The life and vegetation of Kovdor is a city that belongs to the oligarch Andrei Melnichenko, prescribed on the most spacious yacht in the world

Kovdor stands on the edge of the pit. The hole is visible from the cosmos. There is nothing arrogant in the word “pit”: so the locals call the guarantee of their survival - the largest open quarry in Russia, where half a city works. Career depth is more than 600 meters. Apatitis, iron ore and Baddelis - zirconium oxide, whose deposits in the world are mined in it. When they explode in the pit - usually on Saturdays - plates ring in the sideboards. The plant is indicated by the Ilyich painted with Serebryanka near the city hall. There, in a given direction, a few years ago, the path of every man in Kovdor lay. Now watchmen began to appear in their career, and the locals look at the road with a greater hope: 100 km from here the federal highway leading to St. Petersburg. At 40 km - Finland, but there is no road there. Three years ago, the traces of the ancient country of Hyperborea were “found” in Kovdor. Now the population is recommended not to look at the West, but into space - maybe from there, from extraterrestrial civilization, hope will come.

The course "Lakhovka" to the ruble

Kovdor grew on the edge of the career, part of the deposit is under the city. The first “miners” were convicts. For obvious reasons, barracks stood near the hill of ore. Then the hill turned into a crater, and the huts into the city.

1200 prisoners of the Yonskoy ITL poured the forest, carried out the first mining developments and built a “piece of iron” on the Pyrenga. Officially, Kovdor's birthday is considered June 1, 1953, when the construction of the plant began.

The local museum of local lore has a fragment of the hut of the house, on which a letter is Necarap to the will of a certain Krivoy, a native of the Sumy region of Ukraine, convicted in 1937. There were many such letters. But they read them only in the late 80s, when they began to disassemble the club built from these logs in the village of Yona. The ceremonial story of Kovdor will not mention the gloomy convicts in a line. It is officially believed that the plant is the brainchild of the All -Union shock Komsomol construction.

20 years ago, Kovdor GOK was bought by Eurochem. Since then, for 19 thousand local residents, the name of Andrei Melnichenko is much more significant than the names of the replacement of each other mayors and governors.

Andrei Melnichenko, according to Forbes, takes the seventh place among Russian billionaires and the 96th in the world, having a fortune of $ 19.3 billion. The owner of the Eurochem and Suek Jacess in 1991, when the exchange of currency and Mikhail Kuznetsov opened the currency exchange right in the main building of Moscow State University. Gifted graduates of the Kolmogorov boarding school studied at the physical faculty. Melnichenko left the third year. MDM-Bank grew out of the exchange network, and a billionaire from Melnichenko.

Forbes claims that a businessman is not a tax resident of Russia and lives on his yacht called “A”. This is the most spacious sailboat in the world.

“A” was built at the German shipyard in Kile (as the famous Bark Sedov), the length of the vessel is 142.8 m, the width is 25 m, the tonnage is 12,700 tons, the estimated price is 400 million euros.

There is no sea in Kovdor, and the chance to see the owner “A” too. The average kopeckoy here costs half a million, a three -thousand - 900 thousand. Rubles, of course. A typical single -born, where the fate of everyone depends on the well -being of the main production. In the 90s, the plant owned bread and dairy, and almost everyone in the area. When there was no money at all, one of the red directors, Lakhov, released his currency: the salary was paid with “lahoks”, they were accepted in stores. Money came with new owners who got rid of non -core assets. "Assets" immediately died.

Now the products in Kovdor are planted, the shoulder from Murmansk is 300 km.

About the role of salary in a career

With Alexei Markiv, the driver of Belaza and the leader of the independent union of the plant, we are moving through the primer to the lake with dark water. The shores of the lake sparkle, as if sprinkled with gold, - a mica. This is the flooded quarry of Kovdorslyudes, which for a long time competed for labor with GOK. In 2012, she went bankrupt. Evil languages ​​say: Goku is in the hands, because salaries here were no less than Euro -Chims.

Now the GOK is the only owner of the city. Do not like it - leave: there is no other work in the area.

For example, this summer, the marcks were underpaid, according to his calculations, about 100 thousand vacation pay. Accounting is now somewhere in Siberia-optimization, there is nowhere to go. The marquise who raised the scandal in the workshop, as a result, was returned by parts the difference. The rest of the dissatisfied are going to demand the laid after leave. “We are constantly told that we are 20 percent overtake of a salary of Mikhailovsky GOK in Zheleznogorsk by 20 percent. And I go there on vacation. On Belaza-240-tonniks receive the same hundredth men there as we are in the north. In the middle lane, without a polar night, ”says Alexei.

At our feet under water lies the hope of Kovdor - the bowels that would allow Monogorod’s status, from addiction, they would give new jobs, competitive salaries and new taxes. Flogopitis is used in the production of electrical insulation, porcelain, ceramics ... there are three mica deposits in the world in the world, Kovdorskoye - the only thing in Russia, from the moment of its closure to the country, flogo -plogopitis is imported from Madagascar.

To revive mica production promises a new resident of the Arctic zone of Flogopit LLC, but so far we are talking about the creation of only 39 jobs. According to the SPARK system, the enterprise where two people work does not have its own capital, and its general director and founder Vitaly Manucharyan, parallel to the St. Petersburg company for sewing bags.

Three dozen species of ores lies in Kovdor land. The EuroChem PRarters repeat that the reserves in the Iron Rudnik will be enough for another 100 years. But six months ago, Murmansk Governor Andrei Chibis said that the reserves in his career were dried up already in 2028. Chibis's statement caused confusion in the city. What was based on the governor, and remains unclear: the sides of the career now, on the contrary, are “spread” - they are expanded. And under the dumps at the western side - the deposits of the richest ore.

Recently, watchmen were brought to Kovdor. The plant has long threatened the greyhound workers to replace them with visitors.

“They worked, realized that they were deceived, and scattered right away,” the driver of the heavy truck Stepan Gylka laughs. - Now other parties are importing several people. In our shift, five people work. How much they get, you’ll understand the hell, but they complain that less than they promised, and work without days off. One worked somewhere in the mine, the salary was at 90 thousand and in addition to the harmfulness. And we don’t have harmfulness, the salary is the same, he gathered and went home. ”

The harmfulness was removed in 2016, after the special assessment, the working conditions in the career were evaluated as permissible (class 2), which is comparable to the work of the computer operator.

"We live in shit"

We met Aleksey nine years ago, when the plant was the last major strike. The Belazists then put the ultimatum to the leadership: either you will raise salaries, or we are a body. Directors did not go to negotiations with Buzoters. The men were striking.

Markiva was 31 years old. In a glass on Lenin Square with the exotic name "Coliseum" we drank coffee under the rattle of dishes: explosions. Alexei headed the Professor after Vadim Painyev. Vadim was fired for a strike. Marquit explained that people did not stand up for a salary - she was inerticated in GOK, although the requirements were justified (they asked for only 20 percent).

People got up, feeling that they were considered cattle. Salaries were raised.

Three years later, we met again in Kovdor - in the funeral bureau. That was the new “office” of Vadim Gryeva. He could not recover at the plant and settled down and settled down the coffins. He philosophically explained that now he knew everything about everyone: you want to go past his quiet offices, but you will not pass.

Markiva was also fired then. And he became the first in the history of the plant to a little man who sowned Leviathan: he won the court and returned to work as a winner. Soon after his victory, the omnipotent directors of GOK quietly went into an honorary resignation.

And for the third time we meet with the Coliseum. In a couple of days, Alexei will still lead Belaz and raises two sons, went into politics (fence in the city of heavyweight-Ross), received higher education.

We are not the only one: from the first hours in Kovdor, the outdoor goes after me and travels.

True, with secretly observation in a small city it is difficult: everyone knows each other, and the two gray “frets” quickly filled their eyes, like a sports -looking man in dark glasses, for hours tanned on a bench opposite my hotel. The night before, he enthusiastically took off the sights of the abandoned village of Ricolative, where I drove along the road.

“What are you surprised at? You arrived - of course, they are interested in, ”the director of the hotel reacts calmly, at nine in the morning the came to inform me that the local employees of the FSB dream of talking to me immediately. I did not want to talk, and the visitors left.

Instead of the conversation, an escort turned out to be: the comrades at the Lada traveled around me all Kovdor. Synchronously, we contemplated the ruined bathhouse, burned more than a year ago, five -story buildings with knocked out glasses, an unfinished high -rise, which meets at the entrance to the city, the ruins of the Kovdorsluda office. Behind the gray building of the city hall, everything is dug up: there they promise the townspeople there. They promised him even before the past elections, but in five years somehow it did not work. Maybe the local UFSB was required for someone to open their eyes to these ruins, on the quality of life of the electorate before the elections? I hope in this case that the tour was beneficial.

The townspeople showed a project for the reconstruction of the main area worth 800 million by the past elections, they promised to fall asleep, and lay out the sidewalk with tiles. But five years later there, near the temple of silicate brick, only a bust of Nicholas II appeared. The pedestal states that the execution of the royal family was a "ritual killing." The bust was hooked on the initiative of the local boxer. In releases, they wrote that the idea of ​​installing a monument to the king, shot 35 years before the founding of the city, is to "perpetuate the sovereign's contribution to the development of the Kola Arctic." The church and the bust are opposite the restaurant "Hyperborea", on the edge of the ravine.

True, the autocrat in these places has never been.

Alexey lists: they promised to make a pedestrian Victory Street, put the tile. Now there is still a curve of asphalt and meager greens. They lay a small piece with tiles - to send up the photo report. “They haven’t done anything for five years, now they will be just a little, and people will go and vote. This is ridiculous and insulting, ”says Marquiv. Recently, in the report in front of the regional Duma, the governor Chibis said: according to the results of the quality index of the urban environment, Kovdor was included in the list of comfortable cities for living. The maternity hospital was closed here 10 years ago. The hospital works at the very least, only patients complain: the toilet in surgery is one for all, men and women. They are answered: separate toilets are not provided for by the project.

Opposite the supermarket on the ground are triangles from plywood with balloons tied to them: “Vologda jam”. On a stabbed stall, ragged advertisements: "Circus".

“That is what kills,” the marquet sums up. “When for the sake of Melnichenko a Tauer bridge in London is bred, and we live in shit.”

In Hyperborea on Belaz

Hotels in the city are two plus dispensary. You can’t book online - just call. In the room of the hotel belonging to the GOK, a towel cut in half is economically designed for two guests. The smell of Soviet service, keys with wooden cones attached to them with numbers. In the restaurant at the hotel in the menu of Olenin and Medvezhytin, as well as vodka, infused on the lag and clogging. Only it is closed to "special service".

Hyperborea in Kovdor “opened” in 2018. A serious decision that it was here that the legendary civilization was located on the Council of Deputies of the district. The bureaucratic procedures were preceded by the Eurochem initiative, which, I would venture to assume, instead of feeding the dissatisfied, decided to “serve” them a legend.

In the end, the GOK already gave the Kovdorchan a star from the sky - literally (since 2003, one of the stars in the constellation Cancer is called Kovdor). Now it will give a whole country, though mythical.

They came up with this at a meeting of the leadership of Eurochem and city officials. Since then, GOK has not spares money for PR of a fabulous concept. And it seems like there is no sin in city legends - all their supporters nod to the great Ustyug, who became the birthplace of Santa Claus. But the Hyperborean fleur of life in Kovdor did not affect, no matter how the local authorities try to introduce him into the life of the townspeople. Athletes here are invited to the “Hyperborean games”, runners - to the “Hyperborean mile”, the melomanias sings the “Hyperborean flute”, the mystics are offered a “Hyperborean shaman” enlightenment session, the “Hyperborean palette” are shown connoisseurs of painting, and the ponds are called to the site “Little Hyperborea”. They also did not forget the most severe, specially for them in their career branded the Hyperborean Belaz, writing on the driver's door “Kovdor - the capital of Hyperborea”. A year ago, the issuance of "Hyperborean passports", signed by the head of the district and the legendary snake, Kuvvt. It is also noticed by Mr. Sharicov that "a person without documents is strictly prohibited." Even Hyperborean.

The visitors promise a complete immersion in mysticism and magic. True, first you need to reach: each of the collection of "Hyperborean artifacts" will have to get in the forest from 3 to 7 km. Transport, clear, no.

“Artifacts”, which are shown by the most persistent, are somewhat doubtful. The Gokovsky television channel, competing with REN-TV in a mystical fucker, now and then demonstrates the public with a pile of stones removed from the quadrocopter or a complex relief of the rock, assuring the persistence of eyewitnesses that it is an ancient temple or the profile of a hyperborean. In one of the videos, the journalist, for example, claims that from the Sami (!) Language of the names of hills near the city, they are translated as “Apollo” and “Artemis”, which proves their Hyperborean essence. In another, without the slightest assumption, it insists that 20 thousand years ago it was here that the legendary civilization was - Hyperborea, a wall protected from enemies and unclean power.

It was not possible to find out in detail the concept of the author of the plots: it turned out that he was taken into custody for the seduction of a minor.

“We are now registering as a tour operator, because Murmansk and Kirov companies are ready to share tourists with us. Frankly, if a tourist arrived in Murmansk for ten days, he has nothing to do there on the third day, ”says Sasha, the director of the hotel. Sasha is smiling, blush and lonely. Seven years ago, he came here from Samara to a good contract and, it seems, is a wakeful only thanks to regular foreign leave. He believes in the development of local tourism, but admits that so far there are no tolerable roads to potential attractions, it is difficult to show their guests.

Alexander tactfully leaves the question of the authenticity of artifacts. The local labyrinth does not look like the northern ones at all: neat, not overgrown with grass, looking like a Tibetan mandala. “So they recently laid it out, my friends went to do it,” teacher Julia laughs in response to my bewilderment. “Everyone knows this in the city.”

“We need recreation centers for tourists who risked on a long campaign. We need amenities, food, ”continues the conversation about the painful Sasha. - And then I offered the cooperation to one owner of the camp site, and he replies: "I will not do anything, but if you pass in my territory, 500 rubles from each."

Sasha also understands that to show tourists in Kovdor a quarry. Because, whatever the fairy tale, a person goes after the present, which is not more in all of Russia. As soon as a sighting platform appears on the GOK, the sober Alexander will lead the guests there.

Diagnosis of karma

With Olga Zhuravleva, we meet in a sausage at a stop. Olga is a medium. More precisely, a "rhodologist and a regressologist", as it seems. Rodology is a false concept of the dependence of the events of human life on the biography of its ancestors, belonging to the Topchayevs. Adepts insist on the scientificity of their knowledge.

To learn from the Academy of Rodology, Olga gave the money that the family has been accumulating for the first fee to a mortgage. Now she has certificates “Rodologist for a kind”, “Shamanic practices”, “advanced techniques of interaction with the Subtle World” and “Call of the Pro ancestors”. Two hours of consultation cost 5,000 rubles. Between contacts with the Subtle World, Olga works on the GOK, now on maternity leave. She offers tourists "in nature through four elements to meet with their generic roots."

- With people who come to the place of strength, it is easier to work, because in any case they expect not only to see the “warrior’s head” or look at the “ruby canyon”, they begin to feel at the level of energy to perceive the world. Мое сопровождение начинается в момент, когда мы сели в машину и поехали вместе.

Я уже потихонечку начинаю с вами разговоры определенные, начинаю вас отрывать от этой нашей реальности и поворачивать в то, что есть еще немножечко другая реальность, — загадочно говорит о методах своей работы Журавлева.

В программе поклонение духам ветра, деревьям, воспоминания о предках и полный комплекс мистических практик, поданных под псевдонаучным соусом. Логика примерно такая: если ваших предков раскулачили, вы всю жизнь будете бояться разбогатеть, кармически помня, что излишки зерна все равно отнимут. Но, позанимавшись со специально обученным мастером, карму можно скорректировать и понять, как в «Собачьем сердце»: «Главное событие у вас впереди».

Ольга сетует, что не знакома с Алевтиной Сергиной из села Ёна, которую здесь называют нойдой — женщиной-шаманом. Другие саами считают ее услуги обычным турпродуктом и весьма критически относятся к вольностям в костюме и эксплуатации религиозных практик малого народа.

Алексей Толмачев, директор компании Tallatour, к шаманизму и местам силы относится спокойней. Он верит в свой «артефакт» — найденный на рыбалке камень якобы с профилем гиперборейца. Камень Алексей никому не показывает, опасаясь повреждения ценной находки. А пока водит туристов к иным труднодоступным местам района. А также, разумеется, работает на ГОКе. Тут все работают на ГОКе: и мистики, и скептики.

«Сейчас туристов немного, Ковдор не раскручен. Хотя у него есть многое для привлечения гостей. Горнолыжный комплекс, например, отличный, а цены намного ниже, чем в соседнем Кировске».

В Гиперборею Толмачев верит. Считает, что рисунок на его камень нанесен с помощью технологий, неведомых современности. Сравнивает это с пирамидами. Говорит, что показывал валун геологу и та сказала, что рисунок рукотворный. А вот в «рунический камень» — единственный пункт туристической программы, доступный прямо в Ковдоре, — не верит. Не чувствует никакой энергии рядом с кубической формы булыжником, лежащим в кустах недалеко от входа на комбинат. А другие чувствуют. Например, писательница Кулагина, которая называет себя «мисс Арктика», приехала и сразу почувствовала: есть контакт!

Лично я контакт с внеземной цивилизацией почувствовала в краеведческом музее, в разделе «Животные». За стеклянной витриной сидел явный предок знаменитого «упоротого лиса» собственной персоной. В музее им гордятся, говорят, экспонат полстраны знает, все с ним фотографируются!

Вечером в «Гиперборее», а также в ресторане с не менее звучным названием «Аристократ» гуляют выпускники. В «Колизее» публика постарше пляшет под зажигательные ритмы трехлетней давности. Зеркала, неоновый свет, чайники с болтающимися из носиков ситечками…

Чуть дальше «Колизея» — вторая проходная ГОКа. Металлическая арка, за которой в дыму скрывается карьер, как вход в толкинский Мордор. Тетенька в форме охраны наотрез отказывается показывать мне дорогу к памятнику 100-миллионной тонне руды: «А вам зачем?» Вскоре появляется полиция, деликатно следуя за моей машиной. Что и говорить, туристов тут оберегают.

Алексей Маркив долго курит, глядя с балкона на родной город. Впервые он задумывается об отъезде. «Если у меня здесь что-то получится, придут, похлопают по плечу и скажут: «Молодец, мы за тебя кулачки держали». А если не получится, скажут: «Дебил, куда он полез?» — невесело характеризует он настроение публики. Маркив надеется на проект по строительству дороги к российско-финской границе. Если деньги на нее найдутся, Алексей верит, что город оживет. И тогда, он, наверное, передумает уезжать.