Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave the green light to a massive new construction project in Mordovia, where it is badly needed.
Just recently, Mordovian scientists revealed that the Mordovian people voluntarily joined the Russian state a thousand years ago. Clearly, this news is still a cause for large-scale celebrations, even in 2012.
The recent celebrations of the 1000th anniversary of Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, showed that the federal authorities have a soft spot for such occasions and tend to allocate considerable funds for them. Indeed, it would be quite strange if the Mordovian government missed this opportunity, especially considering that it would have to wait another thousand years for another one. (Oddly enough, Mordovia celebrated the 500th anniversary of the people's voluntary integration with Russia in 1985.)
President of Mordovia Nikolai Merkushkin said that he was deeply inspired by the Prime Minister's decision to "create comfortable conditions for the Mordovian people and develop the Republic's infrastructure within the next few years."
Mr Putin, for his part, noted: "The upcoming celebrations should become an all-Russian festival." And Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov added: "The country should know about Mordovia."
So far, four billion roubles from the federal budget will be allocated for the celebrations, and Mr Merkushkin promised to provide another 13 billion roubles to make the Mordovian capital virtually unrecognisable. The Mordovian authorities not only plan to erect a monument to mark the Republic's unification with Russia, but also to build a new hospital, a square to honour the 1000th anniversary of unification ("The outlay dawned on me two weeks ago," Mr Merkushkin said.), and a stadium for 80,000 spectators, which the city with a population of 300,000 is desperately in need of.
Mr Merkushkin told journalists that he had actually requested a much larger amount of money from the federal government - three times higher, to be exact - but that he could certainly make do with a smaller amount.
"We asked for much more initially, but then we streamlined the planned expenses," he said. "We planned to spend 1.4 billion roubles on the first block of the university, which amounts to 160,000 roubles per square metre! But we can easily make do with 30,000-40,000 roubles, and even have money left over."
By Vladimir Vorsobin