Nightmare in the Siberian Arctic: 

Norilsk, Russia's most polluted and coldest city

Russia colonizing in Siberia were related to the expansion of the Russian czarist state from principles of the XVII century. 

To a large extent, this advance was motivated by the fur trade. The process was followed by colonizing migrations that gradually modified the regional demographics.

The changes were accelerated by the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway, whose laying began in 1891 by a decision of Czar Alexander II and culminated in 1916 shortly before the Bolshevik revolution.

 The trans-Siberian railway system made it possible to know and have access to other natural resources besides skins and wood, in particular deposits of metallic minerals, gas and oil. 

In the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet state, which had replaced the Tsarist power, promoted the occupation of the Nordic and Arctic lands to obtain its mineral wealth.

The most important reservoir was discovered in the 1930s(1) in the Ienisei and Pyasina river basins in the far north. In them important volumes of nickel, and to a lesser extent of copper, cobalt, platinum and palladium were found. 

On this potential economic basis the Soviet government decided to establish a mining and industrial complex in northern Siberia called Norilsk.

During the following years immigration  to the new city was favored and its population grew considerably. 

At the same time, a port was built on the Ienisei River in the town of Dudinka about a hundred kilometers from the mining complex. Dudinka receives the minerals wholly or partly processed from Norilsk for export by river and sea to the port of Murmansk in northwestern Russia.

In less than half a century, due to the economic importance of mining activities, the city of Norilsk grew to have a maximum of 183,000 inhabitants in 1982. 

After that year there was the local mining industry suffered stagnation and the city entered a period of demographic decline that has continued to the present. In the 2005 census the population had declined to 135,000 people.

The geographical site of Norilsk has a very rigorous climate. The average January temperature is -33 degrees C and the annual average is -10 degrees C. There has been a minimum temperature of -58 degrees C. 

For this reason the natural ecosystems of the region are composed of low density boreal forests-northern taiga(2)- and areas of frozen subsoil (permafrost) with herbaceous summer vegetation devoid of trees (tundra) (3).

Due to the mining and industrial activity, the original ecosystems around Norilsk suffered greatly from the environmental point of view. There is practically not a single tree within a radius of 48 kilometers from the plants and quarries. The site has been stripped of its soils and surface formations.

There are large open-air excavations and stabilization ponds covering more than 10,000 hectares and the drainage has been completely modified with deep degradation of nearby Pyasino Lake and its river emissary, the Pyasina River. 

It is estimated that 4 million tonnes of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic, selenium and zinc have been released into the air.

Norilsk is the main producer of acid rain in Russia and its emissions affect an area of ​​more than 100,000 km2 .

From "Chronicles of Human Peripecie", Danilo Antón, .Piriguazú Ediciones.

1 The city of Norilsk was founded in 1935, but mining began four years later.

2 The word taiga comes from a Russian word that in turn derives from the yakuto and means "all uninhabited territory, covered with forests".

3 Tundra is derived from a Finnish word tunturia meaning "plain without trees".

4 The Pyasina River flows into the Kara Sea (Arctic Sea)