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Article: Closed to the Outside - Pollution Covers an Arctic Siberian City.(Norilsk, Russia)
- Article from:
- The World and I
- Article date:
- August 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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On October 30, 2001, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed a decree designating Norilsk "closed," a reversion to the status this Siberian city held in communist times. Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has generally opened to the outside world, so this action definitely bucks the trend. Why has this remote industrial center of 250,000 been declared off limits?
It is perhaps not so puzzling. The town began as a prison camp in 1935, after the discovery of substantial deposits of nickel, coal, and copper in the region. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners were dispatched to this area. They lived in appalling conditions and had to endure the severe ...