Boris Schumatsky:
Olga Yaskina was 14 years old when she was sent to Norilsk, which was then a gigantic Gulag camp. Along with hundreds of thousands of other prisoners, Olga spent her years in the ice-cold polar desert building roads, ore mines, smelting works, and the houses of the developing city. Even following her release, Olga had no means of escaping the Far North.
There are massive deposits of nickel, copper, platinum, and gold under the city of Norilsk. This has been known since the 16th century, but the area was always much too far away to attract real interest: First 4,000 kilometers across the steppes and taiga from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk; then another 2,000 kilometers down the Siberian river Yenisei, across the deserted tundra into the Arctic Circle, and then even further north almost as far as the Arctic Ocean. For a long time, it was considered unthinkable to mine mineral deposits in the middle of an ice wasteland. It was not until the Stalinist era that a solution was found. The first of over 300,000 prisoners were shipped to Norilsk in 1935 - in the windowless and unheated cargo holds of the Yenisei ferry boats.
The state nickel combine built by the Gulag inmates was privatized in the mid-1990s for a fraction of its actual value. Today Norilsk Nickel is one of Russia’s most profitable companies and the world’s leading producer of nickel. At the same time, however, the emissions from the city’s various smelting works rank Norilsk among the world’s ten most polluted cities. Apart from nickel, two thirds of world palladium production is also mined in Norilsk and sold to international automobile manufacturers. Palladium is used in catalyzers to reduce exhaust gas emissions from combustion engines. Meanwhile, a death zone measuring 60 kilometers in diameter has developed around Norilsk. And according to Greenpeace, acid rain is destroying an area of tundra the size of Germany.
As a former inmate of the Gulag, Olga Yaskina is now entitled to compensation. For a fraction of the billions in profit earned by Norilsk Nickel, the city is obliged to subsidize the cost of an apartment for her in southern Russia. Only then will the now 70-year-old woman be finally able to leave the Arctic region. But few people in Norilsk care about Olga’s life story. The middle-aged generation is reluctant to talk about the city’s past as a Gulag. And for students living in Norilsk, money and their future careers are more important than coming to terms with the past. The governing authorities in neither Norilsk nor Moscow want to concern themselves with the past, either, although – or perhaps because – these days it does seem to be becoming an issue in Russian politics again. Olga keeps waiting.
The journey to Norilsk took place in February and March 2007. The resulting radio feature was produced in mid-June 2007 in Berlin by the Deutschlandradio Kultur channel for the series “Menschen und Landschaften” (People and Landscapes), edited by Karin Schorsch. The production was directed by Beate Ziegs. Dieter Mann from Deutsches Theater in Berlin read the part of the narrator. Christine Oesterlein – Grande Dame of German-language radio plays – read the part of Olga.
A radio feature by Boris Schumatsky: "Wie ein anderer Planet. Norilsk im sibirischen Polargebiet"
First broadcast: 24 June 2007, Deutschlandradio Kultur
The radio feature “Wie ein anderer Planet” will be broadcast on WDR 5 radio channel on Sunday 3 February 2008 at 11.05.
FIRST BROADCAST OF THE UNABRIDGED VERSION (51 MIN).
Program announcement on the WDR website: http://www.wdr5.de/sendungen/feature/1036620.phtml
