One glance at the imposing metal structures in the center of Nizhny Tagil is enough to understand that they have been here for a very long time. The buildings towering over the roadway are clearly not examples of modern industry. Today it is the only museum-plant in the Urals. During the Soviet Union, he was called Kuibyshevsky, in honor of a prominent revolutionary and communist. Initially, it was the main metallurgical enterprise of the famous landowners and satraps of the Demidovs, who treated the rebels, to put it mildly, without sympathy and, for sure, turned in their family crypts on the day of renaming. And it all started like this …
He lived in the city of Tula at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, Nikita Demidov, the happy owner of a small arms workshop and a metallurgical plant. At that time, a purely innovative industrialist, for in Russia then the production of metals and all kinds of iron products was tight. In the kingdom was Peter I, who was very fond of coffee, chopping beards for boyars, fighting and carrying out all sorts of large-scale modernizations. The cunning gunsmith Nikita Demidov quickly sensed where he was pulling by the prospect, and on occasion appeased the window cutter to Europe: either he repaired a cunning pistol to someone from his retinue, or volunteered to quickly and efficiently make the sovereign a batch of guns. In general, in modern terms, he took a small (but noticeable) government tender and fulfilled all the conditions in the best possible way. After that, the career of the Tula industrialist did not just go up - it flew, overtaking the birds.
Peter I was a man of a wide soul and, impressed by Demidov's successes in the field of import substitution in terms of arms business, he placed several state-owned factories operating in the Urals under the management. And also a lot of powers and lands for the construction of new ones. So a regional industrialist became a metallurgical and weapons oligarch, and Demidov's factories began to grow in full swing in the Urals.
The Nizhniy Tagil iron foundry and ironworks became the largest and most equipped in the metallurgical empire. Until the end of the 18th century, it was considered one of the best in the country. Its creator is considered to be the son of Nikita Demidov - Akinfia. From the pope, he inherited not only a craving for the construction of industrial empires, but also the ability to grease the powers that be. As a result, he set up a lot of factories and knocked out the court rank for himself.
In those days, the place for the plant was chosen on the basis of three points. First, a river was needed - the then factory machines were set in motion by the power of water, so most enterprises began with the construction of a dam. The Tagil River not only provided energy, but was also suitable for sending the plant's products by water. The dam blocked the river at the construction site of the future plant, and its blast furnaces appeared behind it - five meters below the water level. In addition, there were nearby iron ore deposits and a huge forest area, which could be cut down for a long time and diligently for fuel for furnaces. The first blast furnace started working in 1725, and then the countdown of the life of the plant began.
The dam from which it all began. Photo: Evgeny Lobanov, ETV.
Akinfiy Demidov considered the iron foundry in Nizhny Tagil to be his favorite brainchild and therefore invested in it heartily, sometimes slightly breaking the law. They hired everyone who could be adapted to the business - local hard workers, fugitive peasants (from foreign possessions), prisoners of war, and in general any suitable guest workers. In response to any attempts to point out to Demidov that the laws and rules were violated, he manly folded his figurine - connections in higher circles made him invulnerable. And he had huge government contracts. Not only in terms of weapons (pig iron from the Tagil plant was largely used for casting guns).
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The cunning family has knocked out contracts for the manufacture of sea anchors and other metal products for the needs of the fleet. Akinfiy also remained in history as a very tough manager. Little things like the labor code did not exist then, and therefore guilty workers were punished not only with the ruble. They could have put them in shackles on a starvation diet and flogged them, which often ended in the death of those brought up. The working conditions in the iron-making industry, even without punishment, were such that the description of the circles of hell looks like a tourist brochure against their background. For 12 hours in a stuffy workshop, where metal constantly melts, having a temperature of several thousand degrees. He splashes cheerfully, sometimes hitting the gaping artisans. At that time there weren't really any protective suits, and you would get a bit sick in protection with such a heat. At best a leather apron,and if a hot metal splashes on a bare part of the body, it will burn to the bone. Naturally, there was no talk of any sick leave or disability benefits, only harsh punishments if you did not work well.
The artisans sneaked into the capital, but to no avail. Therefore, when the rebellious army of Emelyan Pugachev showed up in the Urals, the workers of the plant en masse took unauthorized vacations without pay in order to break away for past grievances. This could have a bad effect on the plant - the blast furnaces where the ore is smelted should not cool for an hour, otherwise the molten metal will freeze right in them - you will have to break the blast furnaces and build them anew. But even during the period of mass escapes of hard workers to Pugachev, the blast furnaces were miraculously saved, and the plant continued to work.
The Nizhniy Tagil plant entered the 18th century as one of the largest and most advanced enterprises in the industry. The plant supplied various types of metal both in Russia and abroad. But the Demidovs were no longer the same - instead of further developing their empire, intriguing in the government and increasing their influence wherever possible, the bearers of the sonorous surname were doing what: the courtiers were shut up, patronized, traveled or brightly and tasted drunk and lost gambling huge amounts. The result of this age-old revelry was the serious technical backwardness of the Ural factories in the 19th century - during the industrial revolution and incessant technical innovations, Demidov's factories slipped to catch-up positions.
However, during this period the Tagil plant survived. First, he was one of the largest in the country and too many were interested in keeping him working. Secondly, the courtiers of the Demidovs were not going to concede government contracts to some innovators. So what of the fact that their production is modern? But our connections are more extensive. Then the Nizhny Tagil plant became the largest supplier of metal for the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway.
At the same time, the oligarchs Demidovs nevertheless carried out some modernization - for example, they began to introduce steam engines and other advanced technologies at the time at the plant. By the way, it was at the Demidov factories that the father and son of the Cherepanovs, the creators of the first Russian steam locomotive, worked. In addition, the production of metal products was established here - mainly for their own needs. In 1892, open-hearth furnaces appeared here, and in 1913 - its own power plant. Throughout its history, the plant has tried machines on very different traction - and driven by water, and working on steam, and acting from an electric force.
After the First World War, the collapse of the monarchy and the establishment of the power of workers and peasants in Russia, the plant decayed: there was no one to work, everyone ran through the forests with rifles - now for white people, now for red, now for money. Only in the early 20s of the twentieth century, the plant is gradually resuming work. Red commissars came to replace Demidov's clerks. In 1930, another large-scale reconstruction was carried out here, because industrialization, "five-year plans" and other construction of socialism at an accelerated pace in the country: metal is needed in huge quantities. So, for Stakhanov's work they lived up to the Great Patriotic War.
During the war years, many Ural factories changed their orientation - in Irbit the brewery switched to the production of motorcycles, and in Bilimbay, instead of casting iron, the builders of the first jet fighter plane were using saws. But Tagil hard workers still made metal. Only if earlier they specialized in cast iron, roofing iron and other peaceful alloys, now they had to master and develop the production of armored steel for tanks and light duralumin alloys for aviation. So there were no fundamental changes in the life of the plant: only the production rates became higher, the working conditions were tougher, and there were fewer skilled workers - many went to the front. Throughout the war, the plant worked hard for the military industry, but after …
After the war, Soviet leaders looked at the plant critically - production volumes at it were rapidly falling due to outdated equipment. It was costly to carry out another global modernization: it was easier to demolish the plant and build a new one. And then, over the past centuries, a rather large city has somehow grown imperceptibly around the iron-smelting industry. The location of the plant in the center of Nizhny Tagil, of course, made it convenient from the point of view of logistics, but it had a deplorable effect on the environment. As a result, production began to gradually fade - shop by shop. Old-timers say that when the blast furnaces built under the Demidovs were stopped, cast iron continued to flow from them: red-hot metal poured for many hours, much longer than expected. As if the old smelting furnace didn't want to die. The blast furnace was drowned out, without waiting for this stream to dry up,and the cast iron from that last batch, frozen in shapeless pieces, still lies at its foot. In 1987, the plant was shut down.
At first, they just wanted to demolish the historical enterprise, but they didn't get around - there was perestroika in the yard. For some time, the plant was threatened with a banal cut into metal - the grasping traders of those times could drive a couple of nuclear submarines of the "Akula" type to a secondary metal at a reasonable price, which is already there. However, an initiative group was found that achieved the status of a plant-museum-reserve for the enterprise. This saved him from demolition and death from the grasping hands of scrap sellers, but also caused some problems.
The plant is spread over solid areas - numerous workshops, an exhibition of railway equipment, the construction of additional production facilities and related subdivisions (a canteen, a bath complex, a horse farm) … And the staff for the entire huge complex is only a few people - funding does not allow to expand staff. So far, the guides are coping - three people conduct one or two excursions a day. On average two hours per group. Sometimes, during the influx of tourists, employees of the Nizhne-Tagil Museum of Local Lore come to their aid.
But a huge area is poorly guarded - one post at the former factory entrance, and a guard with a dog on a detour. As a result, outsiders constantly wander around the museum-plant - from ubiquitous teenagers to honest sightseers who accidentally wandered into the museum through the passage in the fence. The exhibits of the huge museum are slowly but surely covered with layers of graffiti and wise inscriptions in the spirit of "Osya and Kisa were here." Some of the stairs leading to the high factory structures had to be cut down so that illegal visitors would not crawl up. There is simply nothing to develop the museum and add some kind of interactivity to it - the little money that the museum earns goes to the treasury, and the special status does not allow renting out some of the premises that are still working, but not interesting for visitors. Museum workers hope that someday this will change.
Photo: Evgeny Lobanov, ETV.
So far the plant-museum has been chosen by the participants of the 4th Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art, who this weekend will deploy their exposition in several premises of the enterprise.
They re-equipped one of the shops in accordance with their ideas about how the rest of the proletariat should look like. To this end, tanks, once intended for the transport of molten metal, became ponds for carp, iron castings lined up in sculptural groups on the sand and turned into post-industrial rock gardens. As a result, these and some other installations should make a "total rest room" - a monument to the labor of generations of people who have worked and lived here for 300 years, as the organizers say about their performance.
And yet, the Nizhniy Tagil Iron Works is a happy exception. Most of the historical enterprises, which for centuries have earned the Urals the fame of an industrial region, are now simply falling apart.
Evgeny Lobanov