MOSCOW, May 27. /TASS Correspondents Viktoria Melnikova, Nikolay Kochetkov/. Many people may travel to Arctic for money or for romance, but not many manage to stand it and connect their lives with the North. Despite the harsh weather and living conditions, cities north of the Arctic Circle do live and develop. Families and generations have been working with the Norilsk Nickel Company, which mines and processes worldwide consumed non-ferrous metals. We have talked with our characters to learn how they came to the Arctic and how some dynasties are already 150 years long.

Norilsk is my beloved city

Anton Yurchenko, a native of Norilsk, can talk much about the hometown. He was born, raised there, and he works in Norilsk. He understands perfectly well the North's specifics. "Norilsk is a very honest city. All pros and cons can be seen immediately, thus people either fall in love with it or remain indifferent. Sure, there's place for the North romance, and it is very helpful in life. You walk around the city - it's beautiful everywhere," he said.

Anton is of a most famous Bardyuk - Protas - Yurchenko dynasty. This large family has given almost 150 years to Norilsk and the Norilsk Nickel Company. Nadezhda Bardyuk started the dynasty. She came to Norilsk back in 1946. "Grandma had an amazing and difficult life. It was not her choice to come to Norilsk from the Soviet Union's south, but she fell in love with the North with all her heart, and the city became her dear city. She was a milkmaid at the Norilsk state farm, then she worker at the municipal maintenance company. The work and life were hard, but Grandma never gave in. She found many friends in Norilsk. She lived in a barrack, and I can remember the door to her room would always remain open. People could come, talk. We had great fun celebrating holidays, sang a lot of songs," her granddaughter, Maya Yurchenko, told us.

During first years in Norilsk, Nadezhda searched for her daughter Lyudmila, from whom she had been separated. According to Anton Yurchenko, the dynasty founder's great-grandson, they have managed to find Lyudmila in Soviet archives. "Great-grandmother (Nadezhda Ivanovna) brought her daughter (Lyudmila Filimonovna) to Norilsk from an orphanage in the Krasnoyarsk Region when she was already 14 years old, so they hadn't seen each other for almost 10 years," Anton Yurchenko said.

At the age of 16, Lyudmila started working in Norilsk and worked for 38 years in various organizations and at the plant, received several state and professional awards. In Norilsk, she married Anton Protas and gave birth to two daughters - Maya and Irina.

The girls' lives were related to Norilsk Nickel. Irina did not work for long because she became a mother with many children and soon left for the mainland with her family. But Maya Antonovna Yurchenko's work experience at the plant's various departments continued for almost 40 years. Maya Antonovna's husband, Alexander Yurchenko, came to Norilsk from Donetsk and worked almost all his life at the Mechanical Plant. He started as an electric welder and progressed to a deputy head of production. The family is proud that Alexander Georgievich has participated in making steles of the Norilsk - Alykel road and letters "Norilsk" at the entrance to the city.

Anton Yurchenko said their family's motto had been: we are where work is. "Nowadays, I work as a deputy CEO in one of the company's divisions, and I also teach several economics subjects at the Polar State University. In 2015, I moved to Moscow to work at Norilsk Nickel's head office, but the North wouldn't let me go. Seven years later, I received an offer from the department director to lead a department in Norilsk, and I returned. I've never regretted it. To me, Norilsk is my native and beloved city, it is my city. I want to work here and make it better," Anton said.

The Bardyuk - Protas - Yurchenko big family is proud of the dynasty's all generations. "Though it was very difficult for my mother and grandmother, they maintained human qualities, they remained kind, wise, and strong-minded. We all loved our work very much - we did not fear frosts or blizzards, we knew we were doing something important and necessary. It must be right that the North educates like nobody else can, and that special people live there," Maya said.

"Wherever you can see - it's all tundra. What a beauty!"

On the left bank of the Bolshaya Kheta River on the Taymyr Peninsula, there is a small village of Tukhard, which was founded in 1968 as a transshipment base for construction of the Messoyakha - Dudinka - Norilsk gas pipeline. The locals - the Dolgans and Nenets - had known the area very well and dubbed it "the place where the fire burns."

In 1970, gas for the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Plant was sent from the Messoyakhskoye gas field along the pipeline's first line. As the big construction continued on the Taymyr, people from all over the USSR were going to Tukhard to develop new gas fields.

Valery Martynov, the founder of the future famous northern dynasty, came to the Taymyr in 1976. "My parents and I come from the city of Serov, the Sverdlovsk Region. In 1976, my father went to a construction site in Volgodonsk, and from there he filed a request and received a call to work on the Taymyr. So, in 1976, we received a telegram from my father that he was in the North, on the Taymyr, in Tukhard. We were very surprised: he had left to Volgodonsk to end up in Tukhard," Valery's son Vadim said.

At that time, gas workers and builders of the Messoyakha - Norilsk gas pipeline were in Tukhard. Workers were needed badly. Tukhard was set up as a transshipment base, to where came to work families and single people of different skills - they were builders, welders, installers, drivers, helicopter crews. Valery got a job as an electrician, settled in, and a year later brought his family to the North.

"I was four years old then, but I can remember that trip. We traveled first from Serov to Sverdlovsk by train, then by two planes, then by a commuter train to Dudinka and by helicopter to Tukhard. When we got to Tukhard, it took me a moment to realize that was the final destination. We were accommodated in a construction trailer (that looks like a railcar), and I thought the train would arrive to pull us on, since I've never seen before that people could live in a railcar. But the train's never come," Vadim Martynov laughed.

Vadim's mother started working as a switchboard operator, and she continued working to 2021. She chose to stay in Dudinka, since all the children (Vadim, Evgeny, Natalia) lived there, in the North.

Vadim lived with his parents in Tukhard before school, and he was sent to his grandmother in Serov to study at school, because there was no school in the village.

"There were many children in Tukhard, we went to the local children's club Cheburashka. While parents were at work, we did crafts at Cheburashka, painted, learned songs and prepared for festive performances for parents. When I was five, my mother gave birth to my brother Zhenya (Evgeny) in Dudinka. Dad flew to Dudinka to pick up mom and the newborn, and I stayed at home alone, neighbors were keeping an eye on me. My father thought he would come back in a day, but they kept my mother and Zhenya at hospital for another week, and I ended up being on my own for 10 days. I go to the hostel, everyone knew that my parents had flown out to Dudinka, they feed me, and then I return home to sleep. Mom from Dudinka calls the neighbors through the switchboard, ask about me, and the neighbors say everything's fine. Nowadays, it is impossible to imagine a situation like that, but back then we were very friendly with neighbors - people who had come from different Soviet republics. That's how friendly people lived in the USSR," Vadim said.

He graduated from secondary school in the Urals, then from college with a degree in crane construction, and in 1993 decided to go to Tukhard to work during the summer river navigation, and eventually stayed there for 32 years.

"Those were the dashing 90s - factories began to close, criminal situation all around. So, the decision to leave was only logic. In 1993, I returned to Tukhard to work as a loader-slinger at the Tukhard workshop of Norilskgazprom. In the summer, barges brought cargoes to the pier, and we unloaded them using floating cranes. In winter, cargo was loaded from the warehouse into vehicles for further shipment to gas fields: Messoyakha, Yuzhno-Solyonoye, Severo-Solyonoye," he said.

Vadim's future wife, Elena, came to Tukhard from the Kemerovo Region in 1999 to visit aunt and eventually stayed there for good. "I have never regretted that my life is in the North. At first, of course, I missed home, being so far away, and there was no communication. I would book a 5-minute call to mom, but wouldn't talk even for one minute - the line would fail. I found a job almost immediately. My office was in the airport building. Vadim had an office in the same building. That's where we met."

Now, Elena is an air dispatcher for Norilsktransgaz. She manages helicopter flights taking shift workers, including Vadim, to gas fields.

"The work is very interesting - I communicate with people all the time, I try to explain everything, to be helpful. During these almost 25 years in the North, I've realized that here live real people with big hearts," Elena Martynova said.

She shared the love for the North with her family. In 2003, her father Pavel Zhiryakov came to work, remained working until 2015 and then returned to the mainland.

"He remembers the North often, he's got only good memories," Elena said.

As Vadim Martynov said, nobody plans to move to the mainland. "We've all settled in here, found our place in life. Here, in the North, I've met my fate. Moreover, I've fell in love with the North and the tundra with all my heart. The tundra is exceptionally beautiful in late summer and early autumn. Whenever I have some free time, I love walking into the tundra to breathe in, to take pictures of flowers, leaves, bushes," he said.

Vadim and Elena Martynov are married with two children. The eldest son Kirill studies at the Siberian Federal University in Krasnoyarsk, the youngest daughter Dasha lives with her parents and studies at the department of orchestral wind and percussion instruments at the Norilsk College of Arts.

"The children have not yet decided whether they will live and work on the mainland or in the North. But I tell my son: Nornickel has many good programs to attract young professionals, so when you graduate from the university, think about it, everyone in Norilsk can have future. While our parents went to the Taymyr for money and for romance, to us the North is our home. Many people who we know would leave for the mainland, and after a short time, they feel nostalgic and miss the North very much. We, the Martynovs, will always value the small village of Tukhard, where our dynasty began," Vadim said.

'I immediately realized - that was it'

The dynasty of 64-year-old Grigory Bukhantsev from Monchegorsk, the metallurgist city, has almost 70 years of experience. He and his children - two sons and a daughter - work at Norilsk Nickel's divisions and its subsidiary - the Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company. Wife Elena has also worked with the Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company - 14 years as a plasterer at the Severonickel Plant.

"We came to the North in 1985 from the Belgorod Region. The eldest son, Nikolay, was only two years old. I can remember, it was such a gorgeous golden autumn that I immediately realized - that was it. I fell in love with the Kola Region, and it returned my love. On the third day, I went to work at the plant, worked at the construction shop for 12 years, in 1997 I went to the refining workshop for water treatment, and I have remained there, and I don't want to go anywhere else," Bukhantsev Sr. said.

A year later, was born the second son, Artyom, who now works at the Kola Plant's chemical workshop, and in 1992, the Bukhantsev dynasty was joined by his daughter Anastasia, who also later on went to work there.

"You know how people say that somebody has a mission, so my sister's mission is a personnel officer, it's her character and mind," said the eldest son - engineer Nikolay Bukhantsev. "And my brother has been working with metal as long as I can remember. After the army, he worked at a factory for dismantling metal structures, and now he has been working with pipes for more than five years at the Kola Plant's chemical workshop, he knows everything from A to Z."

Nikolay has been working with electrical installation at different companies and on different positions. Nowadays, he is an engineer at the Gipronickel Institute.

"Like Dad, I studied at a technical school's evening department, I loved technical drawing greatly, and in 2013 I, quite incidentally, started learning the AutoCAD design program. Well, since 2013, being chief power engineer at a St. Petersburg company, I did both electrical installation and design of facilities. During the coronavirus period, I got a job with Gipronickel, being, roughly speaking, a menial, and then I passed the entire route from an electrician to a master. By now I am skilled to do an entire installation be it in a flat or in a workshop. I've been working on big projects. With the knowledge and skills I've gained, I have a clear picture in my mind of what I am drawing on the monitor," he said.

Nikolay's children are school students, and they eye continuing the dynasty at the plant.

"I've always guessed my son could follow my and grandfather's footsteps - he is technically minded, and a similar character. But quite recently, my daughter has surprised me greatly when she said she wanted to be a designer like Dad. Well, who can say how it all will work, but anyway that desire has stirred my heart. Anyway, I would want my kids to go in the technical direction, which looks quite probable so far," he added.

The dynasty's founder, Grigory Bukhantsev, has many children as well as many grandchildren: four boys and a girl. If they prefer to follow in his footsteps, the grandfather will be happy, but pushing for it or even forcing is not his style.

"Everyone has own way to follow. I have never dictated anything to the children. Their choice has been smart and reasonable. Sure, it would be interesting to see how the grandchildren in my workshop will address production problems. Would they surrender to their grandfather? Well, generally speaking, I just would like all of us to continue living together in the North, to where we have come one day to stay till now. The North has attracted our sons and daughter, and we support their choice. I hope that the grandchildren will follow suit," Grigory Bukhantsev said.