"Budget" cathedral

On the next Sunday, a citywide survey will be held in Yekaterinburg: the townspeople will choose a place for the temple of St. Catherine

The Yekaterinburgers won the right to choose in May this year, when four nights in a row gathered in thousands in the square near the drama theater, they went to the batons of the Russian Guard and fists of fighters from the Martial Academy of Martial Arts of the Russian Copper Company, one of the main sponsors of the construction of the temple. People did not want to give the square to the construction site, and industrialists and the church did not want to miss the location in the very center of Yekaterinburg.

Only four days later, street battles, when riot police from neighboring cities and regions was pulled into the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said: “There is a simple way to conduct a survey, and the minority should submit to the majority.” They converged on that.

Not five months have passed since that statement by the president. During this time, everything was done so that the townspeople lost interest in the survey, and the choice could be made for them.

At first, Yekaterinburgers were actively involved in the choice of sites for the construction of the temple: the city hall asked the townspeople to offer their options. And 11,000 people immediately offered 53 places. Then, of these 53 places, 13 were left - the most popular. And then - they began to “chop” the remaining ones: after several meetings with the expert community, the city hall left six sites at first. Then three. The reasons for the wems were called different: the earth was too expensive, then there were other plans for it.

At the end of September, three weeks before the survey, the list of sites was completely reduced to two, and the most popular option was excluded - the wasteland at the intersection of Belinsky and Furmanov streets. To build a wasteland, according to Mayor Alexander Vysokinsky, banned the Federal Property Management Agency.

As a result, the Yekaterinburg residents were left the minimum choice: to build a temple in the city center on the site of the former instrument -building plant, or - on the so far not mastered territory behind the Makarovsky bridge.

At the same time, officials have already identified the “correct option”: at a meeting of the City Duma, the mayor of Yekaterinburg, Alexander Vysokinsky, said that the construction of the temple on the site of the instrument -planning plant “would make it possible to completely reconstruct the writers' quarter” and “build the old city”. And on the site behind the Makarovsky bridge, according to the mayor, there is not even construction documentation. The Yekaterinburg diocese also advocated the construction of the temple on the site of the instrument -planning plant. This is understandable: the former building of the plant is located in the center, the site behind the Makarovsky bridge is half a kilometer from it.

For those whom neither the mayor nor the church can convince, they turned on black technologies: they began to distribute leaflets in the city, which tells that if residents suddenly vote for the site behind the Makarovsky bridge, then the money for the construction of the temple will be taken from the budget.

And this is 3.5 billion rubles that will not receive city hospitals, schools and kindergartens.

The “budget resource”, however, was activated to the maximum: judging by publications on social networks, they force the survey to go to the heads and methodologists of kindergartens and schools. Employees of the Yekaterinburg trade and economic technical school in the mailing list indicate that the “correct voting option” is the site of the former instrument-building plant. The City Hall of Yekaterinburg has already been called what was happening "bends in the field."

Officials do not expect excitement on the sites on the sites: they predict that about 30,000 people will vote - 3% of the total number of voters. The minimum necessary to recognize the survey in the held is 10,000 votes.

To take Yekaterinburg with an attack “in the forehead”, as it was in the square, did not work. But to leave the city without a choice was almost possible. Will Yekaterinburg make his choice, or will they still make a choice for it-we will find out on Sunday.