Igor Naumov
Russian Cities Develop Only on Jubilees
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Astrakhan yesterday. The city will celebrate its 450th anniversary in a month, and federal jubilee allocations are being channelled into the social sphere, transport, economic development, and protection of historical monuments, including the Astrakhan Kremlin. Federal funding started only two years ago, and construction is well underway. So Putin inspected mainly sites during his visit.
The Astrakhan airport closed for reconstruction several years ago, so the Prime Minister arrived at a military airfield. The sight of warplanes may have awakened his desire to pilot a MIG fighter once again, but his pressing schedule demanded a trip about the city, which owed him 17 billion roubles in federal allocations two years ago. Regional allocations added another six billion. Private investors were the most generous, with 100 billion roubles. Among other projects, the money went to the restoration of the Astrakhan Kremlin, which Mr Putin visited.
Astrakhan functionaries are at a loss, as the federal centre was too slow with decision-making on the jubilee. Kazan started preparations for its millennium celebrations eight years before, while the official decision on the Astrakhan jubilee came as late as 2005. Even that was done only thanks to Mr Putin, then President, who used his authority to get relevant funds through the Finance Ministry. Astrakhan sees it will be unable to commission jubilee projects on City Day, October 5, and has tolerated a great deal of procrastination.
Mr Putin saw a nearly-completed sport and entertainment centre and the Astrakhan Music Theatre, whose site more resembles a junk heap than the ambitious building it should be. Economic Development and Trade Minister Elvira Nabiullina had come to the site before the Prime Minister but did not risk getting out of her bus, going to the sport centre instead. Her flight from the theatre site was a display of Dame Fortune's irony - the idea of a new music theatre in Astrakhan, expected to be on a par with La Scala someday, was the brainchild of her ministry. When German Gref, then minister, saw the old theatre, he told President Putin that it was beyond repair, and Mr Putin agreed.
We can only regret that such radical and economically grounded decisions are made so seldom. Take the Astrakhan housing programme: 20% of townspeople live in dilapidated houses, whose total floor space equals 1.7 million square metres. Three or four times more is necessary to give them all decent dwellings. The regional housing programme demands 35 billion roubles, with average federal allocations at two billion a year, so the effort will take 15-17 years or even longer, Sergei Agabekov, deputy head of the regional construction and road maintenance board, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Housing standards will rise within that time, and two- and three-room flats of 64-72 sq m will no longer appear as fine as they are today - which means new housing programmes and more budget allocations will be necessary. Officials have nothing against it, especially because this pattern is practised countrywide. Take Nevelsk, an earthquake-hit Sakhalin town where houses built on a government contract have three-room flats of 60 sq m. This is how federal money is squandered under the disguise of economising. Ms Nabiullina has said that 34,000 Astrakhan families need new housing urgently, while a mere 15% have received new accommodations in recent years. Mr Putin recognised tenant resettlement from hazardous dwellings as one of Astrakhan's most pressing problems. He thinks the term "disaster scope" is more applicable to the situation than "amount of construction". He called on Governor Alexander Zhilkin to closely cooperate with the Communal Services Reform Fund and said construction rates should increase spectacularly.