Izvestia: “Blogger’s petition earns his village a fire alarm bell from Putin”
How Russian officials follow Vladimir Putin's orders.
Vladimir Putin's response to a blogger's strongly worded post denouncing the fire safety situation in his native village made headlines in the national press last week, and the story has continued to unfold against the backdrop of abnormally hot weather and widespread wildfires.
The blogger, who introduced himself as Alexander, complained that his village, in the Tver Region, had had its ponds drained and filled with sand and its fire truck taken away. But his gravest concern was the disappearance of the village's vintage fire alarm bell, which he identified using the old-fashioned term "rynda." The rynda has been replaced with a phone, which is permanently out of order, Alexander lamented.
In his reply, Mr Putin promised to look into the situation and to ensure that the rynda was restored.
"Rynda? What does it mean? What are you talking about?" a secretary in the local administration asked, responding to our request for comment.
But isn't "rynda" a buzzword in all Russian town halls now? And primarily here, in the Tver Region?
We came over in the morning. The top official of the Kalyazino district, where Alexander's village is located, was too busy to see us.
Vera Kolmakova, head of the local administration's emergencies department, knew what this archaic term meant but refused to comment, saying only that the issue was for the administration head to decide.
Deputy head of the local administration Vyacheslav Tyomkin also declined to be interviewed, saying he had learned about the story only earlier that day, while surfing the Internet. He added that he didn't approve of the blogger's letter.
"In many of the local villages, there're 400 summer home owners per every couple of native residents," Tyomkin said. "And instead of arranging a meeting with local officials, people complain directly to Putin. This man, for instance, has never come round to meet with us here."
The blogger, who identifies himself on the internet by the nick "top_lap," claimed in his letter to Mr Putin that he had met with the local administration's head to tell him that his community was preparing to restore the ponds. The official was less than enthusiastic and even threatened to put Alexander and his fellow villagers behind bars if they went ahead with their plans.
By the middle of the day, the head of the local administration, Konstantin Ilyin, personally called Izvestia to specify the name of Alexander's village, Vysokovo, but insisted that none of its inhabitants had petitioned the authorities about the rydna.
"Is this an issue, in the first place?" Izvestia asked him.
"You see, the rynda isn't a necessity," the official answered vaguely. "If you travel across Russia's rural communities, you'll see that ryndas are few and far between. There may be several, preserved as artifacts. They have been replaced by modern communications devices. And there's absolutely no need for a pond in that village, as it sits on the Nerl River and water can be taken from there should a fire break out."
The blogger Alexander raised all these points in his posting. He spoke about the modern communications devices ("There's a phone, which has never been connected to the line, and is therefore out of service), as well as about taking water from the river to put out a fire ("Some 15 years ago, a fire broke out in a nearby village; a firefighter took two buckets, filled them with water, took a bicycle and off we went to put it out together.")
Asked what happened to Vysokovo's pond (the blogger claimed it had been filled up with sand and then sold off as a construction site), Mr Ilyin said, "We don't need a pond over there; there's never been any pond there, actually."
"That's pure fiction," he claimed. "What's the motive behind it? Well, the district has its ill wishers." The administration head does not know the blogger's name yet, but is convinced the man is "a crazy saboteur."
We know that "top_ lap" was born on September 4 (he has not specified the year) and that he joined the blogging community only a short while ago. Journalists from the Ekho Moskvy radio station have found out that his first name is Alexander. Oddly enough, in Alexander's profile, Israel first featured as his place of residence, but that has now been changed to Russia. His other postings suggest that his ancestors were Jewish and he is a Moscow resident, with a summer home in the village.
"You shouldn't try to find some political motivation here," Alexander said to Ekho Moskvy, commenting on his blog post addressed to Putin. "We are not affiliated with the Communists, the Democrats, or some other party. We're just ordinary people."
The blogger did not name his village, but officials identified it somehow. Most likely by intuition.
District authorities say the man is a saboteur because he uses obscene words in his blog posts. It is the vocabulary that they find particularly embarrassing. But they are not in the least embarrassed by the fact that Prime Minister Putin personally replied to the complaint, admitting that the grievances expressed in it were not unfounded.
It is true that should a fire break out in Vysokovo, there will be no one on hand to extinguish it. Mr Ilyin has confirmed that there is a single fire department for the entire area. The Starobislovskoye municipality, which the village of Vysokovo belongs to, includes 96 villages overall. And the district itself is comprised of five such municipalities.
"We write petitions because creating additional fire departments in our district is a responsibility of the federal authorities. But maybe the centre can't deliver at this point...," Mr Ilyin lamented.
But, according to him, the district is not at risk. "There's almost no smoke, no strong blaze; and all occasional fires that have broke out have been put out within hours," he said.
Never mind that in Russia's European part, villages that catch fire have burnt down in just 20 minutes.
Despite all the skepticism surrounding Alexander's message, the instructions issued by Prime Minister Putin in response have been carried out.
Later that day, Mr Ilyin told us: "We've got a new ‘rynda' here and it has been waiting for the applicant to come pick it up for a couple of days now. We'll give it to him as soon as he shows up. " It was subsequently learned that the fire alarm bell had already been installed in Vysokovo. The blogger Alexander confirmed this in his interview with Ekho Moskvy. "Yeah, I know, Mum gave me a call to say it's there."
Unfortunately, not all rural communities in Russia are lucky enough to have a brazen activist standing up to the prime minister in defence of their rights.
Alexandra Beluza
