The Lure of a Better Life, Amid Cold and Darkness | Hacker News Reader

The Lure of a Better Life, Amid Cold and Darkness

nytimes.com

112 pointsdanso36 comments

Its interesting, I live far north in Europe, and yes part of the year is cold and dark, but real winter is also fantastic, and the opposite, real summer, something nobody living south get to experience is nothing short of amazing, perpetual sunlight, a pleasant warmth and a life that slows down that gives you time to reflect on bigger things.

Its all in the perspective....

Its probably a fair bit warmer where you live though. This city is in Siberia which although the same latitude as Northern Europe, is a lot colder. Right now it is -20C/-5F there, and it’s not even the cold part of the year yet :-)

Yeah. I grew up in northern Europe too (actually almost exactly the same latitude as Norilsk), and I agree that Siberia is whole another degree of extreme. Of course there is the climate, the difference of hitting -40 (which was what I've grew up) or -60 (Norilsk) feels pretty significant. Then there is the level of infrastructure; northern Europe enjoys high standards of living and decent enough infrastructure, which arguably helps dealing with the environment. Finally there is the degree of remoteness and isolation; this latitude is roughly 1000km north of the major cities in Nordics (Oslo/Stockholm/Helsinki). In comparison go 1000km in any direction from Norilsk and you are still in the middle of Siberia.

What I find most surprising is the size of the city. 110k people seems quite large for a mining city in the middle of nowhere.

The big difference may be with access: Norilsk, as the article implies, has neither road no rail connections to the rest of the world. A plane (expensive, few, affected by weather) is pretty much the only practical way in and out.

Living in Norway and being able to go for a weekend to a larger civilization a few times per winter I suspect makes a world of difference.

One photo is mislabelled. Its a 'potemkin village' labor camp, the photograph is obviously re-constructed stagefronts of work camp houses, with no sides or back, and with russian orthodox crosses alongside each: its either a memorial or an art installation.

Good catch! I knew something looked off/artificial about it but I didn't know enough about the history of the area to figure it out.

Its very interesting to me, as a person who grew up with very anti-communist parents, to see that most citizens of the city still live in Soviet Era apartment buildings. If the country/city could build an entire fucking city under Soviets, what's preventing more modern city blocks from being built in these times? Or is it just that the population is not expanding enough?

It's not only in Russia, actually.

In New England, many buildings are from early XX century or older. People still live there. (Of course, they are refurbished.)

What changed from the Soviet times - now there's no free money, so no one will build new buildings unless someone else will pay for it.

I hear in Moscow they were trying to tear some of these old buildings to build new apartment complexes. It's controversial in how it was handled I hear especially with respect to older people who have lived in those buildings.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/31/moscow-bigges...

It's allegedly the largest planned urban demolition.

In general Soviets liked to build fast, cheap and efficiently. Corners were often cut. The apartments were not luxurious and would be considered cramped by Western standards. Everything was standardized so you'd see blocks and blocks of almost identical buildings. There is even a well known movie that has that as a key plot element: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073179/ (Man gets drunk, accidentally flies to another city, which had an identically named street, apartment block looks the same, etc).

However it was provided to the citizens for free, sometimes after waiting in line for years. My parents waited for 6 years to get a new apartment after I was born, we got one with 2 rooms instead of 1 room. And yes, they were also very anti-communist (in private at least during those times).

In a place like Norilsk I would guess there other constraints such as extreme cold, would make things hard. Even as new developments having 5 or 9 story blocks might be the more efficient to heat and maintain them. They also built on permafrost, with global warming melting, they'd probably be having major issues soon.

> There is even a well known movie that has that as a key plot element: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073179/ (Man gets drunk, accidentally flies to another city, which had an identically named street, apartment block looks the same, etc).

My wife makes me watch this every Christmas. (I usually fall asleep before the second part) I have the feeling it is a tradition somewhat like It's a Wonderful Life.

Interesting intersection of traditions.

Usually Russians watch Ironiya Sudby on December 31, since Christmas is not celebrated.

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Another one that everybody watches is Briliantovaya Ruka.

Possibly there’s nothing much wrong with the actual structures? Tearing them down and replacing them with modern versions mightn’t yield that much improvement. The design life of an apartment block tends to be pretty long.

There are lots of 60s and 70s apartment blocks in my area; many have had improved insulation, windows etc, put in (and in a few cases even an extra storey) but it wouldn’t be normal to demolish and rebuild them.

"to see that most citizens of the city still live in Soviet Era apartment buildings."

In this context, "Soviet Era apartment buildings" means "crap quality buildings". A while ago there was a post on here on how bad they are, that Moscow's municipal government is on a replacement spree, but how some were fighting tearing them down because of nostalgia. Either way, the plumbing was all broken, they're tiny and with inadequate heating systems, etc. Of course the Soviet system could build cities, they did all over the place. The problem is the quality and the long-term economic sustainability.

>but how some were fighting tearing them down because of nostalgia.

No.

Alexey Kovalev (of Moscow Times IIRC) is your guy if you wanna know more. But I am sure these people are not going to protests for "nostalgia".

No you're right, now I remember - some people got replacement home in other neighbourhoods and they didn't want to move. Either way, doesn't really change my point.

Russia's population is shrinking and Soviet-era monotowns [1] are shrinking fastest of all, so housing supply exceeds demand everywhere except hotspots like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Norilsk is doing better than most because its raw materials are still valuable, but per Wikipedia even its recent population growth appears to be mostly due to absorbing two nearby cities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotown

I imagine that construction costs in such a remote area are astronomical. Under the Soviet system, the buildings were simply built regardless of cost because the economy was centralized. Now, most Norilsk residents probably don't want to shoulder the costs of construction there. After all, the salaries are high for unskilled Russian labor but still not high (2,500 USD/year in 2011 [0]).

Apparently, apartments are dirt cheap too, and other prices are quite high [0]. So maybe Norilsk residents don't have the disposable income to replace the blocks even if they would like to.

[0]http://siberianwonders.com/2011/03/norilsk-nickel-siberian-c...

Can anyone link to more pieces like this? I love reading about communities living in foreign or extreme environments like this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insig... Kowloon is another great one.

You might know of (or else enjoy) Whittier, Alaska, a "city within a building" through each winter.

https://www.npr.org/2015/01/18/378162264/welcome-to-whittier...

FYI Kowloon refers to the peninsula part of Hong Kong which is incredibly, not to be confused with the removed walled city (the area of which is being redeveloped IIRC)

If you don't mind fiction, I can recommend Drop City by T.C. Boyle. It's about a hippie commune moving from California to a remote town in Alaska.

Here's a short video from a year ago regarding the same town.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/my-beautiful-dead...

That seems like a pretty nice place to live. (I'm serious)

Only if you set aside the pollution.

The pollution dead zone would seem like a bummer. Fairbanks might be a better bet.

It would be interesting to visit, on the assumption that people who live hard party hard, and just to see how people make the best of a non-ideal situation, especially in isolation. But it doesn't sound like it's easy to get travel visas.

I'd be interested in hearing the backstory of how this photo essay came together. The photographer, Sergey Ponomarev, is a Pulitzer Prize winner [0] for freelance work he did as a NYT freelancer and is born and based in Moscow. It sounds like the city is under tight restrictions but presumably Russia's security services trusted him enough to let him in.

[0] http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/mauricio-lima-sergey-ponomar...

Not for most...but there are us weirdos who actually like the cold and dark :)

From the stories of people who visited or lived in Norilsk (a decade ago though), it sounded like it was the closest approximation of hell on the planet.

Can I interest you in Svalbard?

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Svalbard

Svalbard is nice, except (IMHO, if you stay for a while) there isn't enough people there.

Longyearbyen (Largest settlement) has got on the order of 2,000 inhabitants which basically means that in a few weeks, all the faces are familiar and the ones which aren't are tourists.

Now, this obviously leads to a close-knit community and isn't inherently a bad thing - but I'd find it a bit claustrophobic in a while. (Doubly so if I was single, as the dating pool is very, very limited.)

The scenery is hard to beat, though.

Fun fact: Part of the deal when Norway gained sovereignty over Svalbard was that anyone from anywhere could settle there without bothering with visas and the like - as long as you can provide for yourself. (This, admittedly, is somewhat more difficult than it sounds, as just about all housing there is is owned by the Store Norske Spitsbergen Kullkompani, the coal mine which until satellite communications became a thing was Longyearbyen's raison d'etre - so finding shelter can be a challenge if you decide to give Spitsbergen a try)

It is a bit depressing. You should think on your vitamin D levels. You will be on the verge of suicide (joking).

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