Prime Minister Vladimir Putin participated in the opening ceremony of a stamping plant that is now part of the Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) in Kolpino, the Leningrad Region. Kommersant correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov attended a symphony concert staged on the plant's main floor to mark the event.
Formerly, the Kolpino plant manufactured tank armour. The area saw heavy fighting during WWII when the Soviet Army tried to defend Leningrad from the Nazis.
The town itself has not changed much since the 1940s, except for the massive, brand-new metallurgical plant built to manufacture stamped sheet metal parts for the local cluster of assembly plants that belong to international carmakers such as Ford, Nissan, Hyundai, Renault, and the Bosch-Siemens alliance. These companies have surrounded St Petersburg as if imitating the 1942 siege, only it's a gentle and careful one this time.
MMK management arrived in Kolpino for the ceremony, led by President Viktor Rashnikov. A quarter of the huge assembly floor was freed to accommodate a stage, seats for the audience, and an area for buffet where refreshments were served. The silvery corrugated pipes running all over the place almost reached the freshly dressed tables that were not yet set; one got the bizarre impression that they were arranged so as to start pouring drinks or sprouting ground meat as soon as the time came.
Vladimir Putin made a short speech telling the workers that anyone completing a project must have "the exciting feeling of accomplishing something new, promising, and interesting."
The invisible master of ceremonies used the loudspeakers to invite the prime minister, St Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, and primary MMK shareholder Viktor Rashnikov to put the new plant into operation by pressing a button on the stage. He did not seem to realise or care that he was inviting three people to press one button, which was clearly visible from any distance, mounted on a transparent Plexiglas block that looked more like a ballot box. Several wires connecting it to the baseboard of a last-century computer and a power source that was just as old made one think of the coloured wires connecting a bomb and a detonator and stopping to consider which one to cut – the red or the blue – in order to prevent an explosion.
But the wires were connected to the baseboard only, making the button and the old computer a close-looped, autonomous system that gave one the much less exciting impression of seeing something obsolete and boring. Regardless, the three officials were to start the system up.
It is impossible to tell who actually pressed the button. Those attending saw Putin take Matviyenko's hand and move it toward the button, but then everything was blocked from the view of photo and video cameras by Rashnikov's massive torso.
Once the button was pressed, the executives attending the ceremony heard the sound of a violin. The blue curtains were drawn to reveal a violinist, a flautist, a cellist, a clarinetist, and a trumpet player to the astounded audience.
As far as I understood, each instrument symbolised one of the plant's production lines; one by one they joined a tune that probably allegorised the triumphant chorus of stamped metal parts. The audience exchanged embarrassed looks, probably ashamed of failing to have attended a symphony in a long while.
When Putin, Matviyenko, and Rashnikov went on a tour of the plant, the musicians left the stage in a rush, as if trying to catch up with the three officials. But the music kept playing after they left, which suggested they had been using a playback.
The audience remained seated, listening faithfully, but fidgeting uneasily. Loyal to the plant's management, they probably waited for permission to leave. The opening ceremony turned into a concert with no players. No one dared stand up while everyone else was seated.
As for the music, they probably just forgot to turn it off – it is a plant, not a music hall after all.