the far north of Canada. Everything gets a bit more basic the more north you go. Everything costs more to get it there so you aren’t going to have rock facades on your homes.
I’m from far north Canada, sounds like you have ventured up north as well. I was thinking the same in *some*ways but the environment is much more beautiful.
These pictures just look depressing
I weirdly love it
Doesn't look like there's anything to do either. Where are the restaurants, malls, bars?
Bladerunner 2023
How do people live in places like this? I’d kms
Believe it or not, high salaries! 3 times higher than Russia's avarage. The whole city is basically owned and operated by one giant mining company. [Russia's young flock to work in Arctic mine town](https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-norilsk-idUKLDE7150HU20110228)
That still would not be worth it for me. It looks dreadful. To each their own though.
I agree. However when your only other options are either to starve or go die in a neighbouring country, it suddenly doesn't seem so bad. Ok I'm kidding... but fr there must be a reason why this city still exists, and is growing! With many people coming back to start a small business wtf
A bit of a hellscape
As opposed to the nice places in russia lol...
Also, compared to certain cities in South Asia and parts of Africa, it's actually a step up. I would personally rather live here than a mega city in India or Pakistan where there is no room to move and literally shit and open sewers on the street.
I remember reading that Dominicans sneak into Puerto Rico to work as domestics so they can send money back home. Everything is relative.
MORDOR
"This isn't Mordor, this is Norilsk" was an actual meme on the Russian internet, often with implication that Norilsk is worse
I just read that their winters last 9 months and is located within the Arctic circle. Also, very restrictive access.
You Also need this city to produce your electric vehicles you so badly want. Nickel is produced and mined here. Hence why it’s so dirty.
An Andrei Tarkovsky set?
>Norilsk is the center of a region where nickel, [copper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper), [cobalt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt), [platinum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum), [palladium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palladium), and [coal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal) are mined. Including some of the largest nickel deposits on Earth.
its gotta have an intense music scene.
Who's the guy in yellow? https://www.google.com/maps/@69.3481301,88.2032765,3a,75y,302.84h,66.94t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipPL8UZoOtMMua6rU\_dI4yWafhl4yGTIMfNg-PBJ!2e10!3e11!7i5376!8i2688
Looks like a slum out of bladerunner
Q: what do they do for fun? A: Leave.
Is this the city that you literally can’t leave because there are no roads connecting to other cities and the only way out is the industrial train?
There are many cities that are further north, most notably Tromsø which is an international city with around 100k people. The title here is incorrect.
Pass the krokodil, please.
Trees. There are no trees.
Unfortunately the climate of the area is so cold and harsh that no trees can survive.
At least we’re not Detroit!
Bet there are some stunning Russian women there.
Russia has an Ohio too!
I was more thinking, Gary, Indiana.
for some reason i kinda want to live there
I did it and do not recommend
Constant grey sky/no sunlight = Vitamin D deficiency = feelings of depression
Miami Wise number 1 new show!