Looking from the stratosphere

Imagine that you invited the lady to the restaurant, ordered the most exquisite dishes, and when it was time to pay for dinner, it suddenly turned out that the wallet with money and a plastic card remained at home, in your old jacket. Shame. Disgrace. Nightmare. You feel at least an idiot. Now imagine that in such a situation there was a whole Russian region, which has no money for all sorts of excesses either in the old jacket or in the new one. They are simply not provided for by the budget. "Why did you, a fool, dragged yourself into this embarrassment?" -"Yes, the devil knows him! It somehow happened by itself."

The entire previous paragraph is an artistic illustration of a real occasion in the Saratov region. Recently, the governor , having pulled his eyes, admitted that the new airport promised to fellow countrymen several years ago will not be built by 2017. And by 2018 too. Moreover! If it is not possible to agree with the former general contractor or find another kamikaze, then a bright idea worth about 20 billion rubles (some of which is already safely buried in the ground) will not be realized at all. Thus, bossies have dispersed with opportunities. Litavra and fanfares - favorite tools in the orchestra of official journalists - did not help.

Strictly speaking, the idea itself was originally with a marriage. The spindlers unsuccessfully tried to figure out why the second airport was needed, when the first one in Saratov was loaded by a third. The passenger flow does not grow from nowhere. The city of the Volga region cannot become the city. The prospect of turning into a tourist paradise does not shine for the regional - even motor ships have long come past us without stopping. Maybe we have scored a fountain of longevity and there will be no end to the suffering from all over the world? No, no fountains. Or maybe we decided to hold an interplanetary chess tournament? Also - no. What if the governor Valery Radaev found the legendary treasure of Stenka Razin and elementarily tried to invest a prize 25%somewhere? Alas! As already mentioned, we do not have our money.

Our sad poverty looks most expressive against the backdrop of meaningless cyclopic buildings, steadily breaking and overgrown with grass of oblivion

True, these nuances do not stop. The city and the region humiliatingly beg at the federal center penny grants for maintaining pants - and at the same time they build museums unknown and they are not clear to whom it is not clear to whom. If you look at the Saratov province from somewhere in the stratosphere, then the picture will surely be wonderful: buildings and monuments are visible, dirt and garbage-no. Nearby, the city makes a serious impression. The sidewalks are like a grater. Roads look like after a bombing. We are poor and sad, and our sad poverty looks most expressive against the backdrop of meaningless cyclopic buildings, steadily breaking and overgrown with grass of oblivion.

However, we do not throw a stone in a particular Volga Valery Vasilievich - he is only an administrative expressor of the collective unconscious. Eternal Russian craving for megaprojects is a state of mind: not to hug with the mind, not to measure with commercial arshin; It is just right to change the gossimvolik, depicting Platonov's foundation pit in the place of the two -headed eagle. From time immemorial, the Supreme Priests of the Aztecs and Egyptian pharaohs woke up in our rulers - and then entire nations moved by a wave of sovereign finger, concrete piles, giant tunnels and railways were driven into permafrost, left nowhere to nowhere. For some reason, we can’t become famous for good deeds. The leader, who suddenly turns into the head to take care of the needs of people, can hardly leave a mark in history. But the leader, who, in a fit of paranoid gigantomania, will let millions of the lives of his subjects into the spray, the rating will go off even half a century after the monster died.

Although the Soviet government in our country seemed to cease almost a quarter of a century ago and we seem to build a different society all this time, hysterical romanticism still prevails over bourgeois pragmatism. The form is higher than the content, fanaber is more important than the universe air castle, it is more convenient for us to be a “screw” than an independent person ... By the way, while this material was prepared, rumors have leaked into the seal that the airport-2 may still be built with us. It seems that in Moscow, finally, they realized: the Saratov megaproject is not only ambitious, but also useless. Well, how can one not throw money?

Roman Arbitman - Saratov writer

Opinions expressed under the heading "Law" may not reflect the point of view of the editorial office