Translated material
Olympic square dance
Mayor time in Sochi
On the beaches of Sochi - sold out. The holiday season can be considered open. At the time of signing the issue, already 20 people are applying for the post of mayor of the main Russian resort. The main intrigue is who the Sochi election committee will leave on the lists. Why such a hype - understood The New Times
Of all the guns Unprecedented case: in the election race for the post of mayor of a small provincial town, not even a regional center, all the first persons of the state joined. President Dmitry Medvedev personally met with Governor of the Krasnodar Territory Alexander Tkachev and candidate from the ruling party Anatoly Pakhomov. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, without naming names, said that a person "experienced, professional, successful" should become the mayor. The prime minister wanted the best, but it turned out as always: the opposition jokes that many citizens took Putin's words as support for Nemtsov: and indeed, who else of the candidates has many years of leadership in the province and positions from minister to deputy prime minister of the government? A very funny story came out with the speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov. Commenting on the nomination of Nemtsov, Mironov said that one of the locals should become the mayor. “I put myself in the place of the Sochi residents - if a “Varangian” was nominated for this position in St. Petersburg, I, as a Petersburger, would never vote for him,” Mironov said. Mironov apparently was not told that of all the federally known politicians running for the Sochi elections, Nemtsov is the only one who was born in Sochi. Neither Andrei Bogdanov, nor Anastasia Volochkova, nor Andrei Lugovoy, whose nomination from the Liberal Democratic Party was seriously considered in Moscow, are Sochi residents. Not only that: the main candidate for power, Anatoly Pakhomov, was also born not in Sochi, but in the village of Novoarkhangelskaya, Tikhoretsky District, Krasnodar Territory.
Olympic wiring At stake is the reputation of Vladimir Putin, the main apologist for holding the Winter Olympics 2014 in subtropical Sochi, who promised not to stand up for the price: the budget for the future Olympics includes $13 billion, skeptics say that it will take no less than $30 billion. Nemtsov, on the other hand, began his campaign with the fact that it is impossible to hold the entire Olympics in Sochi. “Sochi should host competitions in bobsleigh, sledding, ski jumping, and that’s all. And competitions in skating and hockey, skiing and biathlon are in another city or cities,” says Nemtsov, referring to the Olympic Charter, which provides for the possibility of decentralizing the Olympics. According to the former Deputy Prime Minister, the rejection of the project to hold the Winter Olympics in the subtropics will solve three problems at once. Firstly, it will help save money, the squandering of which during a crisis is madness. Secondly, it will help the residents of the Imeretinskaya Valley to save their houses, which are planned to be demolished for the construction of Olympic facilities. Thirdly, there will be no need to puzzle over what to do with these same objects after the Games are over. “Why build 200,000-seat stadiums in a city of 400,000 people?” Nemtsov asks.
The risks for the Kremlin are great. In Korean Pyeongchang (this city was only a few votes behind Sochi when the issue of the 2014 Winter Olympics was decided in Guatemala on July 5, 2007), Olympic construction continues, because the Koreans are sure that the Russians will not cope. As a result, the Kremlin ideologists decided, apparently, to resort to the tactics of scattering the votes of the opposition electorate in order to approve the current acting governor as the mayor. Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov.
The Kuban Cossacks of Sochi always led their own, until the governor Tkachev and the Olympic project mixed up all the cards on the local political Olympus. Shaking the resort began nine months after it was chosen to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. The then mayor of Sochi, Viktor Kolodyazhny, who headed the resort city in 2004 after the resignation of the mayor Leonid Mostovoy, contributed to this victory. Kolodyazhny won more than 73% of the vote in the elections. Success could be considered absolute, if not for the total number of voters: only 22.4% of voters came to the ballot boxes with a turnout threshold of 20%.
The victory over the Austrian Salzburg and the Korean Pyeongchang gave the country the state corporation Olimpstroy, and Sochi a new mayor. Having dealt with the economy entrusted to him, Semyon Vainshtok, the first president of Olympstroy, hurried to resign in April 2008. The official reason is reaching retirement age. Unofficial - a shaft of potential land riots: as a result of the start of construction of Olympic facilities. “According to our estimates, one of the main reasons for Weinstock’s resignation was the conflicts between the head of Olimpstroy and the regional administration regarding the implementation of the Olympic project, the main among which was the issue of buying out land with a total area of 3,000 hectares for infrastructure construction,” says the IK analyst. Finam" Konstantin Romanov. The far-sighted Weinstock, they say, even wrote a note to the president about the lack of funds in the state corporation's budget for a noble cause, because the bulk of the required land is built up with houses or these are protected areas.
On April 17, 2008, Olimpstroy was headed by Viktor Kolodyazhny. Vladimir Afanasenkov, vice-governor of the Krasnodar Territory, was appointed acting head of the city.
Severe, sudden illness Native Kuban Vladimir Afanasenkov built roads for 20 years, then supervised their construction, and in June 2006 sparks of the Olympic flame flashed in his career - and he headed the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Directorate for the implementation of the federal target program for the development of Sochi as a mountain climatic resort in 2006– 2014" In February 2008, Afanasenkov became the “chief in charge of the Olympics” from the regional side: Governor Alexander Tkachev appointed the once strong road builder as his deputy in charge of preparing Sochi for the Olympics, and in April Afanasenkov ended up in the “Olympic Drama Theater” at all, taking the position of acting director. O. Mayor of Sochi after the resignation of Kolodyazhny.
On June 29, 2008, Vladimir Afanasenkov won a landslide victory in the early mayoral elections: more than 85% of voters voted for him with a turnout of 44%. Without touching on the topic of the Olympics, Afanasenkov during the campaign spoke about traffic jams, energy, sewerage and other understandable problems requiring urgent solutions. However, the matter of the popularly elected mayor did not go further than correct conversations: on October 30, he resigned. The official reason looked as unexpected and frivolous as Semyon Vainshtok's retirement age: Vladimir Afanasenkov's spine hurt. The head of the regional programs of the Information Policy Development Fund, Alexander Kynev, called the stated reason ridiculous and suggested that, in fact, Afanasenkov's resignation could be associated with a change in the federal curator of the 2014 Olympics: shortly before his resignation, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak was appointed to oversee preparations for the Games. Sochi Communist leader Yuri Dzagania, who is also running for mayor, says he saw Afanasenkov a week before Afanasenkov's sudden resignation and did not notice any signs of illness.
Faster, even faster Next acting. Dzhambulat Khatuov became mayor of Sochi: he held this post for less than three months. Before Sochi, he led Armavir for five years. Record indicators of the city's development, according to Governor Tkachev, became the main "trump card" in the choice of Khatuov's candidacy for the once again vacant seat of Sochi mayor. “This is the best we have in the region,” said the governor, presenting Khatuov's candidacy to the deputies of the Sochi city assembly. "The best that is in the region" ceased to be such after 90 days. According to Governor Tkachev, Khatuov "handled it to the fullest, with an A plus." 5 plus Tkachev put Khatuova on January 20, 2009, appointing a new acting mayor of Sochi - ex-mayor of Anapa Anatoly Pakhomov, who has now become the main candidate for mayor from the United Russia party.
Armchair with a warranty period In his incomplete 50 years, Anatoly Pakhomov looks cheerful, energetic, ready to perform the most complex tasks in the shortest possible time. Apparently, he retained this resolute attitude from the time when he first headed the zonal student construction team, then the entire Kuban Komsomol. From 1997 to 2005, Pakhomov replaced several cabinets of the Krasnodar and regional administrations, and in March 2006 he was elected head of the Anapa administration. Introducing the staff of the Sochi administration of the new acting. mayor on January 20, 2009, the governor said: “At this stage, the personnel crisis in the resort capital of Russia is over. We hope that the time of stability begins. Anatoly Pakhomov is the mayor for decades. I hope my choice today and yours in the election of the head of the city will coincide.
In mid-February, Pakhomov met with residents of the Imeretinskaya Lowland, whose houses are being demolished due to Olympic construction and who demand to buy their houses and land at market prices,¹ appealed to their patriotism, citing foreign experience as an example. “I recently returned from Vancouver, we looked at how the construction is going and how people feel about it. And the people are very patriotic. Patriotic means that people understand that in addition to their own interests, there are the interests of the state,” Pakhomov said to people who refuse to leave their homes and move to hotels and sanatoriums.
Vote don't vote On patriotism, or rather on the administrative resource, Anatoly Pakhomov will most likely be elected mayor, experts say. But the Sochi residents still win. Boris Nemtsov estimates the resettlement project for residents of the Imeretinskaya Valley at $1 billion: $600 million for the resettlement of households and $400 million for the resettlement of apartment buildings, and says that exactly the same amount the state is obliged to pay Sochi residents for the loss of houses, gardens and the usual way of life of residents of the resort town who were fed from the fact that they rented their houses and small rooms to vacationers. It is obvious that now that the election of the mayor of Sochi has received federal publicity, the Kremlin, despite the crisis, will not stand up to the price.
1The New Times covered this lawsuit at length in issue #47, November 24, 2008.