St. Petersburg small entrepreneurs came to Moscow to defend their right to life

Today, August 13, a rally in defense of small business in Russia was held on Triumfalnaya Square (formerly Mayakovskaya). The reason for the action, which was called the "Empty Consumer Baskets" rally, was an attempt by the St. Petersburg authorities to close ...

Today, August 13, a rally in defense of small business in Russia was held on Triumfalnaya Square (formerly Mayakovskaya). The reason for the action, which was called the "Empty Consumer Baskets" rally, was an attempt by the St. Petersburg authorities to close the Khasansky Trade Complex and resell it to the large Lenta hypermarket chain. The complex is located on the outskirts of the city and is very popular with the population. A group of small entrepreneurs erected it on the territory of a former wasteland and landfill.

Now, according to the organizers of the action, this is one of the youngest and most modern shopping malls in St. Petersburg, where people come from all parts of the city and even from other cities. Since 2005, the Lenta hypermarket chain has claimed this site, and the city administration has made repeated attempts to evict small entrepreneurs from there, some of them have confiscated goods from some of them for no apparent reason or explanation.

About 300 enterprises are located on the territory of the complex, which, in addition to providing various types of services (repair shops, hairdressers, etc.), are engaged in retail trade and support small producers who are unable to work with large monopoly companies. Participants of the action warn that if the Khasansky shopping mall nevertheless becomes the property of a large monopoly hypermarket chain, not only small entrepreneurs who ensure its existence will lose their jobs, but also their suppliers - small regional manufacturers.

“What is happening today can be called genocide,” says Ilya Khandrikov, chairman of the All-Russian Movement For a Fair Market. “According to experts, up to 40% of small and medium-sized enterprises will die by the New Year – they do not have working capital and cannot develop.”

“The worst thing is chaos,” says Larisa Soboleva, an employee of the Staraya Derevny shopping zone. “But it becomes even more terrible when directed against the elderly or against those who provide and maintain, for example, the economy. Some of our grandmothers on their four thousand will not be able to buy products in hypermarkets. Others who are engaged in gardening are deprived of the only opportunity to earn money. We are doomed to extinction."

The venue for the rally was not chosen by chance, one of the buildings overlooking the square is the Ministry of Economic Development. But, not expecting much help from the authorities, the entrepreneurs decided to apply directly to the president, and they did everything possible so that their appeal would not go unnoticed.

“Three weeks ago we started the 1000 Letters to the President action,” says Grigory Solominsky, head of the legal service of the Association of Small and Medium Business Entrepreneurs of St. Petersburg, one of the organizers of the action. – We have repeatedly written to D.A. Letters to Medvedev with a request to pay attention to this situation, but his administration always answered in monosyllables, unsubscribed or simply ignored us. Therefore, in order to get at least some intelligible answer, we decided to write him not ten or a hundred, but a thousand letters. About 4,500 letters were collected in three weeks.

No more than a hundred people took part in the rally, but they are all very determined. Most of them specially came from St. Petersburg, there were also residents of Voronezh, Tambov, Lipetsk, even Muscovites. The position of the protesters was reflected by a mass of posters, which read: "Do not deprive us of work", "Stop making us nightmares" and "No to the monopoly of networks." The most impressive were posters with the image of a fico, each of which said something different: “Here is the fight against corruption”, “Here is social stability for you”, and also “Here is fair competition for you”. Under each statement was the signature "Power of St. Petersburg." The largest, two-meter-long fico with the same phrases on both sides lay in an incredible-sized cart from a hypermarket. Empty shopping baskets, symbolizing the sad result of the socio-economic policy of the Russian authorities, stood right there. The protesters also raised the flags of the Yabloko and SPS parties, whose leaders helped apply for the rally.

For tomorrow, the organizers of the action, defending not only their own interests, have already scheduled a press conference and a round table on the problems of small business in modern Russia. Despite mass protests, from September 17, Khasansky shopping mall will be put up for auction with an initial price of 38 million rubles. The St. Petersburg authorities promised entrepreneurs and tenants that they would "deal with them in court."