The Daily Life of the Employees on the Pazsky (Pazretsky) Cascade of Hydroelectric Power Plants in the «Brezhnev Era»

The article is devoted to the daily life of employees of the Pazsky (Pazretsky) HPP Cascade in the «Brezhnev era» (1964-1982). The author pays attention to such aspects of the Soviet daily life of residents of the Far North, as: household, working and recreation conditions, the solution of social problems by public organizations and the management of the enterprise. The paper is based on previously unpublished historical sources from the R-970 Fund (Cascade of Pazretsky HPPs) of the State Archive of the Murmansk region. The period of “developed socialism” is often characterized as the most prosperous and stable time in the history of Soviet society. The materials studied allow us to conclude that Cascade’s development plans included the creation of favorable working and living conditions for its employees. On the one hand, this was entirely consistent with the goals and objectives of “communist construction,” and on the other hand, it refl ected the management’s caring attitude not only to the work of enterprises, but also to the health, leisure, and education of employees and their family members. The administration tried to make living conditions as easy as possible by organizing leisure and cultural events so that the quality of everyday life in small northern settlements would in no way be inferior to that of the Northern capital.