Photos, beaches, hotels, entertainment. Imereti Lowland

Throughout the Olympic construction period, pickets and rallies took place at the Rossiya state farm. Their inspiration is the chairman of the local TOS “Psou”, member of the Public Environmental Council of Sochi Natalya Kalinovskaya. The activist is one of the Sochi residents who perceive the 2014 Games exclusively negatively.

“We endured construction for five years”

Natalya Kalinovskaya and her friend Svetlana Beresteneva are sitting in a tiny kitchen. Here, in an apartment of less than 30 square meters. m, eleven people are registered - her family, her daughter’s family, her ex-husband. Svetlana, who has been on the waiting list for improved housing conditions since her birth in 1966, is still knocking on the doorsteps of the administration. Recently she was offered an apartment in Krasnaya Polyana, but the woman does not want to move there: she does not like how she claims that there is no social infrastructure in the mountains and it is difficult to get there. He continues to seek an apartment here, in the remaining houses for displaced people and volunteers.

“We received lack of money and unemployment from the Games (Rosstat also recorded an increase in unemployment. - Gazeta.Ru”), says Kalinovskaya. — Do you know how our acquaintance with the IOC (International Olympic Committee) began? In April 2008, the first commission of the Olympic Committee was supposed to arrive. Governor Tkachev said that not a single house will be demolished, not a single family will be harmed. And before the IOC’s visit, talk about demolition had just begun. We prepared posters and hid them in the Old Believer cemetery. When the IOC commission appeared there, they took it out and tried to unwrap it. The police ran towards us and a fight broke out. So local residents met the Olympic Committee. We realized that there was no one on our side.


Valery Sharifulin/TASS

“I,” Beresteneva adds with a smile, “had hope that because of this cemetery the stadium would not be built.”

Built. A couple of tens of meters from the Fisht stadium is an active churchyard fenced in, which was closed with red screens during the Olympics.

“We endured construction for five years,” the women continue. “They brought in thousands of migrant workers who stole everything edible from the houses at night. A friend left a frying pan with cutlets on the stove, so they swept them away and threw the frying pan in the garden.

Olympic construction had a detrimental effect on holiday season. It was cheaper to relax in “Russia” than in the popular Adler and Sochi itself. Having arrived during the first year of construction, tourists did not return: the entire site was buzzing with bulldozers and excavators around the clock, and it was impossible to open the windows due to the dust. Tourists who came for many years in a row shrugged: the village was unrecognizable.

However, after construction was completed, tourists began to return.

— This summer people went. For example, a couple from Moscow settled with me, who had previously traveled to Berdyansk in Ukraine. It’s dangerous to go there now, they were looking for a cheaper place,” the interlocutors add.



State farm "Russia" in Sochi before the Olympics

Valery Sharifulin/TASS

Last fall, in an interview, Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov agreed that the Coastal cluster, which includes the former state farm, “requires additional presentations” - at the height of the season, the number of rooms in the Imereti Lowland was 55% full.

Today, by the way, on many fences at the Rossiya state farm there are large “For Sale” signs hanging on them.

I’m trying to at least point to something positive, because roads were built in the Imereti Lowland, a gas storage tank was built, and flower beds were planted.

— Do you know that even the Olympic flame burned from a cylinder? - Kalinovskaya interrupts. — We didn’t have network gas and still don’t. After every rain, the Ministry of Emergency Situations comes to pump water out of the yards. When the captured Germans built the state farm, the roads were paved with cobblestones, and water was absorbed into the ground. Now everything has been covered with asphalt, it flows in streams into the lowlands. There were concrete power poles on the state farm - they were replaced with wooden ones.

“Adler jumped forward a hundred years”

Having said goodbye to the activists, I walk through the residential areas that have grown up on the site of the greenhouses. Smooth roads, neat houses against the backdrop of snow-capped peaks and blue skies. There are almost no people. All this is bright, beautiful, but completely uninhabited.

Not all residents of Imeretinsk are dissatisfied with their proximity to the Olympics. I find Viktor Altunyan in the new Tavrichesky microdistrict. An Olympic station was built on the site of his former yard, and in return he was given a standard house and plot.



State Farm Russia after the Olympics

Valery Sharifulin/TASS

— They sent a decree in advance and explained: either take the money or new house. I like to do housework, so I chose the second option,” explains the man, looking up from the construction site. Planed boards and tools lie on the ground. At the back of the yard he is finishing off a two-story utility block.

“We’ve been living here for four years,” shares Altunyan.

At the previous place there were no communications, except for light. Now there is gas (albeit imported: it is pumped into a storage tank, from there it is distributed to houses), sewerage, and water.

“Adler jumped a hundred years forward,” the Sochi resident lists. — Previously, it took an hour and a half to get to the city, now I can get there via new junctions in 20 minutes. Of course, there are dissatisfied people. But the person was given everything new - say thank you, among my friends, the majority moved on a positive note.



Olympic torch

Valery Sharifulin/TASS

He also brushes aside complaints about five years of continuous construction: when a house is being renovated, one has to endure inconvenience; such an Olympics cannot be built without noise and dust.

And the dissatisfied, he adds, most likely fed from the demolished greenhouses where radishes and other vegetables were grown. He says that there are no problems with employment in Imeretinka.

I leave Rossiya in the evening. On the embankment, where the sun hid in the sea in ten minutes, couples are strolling, several mothers with babies, and cyclists are leisurely pedaling. There are not many people, despite the warm Saturday evening. A little more vacationers are on the square in front of the central fountain: a bright musical show with foam jets and lighting is watched by about thirty people. The rest of the Olympic Park is empty, you can wander along the illuminated paths completely alone.



Cemetery of the Old Believers (circle on the left side of the frame)

Valery Sharifulin/TASS

This week Gazeta.Ru will also launch a special project dedicated to the anniversary of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. Readers will be presented with a panoramic interactive map Olympic venues in Sochi, which will depict the three main periods of the Olympic Sochi: 1) the moment of preparation for the Olympics, construction of facilities and infrastructure; 2) the competitive period of the Games, the number of medals awarded at each venue, the successes of Russian athletes; 3) the Olympic legacy and how Sochi lives now, how the facilities are used, what competitions are held and planned.

The forest is being cut down and the chips are flying. This Russian proverb becomes relevant every time important government construction projects come into contact with the daily lives of the country's residents. Global construction projects of the 20th century destroyed many unique topographical objects. Many towns, villages, monasteries, temples, and ancient necropolises perished in obscurity.

Thus, during the creation of the Ivankovo ​​reservoir, more than 100 settlements, including old City Korcheva. Under the pretext of flooding, many churches were blown up, including a unique Old Believer church in the village of Kuznetsovo (now Konakovo), which you can read more about on our website.

Nowadays, serious changes in the historical landscape have occurred in Imereti Lowland, located near Sochi, in the construction zone of sports facilities for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

The history of the Imereti Lowland is connected with the Old Believers, in particular, the “Nekrasovites”. They appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 18th century, were persecuted for two centuries and were forced to leave for the possessions of Turkey. After the revolution of 1905-1907. they returned to their homeland. The first place of their settlement was the Sochi district of the Black Sea province - the least developed among other districts. As local historians point out, by inviting the Nekrasovites, the authorities pursued a specific goal - to oust the Turks from fishing and, most importantly, to stop smuggling from Turkey, disguised as cabotage (coastal shipping). And the Nekrasovites were not only good farmers and hunters, but also excellent fishermen and coasters.

Old Believers settled in Matrosskaya Shchel (near Golovinka), in Imereti Bay and Babuk-Aul. Most of the Sochi Old Believers by the mid-20s. XX century left for the uninhabited Don lands. The reasons were the lack of easy-to-use Agriculture land, infertility of soils, difficult living conditions in the mountainous zone, increased tax pressure. By the end of 1926, the Old Believers remained only in Imereti Bay.

The uniqueness of the Imereti Lowland was recognized by the tsarist government, in 1911 assigning it the status of a specially protected area. natural area. Here are the only areas of Colchis wetlands in Russia with unique flora and fauna. Imeretinka is home to many rare species of plants, birds and animals.

For the 2014 Winter Games, the Olympic Park (central stadium and five ice palaces, as well as a media center) was built in the Imereti Lowland. Construction Olympic Park In 2008, it caused serious conflicts with the local population - Old Believers and Cossacks living in the area, which even led to violent clashes and arrests.

Fortunately, both sides found patience and restraint to avoid tragic developments. Residents of the area received compensation to build themselves housing in a new location. In 2010, three sites for new construction were allocated in the Adler district, the rest will be developed in the Khostinsky and Central districts.

It is interesting that part of the Old Believer cemetery remained from the ancient village, which was preserved by the builders. However, this cemetery is practically invisible from the ground. A passerby who does not know about its existence can walk a few meters from the ancient necropolis and not notice it. Access to the cemetery is open, and former residents of the Imereti Valley can visit it.

Chairman of the Old Believer community Dmitry Drofichev now he says: “As a result, the Old Believers’ village of Morlinsky was moved a kilometer higher from the sea. But it was not possible to raze the cemetery to the ground: the people blocked the road for the bulldozers with their breasts.”

Today we are publishing unique photographs of the Old Believer necropolis of the Imereti Valley, taken by blogger Alexey Nadezhdin and photographer

The Olympic Park was built exactly where I once loved to walk and next to the bay in which I always swam in splendid isolation.
I tried to go the same route several times and had no time to find favorite place. Almost succeeded.

The picture during the day, to put it mildly, is nothing - glass, concrete and asphalt with rare splashes of greenery. However, the pre-sunset sun works wonders, and if you are going to take a walk there, then go in the late afternoon. At the end of the post there will be before pictures, and now some recent photos with explanations.


For starters, an inspiring view of the sea from the large ice palace

Exactly in this place there was an emerald green plain and reeds above my 172 (the only Colchis swamps in Russia - a stopping place for migratory birds and one of the key ornithological territories of Russia).
Now the tile is vibrating under my feet (I never found out the reason for the vibration), and a view of 3 buildings:
Left big Ice Palace, on the right is the Shayba ice arena, the Fisht stadium is farthest in the center.

The stadium took its name from the same name mountain peak in the western part of Main Caucasian ridge(translated from the Adyghe language the word “fisht” means “white head”)

Mountain View. The painted hangar on the right is the back of Fisht Stadium. Do you see the trees behind the tourists? This is an Old Believer cemetery fenced with a high fence, it is located between the Fisht stadium and the torch square.

Sea view from the same place.

Directly ahead are new houses on Parusnaya Street; there used to be a holiday village there.

Another view of the sea.

Reflection of the sunset in the large ice palace. Its glazing has a secret. During the day, the glass is mirrored and nothing is visible there except the reflection of the surrounding space. As soon as it starts to get dark, the mirror properties gradually disappear and you can already look inside.

View of the sea from the inside, a very futuristic building.

View from the end, a sectional view of the wall of the large ice palace, so to speak). These metal laces are lined with glass on the outside and are part of the supporting structure for the stadium roof.

And a couple of photos from the past.

The Imereti lowland (2006), untouched by construction, look at the color of the sea in the lower left corner, there was the cleanest water in the Sochi region. Photo taken

Now this place looks like this, there is simply no greenery. Photo from here

The same place in 2010, the construction site has already been completed, surrounded by a fence... and carefully guarded!

I wonder from whom? There were several such installations around the construction site.

There will be no conclusions yet; I have shown you only a tiny piece of a huge territory. To be continued, as well as my personal opinion about what we have lost and what we have gained.
As they say, don't switch.

Tomorrow it will be two years since the Olympic Games opened in Sochi, and I continue to reminisce. This photo was taken in April 2009. On him Imereti Lowland, the entire future Olympic Park. The landmark is a small grove on the right, this is the cemetery of the Old Believers, which was not touched during the construction process, only hidden behind a fence and a high hedge. Another landmark is a small hillock, a mound and a bald spot from a landslide nearby; they can be found in the second picture to help you orient yourself on the terrain. Less than FIVE years before the Olympics, grass grew at the site where it was held; there was not even a hint of sports palaces or other structures.

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This photo was taken at the end of May 2009. The circle outlined by the road and pillars is the outer contour of the future Big Ice Palace, the same one where the Sochi hockey club beat Omsk Avangard yesterday. This grandiose structure was built, by the way, by Omsk residents, by the Mostovik company.

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A few more pictures from May 2009, the site for the future hockey palace, the Iceberg, Adler Arena, Medal Plaza will grow a little further. In the distance, Blinovo can be seen as a landmark.

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It is no secret that the design of Olympic facilities continued directly during construction. It was in this tent, before the modular administrative building was built, that the designers of Mostovik worked. We also had lunch here.

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And this is already September 2009, the same Big Ice Palace with its outlines already visible.

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And this is the future curling center, the Ice Cube. At first it was assumed that after the Olympic Games it would be dismantled and moved to another city. But they didn't do it. Today the Ice Cube is one of the most used post-Olympic heritage sites.

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At the peak of the construction of facilities for the Sochi Olympics, more than 150 thousand attracted specialists worked in Sochi. A significant part of them were hard-working guys from the sunny republics, who were once part of the friendly Soviet family of peoples. These particular guys are from the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan. They lived in these modular houses, in these rooms, throughout the years of Olympic construction. Whatever one may say, sports facilities, transport interchanges, Rosa Khutor, Gorki Gorod, and the entire infrastructure of the new Sochi were built by the hands of guest workers.

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2009, construction of a port at the mouth of the Mzymta River. Despite the construction around, people persistently rest on the then wild Imeretian beaches.

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Construction of a combined automobile and railway to Krasnaya Polyana. The most expensive object of the Sochi-2014 project. Somewhere in the depths of the mountain there is a giant super-mole working, gnawing into the thickness of the rock, creating tunnels for trains and cars.

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Construction of cottages for the resettlement of residents who were subject to demolition in the Imereti Lowland. As a result, the village turned out to be very good.

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A very old photograph, taken, if I’m not mistaken, in the fall of 2007: the people who started it all. Semyon Vainshtok, first head of the Olimpstroy state corporation. He did not do anything noticeable in this post; in 2008 he was removed and left the country. Governor of Kuban Alexander Tkachev. He survived the Olympic race and was subsequently appointed Minister of Agriculture. And Dmitry Kozak, the real leader of the Sochi-2014 project, personally responsible for it to Vladimir Putin. He carried everything on his shoulders, from beginning to end. He deservedly became an honorary citizen of the city of Sochi.

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This kind of Sochi Olympics was imagined at the very beginning, in 2007, when no bunnies and leopards had yet been created.

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And, as proof of involvement, I am on the Olympic sports ground, wearing a helmet with Olympstroy symbols, in 2009.

Where did the lands of the Olympic ornithopark disappear to: an interactive map of the cut of the Imereti Lowland January 31st, 2014

The time has come to expose another popular lie about the consequences of the Olympics for the nature of Russia. Dmitry Kozak said at the “Sport and Environment” conference: Russia has fulfilled its obligations in the environmental sphere in full... A natural ornithological park has been created in the Imereti Lowland with an area of ​​more than 200 hectares.
However, in reality, something different happened - officials successfully “cut up” the Olympic lands intended for the park, and two-thirds of the area of ​​the “ornithopark in the Imereti Lowland” is located outside the Imereti Lowland itself.
The Imereti Lowland, destroyed by Olympic construction, had no analogues in Black Sea coast Russia on the diversity of migratory birds and coastal flora. According to data from the Russian Bird Conservation Union, obtained on the basis of more than a hundred surveys in 1997-2006, up to 200 bird species were recorded in the lowland during migration, of which 26 species are included in the Red Book Krasnodar region, and 22 species are included in the Red Book of Russia. In cold winters, more than 16 thousand individuals of 65 species of birds were found here.
In 2006, the Imereti Lowland was included in the list of territories that meet the criteria of the Ramsar Convention on the Protection of Wetlands, and in 2008 it was recognized as a key ornithological area of ​​international importance.
To protect birds and rare plants, back in 2004, scientists developed projects for an ornithological reserve and a natural monument for the preservation of coastal vegetation, which were supposed to include the fields of the Rossiya state farm and wetlands with total area about 800 hectares. This is what the lowland area looked like before the Olympic construction began (the boundaries of the proposed protected areas are marked in red)

And here is an interactive map of the existing distribution of land in the Imereti Lowland. The green on the map shows the areas that were actually included in the ornithopark, the red shows the boundaries of the areas allocated for various objects (information on objects is available when you select them). As a result of all the manipulations with the land in the Imereti Lowland, less than 100 hectares remained for the ornithopark, divided into 8 areas (clusters).

What follows is quite long description how officials and builders actually “protected” the nature of the Imereti Lowland.

So, in order to justify the construction of Olympic venues in a key ornithological area of ​​international importance, Sochi's bid book contained a number of unfulfilled promises. In particular, it was argued that they would preserve existing lakes as wintering grounds for birds and habitats for protected plants.
The application book also promised: “The Olympic Park will eliminate uncontrolled development of the territory and mitigate the negative impact on ecosystems. No long-term negative impact is expected.”
To fulfill these promises, the program for the construction of Olympic venues provided for the organization of a specially protected natural area of ​​regional significance - a natural ornithological park.
Work on designing the ornithopark began only in 2009 and it turned out that almost all the land in the Imereti Lowland had already been divided for development with various objects and there was nowhere to place the ornithopark with an area of ​​300 hectares promised in the Application Book in the lowland. Some of the lakes were filled up, and the most valuable part of the proposed ornithopark ended up behind a stone fence on plot of land, provided to the military unit of the FSB of Russia. Therefore, the authorities decided to use the storm sewer drainage ponds and surrounding areas, as well as a wetland in the northern part of the lowland, for the ornithological park. But there was a catastrophic shortage of land, and in order to gain the promised area of ​​300 hectares, it was decided to place most of the “ornithological park in the Imereti Lowland” outside the Imereti Lowland, on abandoned agricultural lands.
Even at the design stage, in April 2009, the Russian Bird Conservation Union sent its position on the ornithopark project to the administration of the Krasnodar Territory and the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation. Scientists stated: “The creation on a limited territory of the Imereti Lowland of a series of disparate environmental objects for various purposes, including those that are not entirely clear, shows that the project developers do not have a clear idea of ​​the natural park as an integral specially protected natural area that has organizational features defined by the current legislation. This scheme also does not provide for the biologically determined needs of birds using this territory as habitats; in particular, to the composition natural park It is proposed to include only a small part of the areas that are still important for bird conservation. In the proposed version, the scheme leads to discrediting the idea of ​​​​creating a natural park for the purpose of preserving unique natural objects.”

However, the opinion of scientists was not listened to. According to latest version boundaries approved by the decree of Governor Tkachev dated October 1, 2012, the park territory consists of 14 plots scattered over a vast territory with a total area of ​​298 hectares, while the ornithopark itself in the Imereti Lowland received about 100 hectares, divided into 9 plots. The remaining two-thirds of the area is located along the Psou River bed and in the mountains.
The figure shows the boundaries of the actually created ornithopark clusters (in green) and the boundaries previously proposed by scientists (in red).

But even those drainage ponds, which theoretically could become wintering and temporary stopover sites for migratory birds, the authorities decided to use at their own discretion. Based on the Regulations on the Ornithopark, the areas located in the Imereti Lowland will be used for recreation and commercial use as a kind of amusement park.
On the ornithopark website, the use of the sites is described as follows:
Cluster 1: as a recreation area for recreation of residents and guests of the resort city of Sochi.
Cluster 2: mode of use not described,
Cluster 3: not included in the ornithopark
Clusters 5 and 6: after the completion of the construction of the regulator pond, the cluster is expected to be populated by aquatic, semi-aquatic, crane, chicken and other birds. It will be used for environmental education of the population and guests of the resort city of Sochi.
Cluster 7: it is planned to use the cluster as a demonstration area showing the species diversity of avifauna and other representatives of the animal world, as well as the construction of a unique dendrological park.
Cluster 8: after construction is completed, it is planned to use the cluster as a park area with a butterfly pavilion and a demonstration of insects of the Imereti Lowland.
Cluster 9: the cluster is intended to be used as park area with children playgrounds, children's contact zoo corner.
It is obvious that under the planned protection regime, bird species sensitive to disturbance will not be able to use the territory of the Imereti Lowland.
At the same time, clusters are classified as a protected area 10, 13, 14, 15. However, cluster 10 is partially built up with border structures, and the rest of it is located in the bed of the Psou River, cluster 13 is intensively used for agriculture, and clusters 14 and 15 are generally located beyond the Russian state border. However, all these clusters remain virtual - none of them are allocated asindependentland plot.
In the photo: view of cluster 6 of the ornithological park, January 2014, Yandex.

Work on “improving the territory” of the ornithopark has already begun. In 2013, more than 600 million rubles were allocated for the construction of paths and buildings for the administration, but this money has nothing to do with bird protection.
The situation with the protection of vegetation is no better. The only surviving area of ​​coastal vegetation is the natural monument “A section of beach with sandy coastal vegetation between the recreation centers “Chernomorets” and “Energia” was destroyed in April 2013, despite repeated promises by the Olimpstroy Group of Companies to include this territory in the ornithopark.
Currently, the territory of the former natural monument looks like this (Yandex, January 2014)


Thus, instead of a protected area in the Imereti Lowland, officials organized a kind of zoo, which they plan to populate with domesticated birds, and build aviaries and pavilions for butterflies on the banks of drainage ponds. Moreover, the area of ​​the created ornithopark is eight times smaller than the territory that was destroyed.
To sum up, we can sadly say that due to the greed of officials, a unique natural object and in our time, no public lie can hide this. The main culprit for the “cutting” and destruction of the Imereti Lowland is Governor Tkachev, who was responsible for the creation of the ornithological park and the distribution of Olympic lands. It is no coincidence that a huge piece of the Imereti Lowland went to Sochi-Park OJSC, owned by his son-in-law’s offshore company, for the construction of an amusement park not related to the Olympic Games. This is much more important than protecting flora and fauna.
In the photo: construction site of Sochi-Park OJSC former places bird habitats, January 2014, Yandex..

 

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