Press festival in Dagomys

Grigory Pasko, journalist

Approximately a thousand journalists from all corners of Russia gathered recently in Dagomys – a little resort town not far from Sochi – in order to take part in the 14th festival «All Russia-2009». This festival is an annual event. And that journalists truly did come from all Russia – of this I became convinced on the very first day: at breakfast the table neighbours spoke a language incomprehensible to me. Turns out, this was colleagues from Buryatia. There were only a few of them, but they were in t-shirts on which was written «Journalists from Buryatia».

On 25 September took place the opening of the festival. Chairman of
the Union of journalists of Russia Vsevolod Bogdanov, who appeared at
the very beginning, greeted all the participants and passed the word to
the hotel director, a certain Sviridov. Sviridov was brief and tried to
ignore Bogdanov’s phrase about how it was high time to do an overhaul
at the hotel. (The hotel is in actuality – a monument of the Soviet
epoch of stagnation: miserably furnished, but very expensive, with a
bad kitchen, but very expensive buffets).

Then Bogdanov granted the word to the newly-elected mayor of the
Olympic – that is how they now call it in mandatory order – Sochi -
Anatoly Pakhomov. It would have been better had he not done this
without establishment of a time limit. Pakhomov got carried away, like
a hungry Ostap Bender. It felt like this was a mixture of all his
speeches: pre-election, celebratory, on the event of meeting the bosses
from Moscow and of appearance at the opening of the latest Olympic
construction. He spoke about how the city of Sochi will be the best
city in the world (comrade Bender’s New Vasyuki came to mind); that the
press must help the powers; that tomorrow they would take everybody on
a trip to show the Olympic facilities…

In the morning I asked the organizers where was the promised trip to
the Olympic facilities? They answered me: those who desired had turned
in passports in advance and the data of these passports had been sent
someplace to Moscow ( to the FSB?), so that they would give them
permission to visit the facilities, because they – are security sites.
Security – means secret. Personally, nobody ever doubted that sooner or
later the Russian Sochian Olympiad will become secret – if chekists are
in power, then everything sooner or later becomes secret.
The Olympic facilities we , naturally, did see, but from afar and in the composition of a group of journalists-ecologists.

At the opening of the festival, Vsevolod Bogdanov gave mayor of Sochi
Pakhomov a gift of a bible, having recalled for some reason Putin in so
doing. (For it is written in Holy Scripture: thou shalt not take the
Lord’s name in vain… And Putin , it seems, for many officials has
become something of a Lord: especially this is seen on Russian
television. In the days of the work of the festival even despite the
fact that president Medvedev was at a summit in Pittsburgh, they were
probably showing Putin on Russian TV more frequently than Medvedev.

It is noteworthy that at the seminars and roundtables of the
festival they talked least of all about telejournalism. Probably this
is not accidental: how can you talk about something that doesn’t exist?
There’s telepropaganda and telezombification, but certainly not
telejournalism.

I spent some time at one of the master-classes. It was being
conducted by Boris Yeltsin’s former press-secretary Pavel Voshchanov.
At one time, Pavel Igorevich had worked in «Komsomolskaya pravda», back
when this newspaper was a newspaper, and not a «yellow sheet». Pavel
spoke zestfully, intelligently, interestingly and critically. «The
press – is the medic of the forest, – said he. – But when there is no
medic, then goodness knows what goes on in the forest. The hare is the
chief in the forest…»

Voshchanov spoke out very critically too about the journalistic
community: «Come on, we haven’t got any community: the only ones you
can count are yourself and your friends».

In the very first days of the work of the festival were formalized
the booths of regions, in which were presented samples of print
publications. I read some newspapers. I will not retell the content of
the publications – they are all alike, like twin brothers. I will
merely give typical headlines as an example: « Soon the new harvest,
while the old one is still not sold»; «Sheep-husbandry private viewing»
; «On the development of the grain market»; «There will be bread and
abundance in families» (I specially read this article, but never did
understand just why there isn’t bread and abundance TODAY, and will be
only some time later, in the future)…

Then we went on a drive around the Olympic facilities. Appearing in
the capacity of a guide was the young journalist-ecologist Dmitry
Shevchenko from an ecological organization under the name «Ecological
watch for the North Caucasus». Dmitry recounted about violations of
ecological legislation during the construction of the facilities for
the future Olympiad in Sochi and showed how they are being built: the
road and railway branch along the channel of the river Mzymta into
Krasnaya Polyana from Adler; the freight terminal of the port; the ice
palace in the Imereti lowland; the demonstrational cottage village in
the settlement of Nekrasovka for those who are going to be driven from
traditional and habitated places ; the city garbage dump in the region
of the river Khirota… Particularly impressing me was the construction
of the road. It is interesting to whom precisely the thought came into
the head to build a road along a river channel? After all, it is
comprehensible even to a non-specialist that the width of the channel
is going to be reduced by half – instead of 140 meters will remain 60;
that in consequence of this will change not only the actual channel of
the river, but also the water-temperature balance in the whole area.
Construction will require the laying of several tunnels. And this means
that air masses will be received unchecked from the warm south to the
foothills of the Caucasus – there, where the downhill skiing pistes are
being build now. This means that the temperature there will rise
sharply, and the pistes will become snowless. Besides all else, the
bridges and roads are going to sharply change the natural landscape of
the region.

We also spent some time in the region of the Imereti bay -there,
where I had met the year before last with local inhabitants protesting
against their forced eviction. Of course, the result of their struggle
was preordained in advance. The inhabitants are living in their houses
for now and are even struggling with arbitrariness. We called on
67-year-old inhabitant Anna Matveyevna. She does not want to leave from
her land from her unprepossessing little house. She has a nice
vegetable garden, an orchard. And beyond her garden is already being
built full-force a cottage settlement for those to whom it has been
proposed to get off their lots. We walked over and took a look at these
beautiful little houses, in which nobody lives for now. (True, the
newspaper «Sochi olympiysky» in the issue for 18-25 September of the
year 2009 had already given notice to readers that inhabitant of the
Imereti lowland Alexey Kubansky has already become newly moved in to
one of the cottages. It turned out that this is a canard: there is not
a single inhabitant in a single cottage even mentioned, as the builders
told us: all of the utilities lines have not yet been led up to the
houses. Besides that, they recounted to us that these little houses,
even though they are beautiful on the outside, are badly made inside:
thin walls, hastily slapped together construction materials… Besides
that, the future owners are still going to have to pay solid sums
additionally for these little houses.

Activist of the confrontation of local inhabitants with the power
Alik Le said that they tried to find a common language with the power:
it didn’t work out. The power is blind and deaf to the entreaties and
claims of the people. What stuck in my memory was that Le is not
against the Olympiad itself: he is against the insolence of the power,
which does not reckon with the opinions and entreaties of the people.

We also took a look at the biggest garbage dump in Sochi – a
facility that’s obviously not Olympic and obviously neglected. The dump
is huge and it just keeps growing. The garbage rots, and the
wastewaters from this heap flow towards the river Khirota. The river
falls into the Black sea in the region of beaches. It looks like the
money for moving or improving the layout of this dump has not yet been
found in the Olympic budget.

…The festival concluded on the 29th of September. I, in principle,
liked it: journalists got a chance to see each other, to exchange
opinions, learn a thing or two from one another, discuss burning
questions… What I didn’t like was that they practically didn’t speak at
all about blogs and bloggers, that the ecological journalism section
was numerically small… I hope the organizers of future festivals will
take this into account.