Viktor Kononov, ex-chairman of the Smolny Tourism Development Committee (Photo: gov.spb.ru)

The former head of the St. Petersburg Tourism Development Committee, Viktor Kononov, who was recently relieved of his post, together with the Dozhd TV channel, made a video about how he says goodbye to the civil service. Earlier, versions appeared in the media that the official was fired because he favorably reacted to the Leningrad video for the song “Drinking in St. Petersburg,” expressing the opinion that the video would help increase the attractiveness of St. Petersburg among tourists.

The new video, which was published on the Dozhd website , alternates footage from the latest Leningrad video and the story of the dismissal of V. Kononov himself. The ex-Smolny official, following the example of the office worker from the clip, leaves the office and goes to the store for a strong alcoholic drink. Then he drinks it, allegedly in company with a white-collar criminal, a store saleswoman and a traffic police officer.

In the new version of the video, Leningrad leader Sergei Shnurov also appears with words of support to the former head of the committee: “Viktor Eduardovich, you are now a free man. And as a free person, I will tell you: “Now you can drink in St. Petersburg every day.” The clip ends with the words of the ex-head of the Smolny tourism committee: “Everything is fine, there is money.”

At the same time, V. Kononov refutes the widespread version that he was fired from the city administration due to the fact that he had previously spoken flatly about the “Leningrad” video. “I left on my own, my leaving work is in no way connected with Shnur’s video [Sergey Shnurov - ed.]. Despite how I felt about the authorities, let’s not demonize them unnecessarily; people don’t get fired for such things. Another thing is that all this overlapped, it all turned out to be an intersection with the content of Shnur’s video, so it turned out to a certain extent even fun,” explains V. Kononov.

The ex-official, apparently, has not changed his attitude towards S. Shnurov’s video. “Look, in St. Petersburg, even coffee shops have already hung wonderful hashtags: “Drink in St. Petersburg.” What drink? You can drink coffee, you can drink juice, it doesn’t matter what... For some reason, we don’t have any objections that we are going to Prague to drink beer or to Munich for Oktoberfest...,” says V. Kononov .

According to him, the authorities cannot ban a cultural phenomenon. “It’s already clear, we’ve been discussing this clip for a whole month, it’s already a cultural phenomenon,” he notes. He likened the prosecutor's investigation of the clip at the request of deputies to an investigation into the activities of aliens irradiating people who do not wear tin foil hats.

Reference

V. Kononov took over as head of the committee at the end of March 2016. According to media reports, in the past the official worked in the tax service and the FSB. And in the mid-90s he went to work in the city tax police department, which was then headed by the current governor of St. Petersburg G. Poltavchenko. In the 2000s, he worked as head of the internal policy department in the presidential representative office in the Central Federal District. Before his appointment as head of the committee, he was an adviser to the general director of the Tractor Plants corporation.

The video “Drinking in St. Petersburg” appeared on Youtube on April 30, directed by Anna Parmas, author of the videos for the songs “VIP”, “HLS” and “Exhibit”. The video tells about a manager, a saleswoman, a traffic police officer, a taxi driver and a tour guide who are tired of routine work, the tyranny of their superiors and the behavior of others. As a result, all the characters in the video decided to find salvation in strong alcohol. To date, the video has been viewed by about 11.4 million people.

The video caused serious concern among some Legislative Assembly deputies. In particular, United Russia member Evgeny Marchenko was so offended by the story told in the video that he decided to share his feelings with St. Petersburg prosecutor Sergei Litvinenko. The appeal, which was sent to the supervisory authority by a member of United Russia, states that “the video of the music video consists of propaganda of alcoholism and drug addiction, propaganda of disrespect and violence against government officials and propaganda of hooliganism; the song contains a large amount of profanity.” The St. Petersburg prosecutor's office is currently checking the clip.

An official fired from Smolny starred in the new “clip” of “Leningrad”