Dir without soft sign

In the city, the re -the Sverdlovsk region about a thousand people were left without work after the closure of the Relshita plant. Victoria Ivleva once visited an industrial city and talked with residents abandoned to their own devices

So it is written - without a soft sign, but with a capital letter, because dir is a city.

At the entrance to the dir there is a stele with the date of the base-1773, and a little further away-confusing the inscription “Baden-Baden Emerald Coast”, although the case happens right in the middle of the Ural mountains.

“Yes, this is a resort here with us with the thermal basin, you can swim in any minus,” says the driver and suddenly begins to talk about real emeralds that are lying from local residents almost underfoot, and about an abandoned gold mine near the grandmother's house, where he is going to climb somehow, but they are afraid that they will give a hat if something is there. ”

In general, the Urals surround me.

A car passes by the inscription "District bread", I think about a lost soft sign, then I catch up. Everything is in order: dir is a city.

The city is quiet and pleasant to the eye, fitting into the Urals and a rich Ural nature, and not crushing them for itself. It has a lot of sky, water, old trees, it is picturesque in the summer and graphic in the winter. The cutter is pretty with its spreading layout, intricate streets running up and down, a huge ancient pond of irregular shape with year -round fishing, surviving mansions of the 19th century and amazingly non -sounding people.

A woman is waiting for a bus at a bus stop near the Reedel plant photo: Fedor TELKOV for TD The worker is studying the list of vacancies in the city in the building of the “Reed” factory administration photo: Fedor Telkov for TD

The main vision of the cutting from all sides is the striped red-white pipe of the Reedel plant, which fed the city for 80 years, and now, unexpectedly for the reins and, it seems, has ceased to exist. It was the largest enterprise in the city at which a thousand people worked.

In connection with the closure of the plant, everyone will be dismissed, and the factory itself, where life did not freeze either day or night, already calmed down and empty. Two other Rezhevsky plants rested in Bose even earlier.

The plant and the sudden closure of all its sudden closure and led me into the dir.

I must say that the “reiz” is not an independent enterprise. It is located exactly in the middle of the chain between the production of nickel ore and the smelting of metal. The “reiz” produces Stein - an intermediate product, and nickel in its pure form is obtained in the city with a fabulous name of the Upper Ufaley . Dir, Ufali and the mine in the city of Serov together form the company "Rusnikel", which produced 15% of the total nickel of Russia.

Monument of combat and labor glory of Rezhevlyan opposite the passing "Reizel" photo: Fedor Telekov for TD View of Krasnoarmeyskaya Street photo: Fedor Telekov for TD

Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, Executive Director of the Plant:

- We could not stand the price of Cox and at the same time with this, the price of Nickel at the same time, this is a fact. But this fact does not mean at all that the plant should be slammed like this, quit, and so that weeds around. We had downtime in the past, but each time we still resumed, conducted partial modernization, invented something ...

- And the plant lived?

- Duck, of course. Here was the scientific platform of UPI, engineering thought was beating, it was so interesting here! But what now gnaws at me: generations all built it, and for what? The soul hurts. We can produce cast iron and steel, we have a favorable geographical position, all communications on the spot. We need to re -profile, not close us - this is the cry of my soul! We won, in 2013-14 we worked with a small, but still profit. And then the state increased the tariffs for transportation - and that’s it. It turns out that it itself works for liquidation, so what? Look, look,-on the coat of arms of the Sverdlovsk region it is written “The Support Fore of the Power”, so you do not knock out this support!

The plant, which, like any other plant, was a monument to work, became the cemetery of this very work

Ah, Ivan Ivanovich! He himself, the working bone, began the assistant to the melt in Upper Ufaley, then learned, became the master of the workshop, now the director. He wants to work, in the juice of Ivan Ivanovich for leading work, forty years to him. But Ivan Ivanovich is the executive director, from him to the owners, whose name few people know at the factory - as to the star of Aldebaran. The owners are a completely different cut people who are neither before the power, nor before Nickel, nor the dismissed workers are doing and cannot be. So somehow it happened in our country: the more business, the less he has conscience and responsibility to people. Now, for example, all the assets of the plant are owned by his creditor, Bin-Bank, it turns out that all these passions on Nickel go into some sky-high-high heights to the poet-songwriter Mikhail Gutseriev (16th place in the Forbes list for 2016, the fortune of $ 5.9 billion) and his nephew Mikhail Shishkhanov (46th place in the Forbes list for 2016, the state of 1.6 billion dollars).

View from the observation deck of the temple in the name of St. John the Baptist to the Reeder Plant Photo: Fedor Telekov for TD Territory "Reizel" photo: Fedor TELKOV for TD

I say - from Ivan Ivanovich to them - like to the star of Aldebaran.

The dismissal began, as usual, with lies of the people. In the twenties of January, when the road liquidation road map was already ready (such cards are created on the basis of an analysis of production and are made for more than one day), the general director arrived and said, literally that "there is no talk of reduction for this moment."

Here the dismissal began. Well, of course, formal external things, such as payments on average monthly earnings, were observed, there is nothing to complain about here, although stubbornly circulating rumors that there will be no money soon, the people are pushing the dismissal by agreement of the parties, which is profitable for the owners of the plant and unprofitable for employees. And informally everyone knows that it is impossible to find work less often, no new places are created, some retail outlets grow as mushrooms, and even on the site of local social protection it is said that "the level of unemployment is higher than the medium -exposure."

And what? Rushed, sparkling with headlights, Governor? Or was the city authorities indicated at the entrance to the plant? Or, perhaps, the United Russia omnipotent party came to the aid of the workers, as they always came to her aid on the election day? Well, or at least the Communists, who were at the second century, who were at the work of the working class, fussed?

No, of course. Nobody appeared. I don’t give a damn about workers that money next to the plant is not always at the Bin-Bank ATM. Bin-Bank’s branches are not less common at all.

Each one who is fired from the factory is smokes himself. This is difficult for people whom the state has taught the nose not to poke, sit on the stove, be afraid and wait for a miracle.

The mothballed melting workshop "Reizel" photo: Fedor TELKOV for TD Workers "Reizel" at the door of the factory administration photo: Fedor Tekkov for TD

The birth of the metal is described many thousands of times, and internally you are ready for it: now they will open the stove, and the fire -breathing river will flow, and gold splashes will fly away in different directions. But when the stove opens, and the river flows, and white smoke rises upwards, and the fountains of sparks blind their eyes, and fiery brew fills the gutter, and people in strange clothes, standing on different banks of the river, adjusting something deftly in the stream-the spirit is still captured from this silicon, and tears are blown up to the eyes!

That was the “reiz” a few months ago.

Now I look at the factory from the roof of the melting workshop - his breath almost stopped, life left this vast territory. To the horizon - not a single person, not a single moving trolley, not the slightest sound. Slows, shimmering with silver sides in the sun, a brand new gradir, unknown why built at the end of last year. The gradier cost 10 million rubles, did not work for a single day, and now it is mothballed at best, at worst it will be cut into pieces. The plant, which, like any other plant, was a monument to work, became the cemetery of this very work.

Chapaeva Street, Gavan district photo: Fedor Telekov for TD The building of the military registration and enlistment office on Sovetskaya Street is the city center photo: Fedor Tekkov for TD

We wander from the workshop to the workshop with Irina Shevchenko, the only employee of the plant who decided at least somehow, sparing and delicately, to compete for his fate. She offered to write a letter to Putin and the governor of the Sverdlovsk region, but he fell ill for the trade union committee, began to ask for permission from the trade union of metallists, he also fell ill, found an excuse-they say, at the factory of the trade union members less than 50%, what to write? The fact that the trade union should defend the interests of the worker, in general, of course, no one remembered.

Shevchenko did not calm down, she loved her work very much, she was worried about the plant, proud of them and could not believe that it was like this - and in a second everything would collapse. The letters were written, signed by almost half the employees and sent to the addressees.

And what? Rushed, sparkling with headlights, Governor? Or was the city authorities indicated at the entrance to the plant?

- Why not everyone signed? - I ask Irina.

- Some have already quit and said that their plant no longer concerns, others thought that this would not give anything, and the others were ill.

- Have you slanted the letter to sign?

- Well, yes.

Portrait of Irina Shevchenko, engineer "Reedel", in the building of the melting workshop photo: Fedor Telekov for TD

I recall Pikalevo - a small single -industry woman in the Leningrad region, whose residents blocked the track in protest against the closure of the main enterprises and achieved the arrival of the president and restore relative justice. It was just seven years ago.

Read also “We were given steam to release” protests during the previous crisis glorified Pikalevo throughout the country. Katerina Gordeeva found out why local residents no longer protest and how deceptive this is calm

“Ha,” Ivan Ivanovich laughs, “what kind of Pikalevo is there, no one here about Pikalevo and heard, and who heard, forgot for a long time.” The brains of people are clogged at all.

- And what? -I ask, thinking that maybe in the Urals people are clogged with something else than in Moscow.

“Yes, Maray Baghdasaryan,” says Ivan Ivanovich unexpectedly, and I don’t even immediately remember who it is, the name of the Moscow Majorian crash is so ridiculous here, at a dying factory.

Every Friday, in the lobby of “Revel”, from eight to ten in the morning, employees gather on the mark: you need to come and sign that I have not found work yet and that if you want to receive an average monthly salary within three months. And it feels like you owe something to the enterprise, and not it to you. The heads of the workshops celebrate the name in the list - and you can go home. They do not go home right away, stand, talk. Discuss what to do. But somehow lost. At the next table, a neatly dressed and tastefully combed lady with a badge, the reza employment center offers me to see vacancies, taking me for someone from the factory. I look - just a little more than 100 positions, mainly for people with higher education. But something for ordinary people without education: cleaners of industrial premises are required for eight thousand rubles.

Monument on the territory of the Melly Melly Revel photo: Fedor TELKOV for TD The interior of the sports hall in the territory of the Revel, the only working part of the enterprise. It is open for residents of the city as a gym photo: Fedor Telekov for TD

“Oh,” my husband once worked there, everyone runs from them, a terrible place, ”says a woman standing nearby. “Yes, this is generally almost all the proposals in some sharashkin offices,” adds another. - You can’t go to private traders, they will definitely heat up. And from normal places they are only waiting for us in the cemetery, and so - they all have a shit on us, even to the president of the native. From a high bell tower.

I have met a lot of where in Russia - the gas pipe is walking along the street, and residents of the street are preparing food on the stove

I come to visit the two dismissed employees of the Revel - Ira and Sergey, the driver of the carrier. Sergei is now interrupted by random earnings-then give up, then bring, then to help help with your hands. They live in a tiny their own house, built by Serezhina’s grandmother. There is no water in the house. And there are no speakers throughout the street either. Seryozha carries water by car from somewhere. The gas pipe passes along the street a few meters from the house, but there was never money for making a challenge, Seryozha and Ira never, and now it will not be. I have met a lot of where in Russia - the gas pipe is walking along the street, and residents of the street are preparing food on the stove. Ira prepares on a gas from a cylinder. The plot at the house is three acres, vegetables saving the family grow on it - from potatoes to tomatoes. Seryozha and Ira do not hold cattle, it all became disadvantageous, but there is a rooster.

- Only to Kukarik! - says Seryozha.

Sergey in a house in the "Tatarsky" area of ​​the city photo: Fedor Telekov for TD

Seryozha began to rebuild the house, they decided to do the second floor, otherwise it turned out just like Kuma had a pumpkin. But now, of course, all this construction does not know how much it will be delayed.

“I don’t understand,” says Seryozha. - We live on metal and iron, why did we suddenly become unprofitable? We are sitting on gas and oil, and gasoline is so expensive, to relax for two hundred kilometers to go for us already a problem.

- Have you thought the plant would be closed?

- We thought that in simple we’ll go, as it happened, it was not scary, we watched on TV the price of Nickel on the London Exchange, we were told that we were dependent on it. Now we will not quit either I or Irinka, we will wait until the end-what if they will open it after all.

“I loved my work very much, stuck to it and the factory, I was a controller at the production of non -ferrous metallurgy,” Irina echoes her husband.

-It is so difficult to believe that we are not needed, our hands are not growing from our ass, we can support our country, we do not ask for money, not a handout, but the opportunity to earn a living in our hometown, where we are good, but it turns out that we only need to vote. We are people on our knees, cheap labor that does not know our rights - this is Seryozha again.

-Have you ever lived plenty? - I am changing the topic.

“Well, what are you,” Irina waves his hands. - So that plenty is never. To go and just buy what you like - never. I always take the cheapest, and products and clothes. We invested all the money for repairing the house, three years ago we took the loan for 150 thousand, now we pay five a month, so we will not understand, and we still need to teach my daughter, she finishes the school this year, wants to become an architect.

Ruda dumps, climb to the cemetery "Orlovaya mountain" photo: Fedor Tekkov for TD An abandoned house in the area of ​​the railway station photo: Fedor Telekov for TD

On the wall in a room the size of a thimble where their daughter Nastya lives, a poster made by her hand hangs. The poster says: "You and only you are the master of your life."

Only the masters of life in Sergey and Irina, well, can’t become in any way.

And so it becomes a shame for them, and so I want to shout there, on the star of Aldebaran, and say: Barin-well, what else to call him, the owner of this? -In a white suit and an expensive hat, well, here are beautiful, simple workers, so that you won’t come to them, to collect them all and talk not in the language of the balance of the Buldo and not a mate away, but normally and simply, humanly, if you still remember how it is humanly, not to talk with people, to explain what happened, and then, dwelling, and then, dwelling. To do something for those who regularly help you and like you to make capital, having a salary less than the cost of tobacco crumbs in your pocket ...

But it is impossible to shout to Aldebaran.

I remember that in Chekhov, in the “Cherry Garden”, the old firce who served the gentlemen who served the gentlemen will forget in a hurry, here they want to forget a thousand people, and soon, perhaps, the city itself will be forgotten. And even the sound of a non -burst string - country! - No one will make anyone shudder.

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