Candy for the eyes or government lies
City life . Culture . Politics . Travel “There’s something about the thousands of glittering lights, the veil of nighttime that almost makes this place beautiful, especially in the reflection of the water. It makes everything askew, disoriented. There’s more truth in a ripple of water than in a clear day.”
― Ellie Lieberman, Society Foundings
This quote brilliantly describes any Russian capital vititor’s reaction to the city decorations during the holidays. Every year in December, Moscow turns into a multi-colored shimmering music box, which makes you want to take pictures every step you take.
The New Year in Russia is traditionally considered a family holiday, which is usually held at the table, eating up kilograms of Russian national cuisine. However, the last five years in Moscow, visitors and citizens prefer to celebrate holidays on the streets, which is not surprising, because the capital flashes with thousands of lights, is transformed and becomes truly fabulous.
January 2017 is when a publication Meduza first published a material on how much money the Moscow government spent on urban illumination on the occasion of the New Year holidays and which companies distributed this money among themselves.
Now, Meduza special correspondent Ivan Golunov managed to find out that the purchase price of one of the most noticeable decoration elements – garlands on Tverskaya street in the form of wine glasses – was about five times overstated, and they appeared a few days earlier than the contract for their installation was concluded.
The total cost of decorating a single wine glass on Tverskaya was calculated. For each of them, three garlands were used (total cost – 5,250 euros), which are fixed on a bracket (1,200 euros), decorated with 40 sparkling snowflakes (600 euros).
The expenses of the Moscow budget for the New Year’s decoration of the city this year increased by more than ten times – the capital spent a total of almost 7 billion rubles (about 100 million euros) on updating the festive illuminations, lighting installations and other decorations.
Until 2016, most of the expenses (80%) for the New Year’s decoration of the city were made by private companies – the city authorities were responsible only for winding the trees in the center with LED lamps, spending several hundreds million rubles on this. This time, however, everything has changed: the city hall decided to spend 5.8 billion rubles on organizing New Year’s illumination. The main source of money was the annual compensation from the federal budget, which is paid to Moscow for the fact that it serves as the capital. For the sacle, the amount of this compensation in 2016 amounted to almost 12 billion rubles, which is about 170 million euros.
Changes in the city contributed to the increasing popularity of Moscow among tourists – both domestic and foreign. Many travelers note that the Russian capital has changed and become more comfortable, now foreigners are increasingly choosing it for the New Year holidays along with other European capitals. But if you look behind all those enhancements, there are endless lies and corruption from the Russian government and robbings of the national budget, while the wealth gap in Russia remains enormous. So the real question is: is the New Year’s holiday a blessing or a curse for the Russian capital? You are to decide.
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