Text: residents of Asbest.
Photo: Aleksandr Solo, Ekaterina Tolkacheva,
Translated by DM.
E very city has something special, that you can remember with warmth, something that makes it native and loved. We decided to ask the residents of Asbest: what do they like most about their city? And that’s what they said … (click on the photo!)
Zufar, around 40 years old, a jazz musician from Yekaterinburg, works as a taxi driver
He picked us up on the highway because he used to go hitchhiking himself, from St.Petersburg to Asbest, for instance. We asked him what does he like the most in Asbest. Naturally, he answered, that’s where his parents live and also his dentist. Adrianova Anjelika Yurievna works at a municipal dental clinic. Now he doesn’t mind taking a trip from Yekaterinburg for treatment.
Two girls
What do you like most in Asbest? –Our school!
Two aged ladies, Pogodina Faina Dmitrievna and Ponomariova Alevtina Anatolievna
— We used to work at AsbestStroi, built the entire city. Young specialists from Kazan, from Moscow used to come here by assignment, and a lot of them stayed to live here. Asbest is not building much these days. Difficulties at the combine. And we have worked for forty years. I do the building, she does the finishing. This is all built with our hands. And we used to work in the North as well. When there were no jobs here, we would take shifts there. But we don’t have any photos of how things looked back then, we didn’t take photos. Didn’t expect we’d be old one day and there’d be no more building going on around.
Moms with strollers
— When people from different places come here we show them the lookout spot at the quarryю Works every time. We have lived in St.Petersburg and in Yekaterinburg too, but hometown is still most appealing. Maybe it’s the calmness or the fact we spent our childhood here. This balances your inner state somehow. We often take strolls with the kids in the parkway, where the obelisk stands. We also have a stadium; everyone seems to be into sports now. Everyone goes there, with their kids or with friends, no matter.
Eleonora Evgenievna Klementieva, a museum employee
— I like that we have a lot of nationalities in our city and it has never been a problem. Take a phone number handbook and see how the surnames vary. There was a great building project for the Komsomol organization in 1963-1965, and young people would come from all over the Soviet Union to join in.
It’s also interesting that the whole of the old city is in the quarry. There had been settlements since XIX century. The quarry is always expanding, and the old buildings have been pulled down. All the old streets, the stadium, the community center — they all are in the quarry. What we have now was built later, in the 1950-s.
In our city, we always paid a lot of attention to sports. Here some Austrian prisoners of war were allocated after the World War I, maybe it was them to bring us football — Europe, civilization, you know. It was 1916, after that people became friends with sports. Football, basketball, gymnastics were popular in the 30-s. Skiing is still very popular. Recently we built a covered skating rink. A hockey school is thriving. We have an Olympic boxing champion of 2012, Egor Mekhontsev. My dad was his trainer. Also we had a world champion in pedestrianism.
And the culture is on a high level too. There’s an orchestra in the city. The director, Mikhail Borisov, now that was a figure. He came here from Moscow, I think, and stayed to live. By the way, many people came here from the capitals to work here.
An aged man
— I like the people here. I work at the combine since 1962 and I like the city, the people and the job — it’s all great!
Immigrant workers
— It’s a little city. It has everything we could ask for. A decent job. Our papers are in order, too. See, we walk as we would at home. A quiet little city.
Alleya Pobedy (Victory Parkway)
— We like the monuments here, they’re beautiful.
— The only one we don’t like is the frontier guard memorial. Because it’s not even a monument, looks just like a wooden beam. I didn’t serve in the military but I have a lot of friends who did serve in the frontier guard and they are displeased that others should have good monuments and for them there’s just this painted log.
— Otherwise, everything is okay. It’s a small city.
— Can we take pictures of you?
— Sure! Lekha, how are you today, photohygienic enough?
— Now, you may begin. Where did you come from yourselves?
— And why would you come to these boondocks? To look at how people live here? Not too well.
— Pavel, get over here too.
— Hey, why without me?
— You may tell people this is what leisure time is like in these boondocks, nothing more to do. Like nothing at all.
High School girls
— It’s a quiet and calm place. I’m about to finish a cooking college, then I’m going to enter a police academy.
— Medical college for me. I will study in another city then come back here. A birthplace determines a walk of life, as they say. We like to go to the forest. There’s a flooded quarry there, a very beautiful place. Especially now, when there’s no ice.
In the House of Culture (so-called community center)
— I like the culture here. I engage in sport ball dancing, now almost done with my career though. School finals soon and stuff.
A director of the House of Culture
— I wouldn’t ever move from here. The best thing to me is that the city isn’t too big, kind of compact, you can’t get lost here. The streets are straight and wide. My favorite places are benches on Uralskaya street and the Victory parkway. A wonderful place to walk. Also I have a place at the riverbank.
A taxi driver who doesn’t like to be taken photos of
— My opinion is that this isn’t a place for old people. The highest wage here was once around 8-10 thousand rubles. I like living here — it’s a very green city. But for work, I’d go somewhere else. I worked as sales representative, and then got my own business running in Yekaterinburg. I rode all the Urals across, have been to many cities. Asbest is very different, it’s very green, and this is where its beauty lies. If you want some privacy you can go to the quarry, to the lookout spot. I’ve never seen the demolition explosions though; I just never get there in time. They start at around 5pm. Haven’t you heard the ground trembling today?
Igor Kochnev, the head of a stage-ballroom dance ensemble “Mountain Flax”
— People are kind here. I like our House of Culture. Though it only survives by the efforts of the parents and some crazy enthusiast teachers. Like myself. I teach sport ball dancing.
Love of Christ church, before the worship. Grigori Lubkov, with the camera.
— I like that the city is rather green, also there’s no big roads to other big cities. A sort of seclusion. Good to raise children. Little traffic. Everything is within reach, many kindergartens and schools, all spread out evenly across the city. I like our church, too. I’ve been attending for about seven years.
Love of Christ church, before the worship. Alexei, Tatiana and Daria.
— We weren’t born here, we chose to live here. But our children did, and it’s their true homeland. We chose to live on this land, and must love it as a whole, now selectively. We had our rehab course here and stayed to work. Should we pick something special about the city, it would be our rehab center. It’s 17 years old already and has a heritage of many families restored as well as newly created. A quarter of our church members are people who managed to get rid of their addictions.
Near the monument at the Victory parkway
— There’s nothing to like, it’s a dying city. What’s to like about it? The combine is at its last breath, once it shuts down the city is over with. There were chances to develop our industry, but they didn’t want it, to prevent brain drain from the combine. Any place was better than the combine. I worked at a different office, left the combine just in time. It was a project design company. Now unemployed.
A man with his daughter who was short a ruble to buy some overshoes. Jenya and Anya.
— I like that there’s still some industry working, that the streets are more or less clean.
Nadejda Aleksandrovna
— It’s a small city, very convenient. I have grandchildren; we have a pool nearby, or dancing classes. Everything is near at hand, convenient to raise kids. And good for the elderly people, too.
— Why would you remember of Asbest in St.Petersburg? People are kind of peculiar here. Don’t know how to explain it. A city is like any other. Sort of a dead end though. American reporters keep coming here to tell us how harmful asbestos is. But the entire city lives off it. The combine, the quarry. If the combine shuts down, it will be like a horror movie, the city is going to die out. We were born here, something like that, I don’t know. People say it’s a very peaceful and green place. I won’t argue, it’s beautiful, many places to rest. There’s a river nearby, some recreation centers. But I would object about it being peaceful. We have all kinds of folk here. You go out for a shift and think what’s going to happen today. Here’s a story. I receive a call, I arrive to a house and open the freezer, and there’s a dead baby inside. A woman with a bunch of kids, and a heavy drinker. Maybe she had a miscarriage. Her boyfriend told on her, drinks just like herself. Nothing personal, friend, but no pictures. Otherwise it’s okay, an okay city.
Kirill and Volodya
— So what’s so good about the city?
— Asbestos, ha-ha. Even the name is great.
— Well it’s a nice place but a lot of industry is stagnating. I go to work. Work, home, a newspaper, sleep, sports, sometimes. We produce composite insulation. And he works as a post office operator.
A family came to the museum to see how their grandfather’s paraphernalia are laid out for display: his military uniform and his medals they have given to the museum after his death in the 2000’s.
Svetlana, sister:
— This city is no megapolis, for sure. Nothing special, a provincial city like any other. A quarry and heaps of dirt.
Mikhail, brother:
— A quiet and calm city. Its seclusion is its special feat. It’s a dead end, only smaller towns further down the road.
Denis Portnyagin, Svetlana’s husband, a shift supervisor at the quarry:
— A special trait of this area is that there are lots of mineral resources here, but the people are relatively poor. Just start digging, and you sure will find something valuable. Like gems or whatever. They used to mine gold here long ago, and many other things. Now they only mine gravel for the railroads.
Sergei Parfeniuk, artist, paints the Beatles
— For me the dearest thing about Asbest is it’s history and culture. Exhibitions, concerts. In the early 90-s we had a creative union here. Artists, musicians, other creative people- we all would get together and do something together. Everything is special here. Alexander Kozlov, Samoilov brothers from Agata Kristi- they are from Asbest. It’s very powerful rock music.
Surprisingly, I first heard the Beatles in 1967, I loved them and started painting. And in 2007 Paul McCartney finds me to ask for my pictures to place them in a book on the Beatles’ history. This is amazing, the connection I mean. Paul McCartney is somewhere in America, I am here in Asbest. I don’t know how this happens. A wonderful virtue of art. I’ve never seen Paul McCartney before but I’ve known him since forever.
— Why don’t your paintings decorate the city streets? If only the gray walls of the city had some of these bright colors…
— I’ve been dreaming about this my whole life, but somehow haven’t reached it yet. As a painter I can see there’s something missing and a few colorful spots wouldn’t harm at all. In soviet times I had more luck, I used to paint summer camps, kindergartens and such. People jokingly call me the Emerald City Magician, because my study is in the Malyshev settlement where the biggest emerald field in Russia is.
Tatiana Yurievna Sokolova, a director of “The Ark”, a social adaptation center for the youth
— There are some pros about the small size of the city. In a bigger city it’s possible to vanish, to keep low profile. People go there to get lost. Here, on the contrary, everything is quite exposed. This makes people watch themselves better, regarding one’s family relations or friendships, be more aware, more responsible.
Young people ask for career advice. They want to sing and dance. We have a good arts school, musical school, dancing schools. But the market demands more engineering specialists. And we don’t have any technical activities for the youth, no technical clubs. Kids aren’t engaged in such things and don’t choose them as professions. They want to be lawyers or psychologists, but the development prognosis for the city says that by 2020 these professions will find no demand. On the other hand, it’s not just the prognoses you rely on when choosing a career.
Maxim Zhilyakov, engineer, head manager of local heating systems
— I have an ecologist degree, but I work as a heating system engineer. Great to be an ecologist here, though, you’d be scared if I told you. We have everything here: asbestos dust, phenol, formaldehyde. Asbestos is harmless on its own, but the tiny particles accumulate in the body and in combination with some other compounds it’s a guaranteed carcinogen. There’s two scientific researches on asbestos, one says it’s simply harmful, the other that it’s extremely harmful. A common disease in Asbest is asbestosis, a type of fibrosis. Asbestos particles accumulate in the lungs and hamper breath. But at the combine they keep the industrial sanitary at a proper level. People live for many years with this disease. Nevertheless, it is said that the oncology hospital in Yekaterinburg mostly hosts patients from Novouralsk, where uranium is refined, and from Asbest. What do I like about the city? That it gives us people like Sergei Parfeniuk, or our boxing champion.
Andrei, a biker
—
A small city has it’s advantages. First, the size, it’s just plain easy to go visit some friends in evening. Meeting informally, like we do in the garages. I have a small business here; it’s convenient to know whom to call to solve some issues. It was quite easy in the 90-s both the police and the mafia would ask for my services- computers, repairs, sales and service. It was very convenient to solve problems with either of them. I am a modest man, from an ordinary workers family.
Despite the enormous taxes, people keep investing money into business, into their country. One of my acquaintances has three hotels here and all he earns he invests back into his business. All the business here is like this. You have to invest back all you earn from it. If you buy an expensive car with the first money you earn, you’ll have nothing left.
Lolita Valentinovna Cherpakova, a first category teacher from Asbest arts school
— My first degree is a theatre director. When you analyze a piece, the end result of the analysis must match the initial impression. You can check everything with it; if something doesn’t match then you’ve missed something. Having lived in this city I can compare today to my first impression of it. When I first arrived here to study at the musical college I was 14 years old. I liked the arrangement of the city at once. There were fountains on the Victory avenue, it was sunny, flowers everywhere, and the Victory Medal star near the Pioneer Palace was all shining with it’s glass decorations. I was very beautiful. Then as lived here I was happy about every new object being built: the stadium, the pool, the park of culture.
There’s just something about the cultural space here. It’s not so bad here, compared to others cities of similar scale. Some attention is paid to culture. My opinion is that once you stop developing culture the city is over. We can only support culture by joint effort. On the other hand, say what you may about local authorities, they still do their job.
Vladimir Susloparov, the head of Asbest city district administration
— This is my city and I have to take care of it as a father does, I guess.
I am responsible for it as its child and love it as one. Of course, a single industry town is not a right thing. A city has to be multipolar, multifunctional. Nowadays we see how interruptions in the work of the combine affect the whole city. And anti-asbestos campaign is so wide that our budget, the region, Russia itself – all suffer from it. There’s no demand for asbestos on European or American markets, although it’s a perfectly harmless material.
Our task for now is to attract investments to help develop other industries as well.
Though we don’t thrive economically, it’s in fact home to many talented people. Take our Olympic champion, for instance. It’s a singing and dancing city, and children’s activities are well developed. we the current administration don’t take credit for this but the fact is that we try to keep and maintain what good we have from the old days. We built a covered skating rink- a rare thing for a small city. In just two years our team took the third place in the Golden Puck competition. While economy is declining, culture and arts are on the rise.
They try to solve problems of industrial towns by some locally applied measures and projects. But we need the right to manage our budget ourselves. We need some means to appeal to investors. Not like what happened to the Russian Magnesium project in Moscow. We had a huge project of 15 trillion rubles worth, a new way to produce magnesium chemically, a discovery, basically. These dirt heaps we have around contain about 20% magnesium. The byproduct of this magnesium extraction would be pure silicon. But the American intelligence service were at work here. They bought the project out in the very beginning and didn’t let us bring it to life.
All the taxes we have here come from the land and realty. That’s nothing. How can we attract investors? We should be able to control our tax gains here ourselves. But today the more we do, the more will be taken from us to even things out for everyone.
Artists
— It’s not a city that has to be liked. We don’t have much choice; it’s where we’re born, where we are rooted. Worst of all, we can’t change anything. It’s a dirty city, it falls apart and nobody seems to care. Buildings are dated 1960’s mostly, and that’s it. We take pride in the quarry, of course. Of course we want our city to live and advance and to take part in it, too. But apparently there’s no need of us, as I see it.
— We studied at an arts college in the 1970-s, in Sverdlovsk. After that we worked wherever we could find work. And in the savage 90-s many of us changed occupations. Busy surviving, like the whole country. Of course we still wanted to paint, to do what we do best, to apply ourselves. But it’s only now that we begin to finally get to it. While all we did before was painting cars or houses. Jacks of all trades, we were.
Yuri Kislov:
— I worked at the combine, and still do. As an artist. Posters, adverts, holiday decorations. It was interesting. Of course, this sort of work was very infused with ideology then. This course of work required both efficiency and having your own world outlook. We were the engines of advertisement. In the 90-s we became useless to the facilities, they began to get rid of the artists because there was no more ideology in the trade. Pampers and snickers, and everybody is happy. A wonderful new life for everybody, and survival for the artists.
— Sergei Parfeniuk, on the other hand, came to success in the 90-s, when everything was declining. We were surviving while he was coloring the pictures, simply put. Somehow this pays well. And I paint nature, portraits, and my homeland. We all graduated the college, academic school…
— Of course, it hurts to see our city in a state like this. We want it to live on. What can artists do? Work more, I guess. Going around yelling and defaming everything isn’t right, really. We should work. Just mind our business.
When we talk to the young, we surely try to inspire them, tell them they should love their homeland, and love their city, even despite it being like this. It is ours, and this is where we live.
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