A MOON OF NICKEL AND
ICE B
Canada (110) 2017 d: François
Jacob
Winters are long and cold in Norilsk, Russia, with an
average temperature of minus 31 degrees Celsius (minus 23 degrees F) in
January. Days are characterized by frost, coupled with strong and violent
winds. The cold period extends for about 280 days per year, with more than 130
days of snowstorms.
—The Weather Channel
From Québécois filmmaker François Jacob, totally
familiar with living in the frozen north of Canada, he takes us on
a journey to an unfathomable region of the earth, so far away from
civilization that it’s only approachable by airplane, located 250 miles north
of the Arctic Circle, where you’ll find Norilsk, Siberia, the northernmost city
on earth with a population of more than 100,000 residents, with an average
annual temperature of 14 degrees, and the distance to Krasnoyarsk, the capital
of the region, is 1,500 km (932 miles), while the distance to the North Pole –
2,400 km (1491 miles). What makes this area notable? It
holds the world’s largest deposits of nickel and palladium, with 17% and
41% of the world production respectively, while factory and mining operations
continue non-stop 24 hrs/day, with a schedule of 3 work days followed by a day
off. But the underlying story is the city history, as it was built
by Gulag prison camps dating back to 1935 that lasted until Stalin’s death in
1953, though the prisons were also filled with regular criminals as well, which
didn’t shut down until several years later. All the more remarkable
is that Gulag prisoners were also the architects that built the town,
constructed in 1940, using cement block buildings in the style of Stalin
architecture. Without modern machinery and equipment, the brutal
work was done by hand, brick by brick. A second construction phase
began in 1960 as part of the widespread USSR system of constructing buildings
with pre-built panels, though they ran out of money and were never completed,
but remain standing, a forgotten ghost town still part of the frozen landscape,
relics from another era. Currently, two oligarchs own the Norilsk
Nickel Company, which is highly profitable, bringing in 2% of the Russian GDP,
but the town is also listed among the top ten most polluted cities in the world
today, annually spewing more than two million tons of pollutant gas (mainly
sulphur dioxide, but also nitrogen oxides, carbon and phenols) into the
atmosphere, where life expectancy is ten years less than the rest of Russia,
which is already among the lowest anywhere in the world. The risk of
cancer is twice as high, including blood and skin disorders, while lung
diseases are widespread, where the air quality is responsible for 37% of child
deaths and 21% of adult deaths. One could safely argue that Norilsk
is the ugliest and the most inhospitable city anywhere on earth, yet
ironically, on top of one of the tallest buildings is an electronic display on
automatic repeat that reads “Norilsk Nickel: A World of
Opportunities!”
Resembling a science fiction landscape, the city, even today,
remains a closed city (since 2001), as you need permits just to visit, with the
filmmakers spending 5 years of grant writing, research, even learning the
language while attempting to navigate the Russian bureaucracy, as all
outsiders are brought in exclusively to work for the company. While
the place is covered in ice and snow for 8 or 9 months of the year, without a
single living tree within 30 miles, so most of the time is spent indoors,
including all children activities, where huge buildings allow them to enjoy
typical outdoor activities like cycling and running in an indoor
environment. From December to January, there are six weeks when they
are plunged into total darkness, with no sun whatsoever, causing any number of
ailments, most stemming from depression, but also including insomnia, described
as “the polar night syndrome.” During the coldest periods, a convoy
of 15 to 20 buses transport workers around three times a day, so if one bus
breaks down, the passengers can be evacuated to another bus. Too
much time, however, spent living in confined spaces leads to claustrophobia,
where the Russian antidote appears to be drinking heavily among friends, the
favorite past time of most adult men. Citizens here brag about their
neighborly hospitality, claiming no child goes hungry, that they all look after
one another and help in times of need, with drinking buddies claiming these are
the best friends in the world, seen taking a midnight dip in the icy waters,
with steam coming off their bodies as they exit. Even in the
bleakest environment, human friendship and companionship becomes paramount, as
difficulties seem to unite people, showing how humans adapt and
survive. But it’s hard to escape the history of this
town. During the Stalin purges, some of the brightest minds were
sent here as political prisoners, as many as 650,000, forced to work in the
freezing cold under the most inhumane conditions imaginable, actually
constructing the mines, factories, and buildings that still exist today, where
250,000 died prematurely from starvation and untreated sickness associated with
slave labor. Nickel ore is smelted on site at Norilsk, one of the
most toxic pollutants, causing acid rain and smog, where a dark cloud
constantly hovers over this city which is constantly spewing gaseous soot into
the air, where even today the city is denounced by environmentalists as a major
environmental disaster. While in the West, we are free to mention
the dark history and the toxic consequences of working there, but in Russia
this information remains suppressed, as the Nickel company continues to recruit
potential workers from former Soviet countries like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan, so the advertising accentuates the financial rewards, including
early retirement by age 45, but omits the hazards, though inhabitants living in
Norilsk certainly understand the risks, that the company literally works you to
death.
There is some controversy among the residents of Norilsk
about how to view their own history, whether to honor those that built this
town and consider them heroes, or whether to remain silent about the uglier
side of the Stalinist Gulags, preferring a sanitized account of history, which
seems to be the government’s position, thinking it’s enough to mention what
happened, but don’t dwell upon it. Be done with it and move
on. There is a contingency that are sons and daughters of the Gulag
prisoners that want to honor their ancestors, as they were committed Bolsheviks
when communism was still considered a revolutionary worker’s party, where a
giant statue of Lenin remains affixed to the town square. Some are
in disbelief that Russia lost so many lives in WWII to rid the world of
fascism, yet it seems to be on the rise again, even in their own country, while
the workers we see continue to vote a straight party line ticket, as communism
represents their social values. One of the leading advocates is
highly outspoken, “Norilsk Nickel has erased its brutal history from the
collective memory: the exploitation of free labor. They
replaced the troubling slave history with myths of the Communist Youth and
stories about eager newcomers.” While once condemning Stalin, more
recently Putin has embraced the former leader, including his dictatorial style,
where a recent Russian poll by the Levada Center, an independent,
non-governmental research organization, found Stalin to be more popular with
Russians today than Putin, as after all, Stalin won the war, Stalin
More Popular Than Putin, Russians Say - Newsweek. With that
strongman ideology comes a crackdown on free speech. When a group
attempted to raise a flag in honor of the town’s founders, commemorating a
famous 1953 Gulag uprising, they were promptly arrested. There is a
thriving theater company that puts on dramatic performances, even in the dead
of winter, claiming residents fully support them and come out, even during the
worst blizzards. What we never see are hockey players or figure
skaters on ice rinks, where you’d think in this city they might thrive, but the
cost of maintaining an “artificial” ice surface may seem superfluous in this
ice city, where the outdoor conditions are simply too brutal. As the
film moves to questioning the ambitions of the city’s youth, almost unanimously
these kids want out, as no one wants to stay here, believing it is a death
trap. Most envision careers in St. Petersburg, including a young
girl who wrote her first novel at age 14, causing considerable alarm to local
residents due to the adult content, believing she was too young to understand
these matters. “Here it feels like living on the moon,” she says,
describing life in Norilsk as living in an “endless tunnel.” Nonetheless,
she is bright and ambitious, where a film crew actually follows her as she
travels to St. Petersburg and begins a new life, relieved to finally find
herself in a cosmopolitan city teeming with life, with Norilsk, already a
distant memory, viewed in stark contrast.
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