Imereti Lowland in Sochi. Where to go, what to see. The other side of the Olympics

Published: 26.10.2018 Category: Author's essay / Krasnodar region

Since many people get to Sochi by plane or travel through this resort to Abkhazia, probably every 3rd Russian had a chance to explore Adler. Imereti Lowland- the southeastern third of the huge Sochi region. Once upon a time, the ancestors of the Abkhazians and the ancient Greeks coexisted peacefully in it, who first accepted the power of Byzantium, and then Ottoman Empire. They were replaced by Russian Old Believers and Armenians. Aboriginal villages disappeared from the map due to the construction of the 2014 Olympics venues. Just like two successful state farms, which left us only their names. The private sector and the agricultural plain have been replaced by stadiums, creative exhibitions, a Formula 1 track, entertainment complexes and sun loungers...

Here you can easily find luxury apartments for rent, a cozy hotel (of any size and category) or an elite hotel in Sochi on the seashore. Entire guest towns have grown up around the Olympic and resort and entertainment sectors.

Geographical location, nature and climate

The location that will be discussed is a 7.5-kilometer plain, between the mountain rivers Mzymta and Psou. In administrative terms, this is the most south-eastern patch of the Sochi urban district, including several areas of the Adler microdistrict (the nature of their infrastructure is described above). This also includes the Sovkhoz Rossiya microdistrict bordering Abkhazia. From the north, the lowland is already limited by forested hills (the residential sectors of Blinovo, Zorka, Selsovet and Veseloye lie on the foothills). The southern borders of the object are two Imereti bays, separated by the “Olympic” cape.

The weather in the Imereti Lowland is the same as throughout the entire Caucasian humid subtropics (in this zone, in addition to Sochi, lie the coastal parts of Abkhazia and Georgia). We are talking about 5 degrees positive temperature in winter and 25 in summer. As well as an ideal ratio of sunny and cloudy days and 2,000 millimeters of precipitation per year. Strong winds avoid this place. The water is suitable for swimming from May 16 to September.

The weather in the Imereti Lowland also explains the composition of the flora and fauna. Imeretinsk is covered with Carian figs, pterygoplastic lapina, pyramidal anakamptis, rare species of reed (in the Colchis swamps), eucalyptus, plane tree, as well as walnut, laurel and hornbeam (in the foothills). The area is home to 26 species of birds (migratory meadow and swamp) and 17 names of animals.

Sights of the Imereti Lowland

The Imereti Lowland is a park. Entertainment, sports, resort, culture and recreation, and even historical in places (there are museums, after all). And the undeveloped parts of Imeretinka are special natural areas. So how natural Park The Imereti Lowland is protected by relevant articles of the law. 1300 hectares of tracts fall under their influence. However, first things first.

Olympic Park

First of all, the Imereti Lowland is known to compatriots for its perfectly round cape between the Upper and Lower Imeretinsk bays. It was made that way on purpose. After all, inside there is now a low-lying Olympic cluster, in which six stadiums and a training arena are inscribed in an ideal circle. In the center is the Olympic Square (torch and fountain), and in the area leading to the local railway station there is a Formula 1 track.

Sochi Park

The Imereti Lowland in Sochi is also considered the location of a unique complex of children's and extreme rides, as well as a Ferris wheel (“Wheels of Times”), from which the entire valley between the mountains, the sea and 2 reservoirs is visible. Inside the fenced fairy-tale town: the roller coaster “Serpent Gorynych”, as well as the amazingly high rise “Firebird”. 15 harmless fun. They also managed to cram a landscape painting here theme park, three bistros, a pond and even a dolphinarium. Outside there is a bright hotel-castle “Bogatyr” and a test for the very brave “Quantum Leap”.

Natural ornithological park

In its center (already across the road from the Olympic circuit) the Imereti Lowland has a protected swampy meadow (Colchis swamps), where such rare birds as the whooper swan, mute swan, one of the Red Book species of bustard, as well as many other endangered (in including migratory) fauna. The area is fenced and has warning stands and signs.

Nekrasovskie Lakes Park

To the south, if you walk through the Sochi Park Hotel quarter, the Imeretinskaya Lowland will show you another of its protected areas. Two lakes were named in honor of the Old Believers village (Nekrasovo). By the way, the elite sector of residential apartments, located further south, has the same name. The ponds are surrounded by lawns, streets, and benches.

Imereti yacht port

A yacht marina, a universal sea terminal and elegantly equipped beaches of the Imereti Lowland form its immediate coastal edge. The marine terminal is universal - both for cargo and for passenger transport. And the yacht marina is considered the largest in Russia. A nautical club was also built here. Several leisure facilities for yachtsmen, surfers and other water extreme sports enthusiasts.

Parks "Southern Cultures" and "Imeretinsky"

Let us note that the weather in the Imereti Lowland is conducive to preserving unique relict plants and planting subtropical and tropical trees, shrubs, and flowering flora. Ancient landscape gardens include well-groomed thickets and plantings of fir, pine, cypress, rhododendron, and hundreds of flowers. There is a pond with swans and fish. Finding “Southern Cultures” and “Imeretian” is easy. You will find a double “paradise” between the residential areas of the Mzymta embankment and the Olympic Park. These are the bus stops “Park Southern Cultures” and “Imeretinsky Quarter”.

Imereti resort

As indicated, swimming recreation facilities on Imeretinka are well equipped. There are 10 of them. Almost each one has EMERCOM towers (rescuers with equipment and a paramedic on duty), a rental point for sun loungers and parasols, and showers. But toilets, changing rooms and trash cans are located in all parts of the Imereti Riviera.

Mzymta Beach

The beaches of the Imereti Lowland, like this one, are distinguished by the fact that they are both sea and river. So, the westernmost swimming pool lies along the mouth of the Mzymta, near the relay tower. The water is colder here. But what picturesque views! Its length is only 100 m, however, the width of the strip is the most record-breaking - over 70 m.

Imeretinsky Beach

The next 150 meters belong to the Imeretian Club. For 400 rubles. spend the whole day here! Capacity 90 people. Sun beds, umbrellas, cafes, sports and children's playgrounds, sanitary cabins and water activities. Animators also work.

Radisson Blu Beach

Admission is free, but all services are paid. Size 200 by 30 m. Considering all the beaches of the Imereti Lowland, this one will be chosen by those vacationers who need not only a toilet, lifeguards and sun loungers, but also water attractions, decking and splash pools.

Rosa Khutor Beach

Looking around this piece of water area of ​​the bay, it should be noted: you can get to it directly from the main stadium of the Olympic zone - “Fishta”, you just need to cross the roadway. After this “highlight”, we emphasize: at your disposal is what was on the previous beach. Let us also add that the space is long (400 m), and the pebbles are small.

Olympic Beach – Gorki Gorod

Like Olympic and amusement park The Imereti Lowland will give similar complexes a head start Western Europe and the USA. Foreigners themselves admit this. The double beach area covers the rest of the coast of the round Olympic cape. Holidaymakers get here from the stop named after the specified stadium.

Sirius Beach

Equipped indoor beach and entertainment complex. Intended for students of the educational center of the same name (its name is in the title, and access is from the terminal bus 125C and 135). It extends 175 meters - to the Sochi Park harbor.

Sochi Park Beach (Bogatyr Hotel Beach)

Next we are greeted not by attractions, but by the beach of Sochi Park, the brand of which is considered far from size. The resort's advantages are very small pebbles (near the water's edge), smooth entry into the sea, its own lifeguard tower and bathrooms. The entrance is free. If you wish, pay only for extreme fun - banana, jumping pillow, jet ski.

South Star Beach

This is the coastline, which is looked after by workers of the same name. hotel complex. That’s why it’s always clean here, and it’s still free for customers. The length of this pleasure is 450 meters, width is 35 meters. The bottom is without holes and grows gradually. And the pebbles here are comfortable.

Velvet Seasons Beach

Named after the elite residential complex, which occupies a decent-sized block. For tenants of “velvet” apartments everything is included. The size is the same.

Beaches of the microdistrict "Sovkhoz Russia" (formerly "Psou")

Now there are 3 beach areas. And yet the aborigines stubbornly continue to call this farm (some services here are common with “ Velvet seasons) – “Psou”. The main attraction of the bizarrely curving 2-kilometer shore is the fence through which the neighboring state, Abkhazia, can be seen.

The Imereti lowland is a unique opportunity to relax without any uphill climbs, to enjoy an analogue of the humid, bright and fragrant Colchis lowland (Abkhazia and Georgia) that is no different in characteristics, to remember the 2014 Olympics...

0

Where did the lands of the Olympic ornithopark disappear to? interactive map cutting 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 the 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..

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 suitable land for farming, infertile soils, difficult living conditions in the mountainous zone, and 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. The construction of the Olympic Park in 2008 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 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

When you look from a distance at the domes of the Olympic Park stadiums in Sochi, surrounded by a triple ring of fences, you quickly forget that this is a space for sports competitions and a symbol of success new Russia. Broken eggshells come to mind. Now the omelette seems to have been eaten to the last crumb, and the Radio Liberty correspondent, having visited Sochi, fully felt the aftertaste.

I came to Sochi for double decker train, this train, plying the route Moscow - Adler, was specially allowed for the Olympic Games. It is still possible to get to the south on it, and for exactly the same money as from Moscow to St. Petersburg, despite the distance being twice as long. Leaving the comfortable carriage, in which I could use, albeit slowly, but still working wireless Internet along the way, I did not believe that I was in Russia. On one side is the sea embankment behind a chain of palm trees. On the other is a huge, shiny station building in the shape of a wing. And in the distance behind him are snowy mountain peaks.

From a special machine I purchased a ticket for the Lastochka train to the Olympic Village station for 17 rubles. A few minutes later, a silent Siemens carriage was taking me towards post-Olympic Sochi.

MIRLNY VILLAGE – STATE FARM “RUSSIA”

I stayed in the village of Mirny, one of the suburbs of Adler in the Imereti Lowland, surrounding the Olympic Park. Mirny is separated from the sea by brand new Olympic facilities, which means a dozen three-meter-high fences. Neat fences - made of boards, metal mesh, barbed wire - are the first thing that catches your eye. “Fenced edge,” the locals joke. The time is still early, around 9 am, and there are almost no people on the streets

Passers-by. Occasionally one encounters people who are more reminiscent of visiting workers than local residents or tourists. A couple of times I see women with strollers. In the shade of nice wooden fences, the same throughout the village, dogs are resting - it is not clear whether they are domestic or stray. All buildings have been recently renovated, every third one was built just a year or two ago. The roofs of most houses are the same brown-red color. On many gates there is a sign: “For sale.”

We meet with Viktor Kobylin, an enterprising local resident, a public representative of one of the neighborhoods in the village of Mirny. Victor is a large, fair-haired man who looks more like a Siberian than a Sochi resident. It turns out that he was born on Far East, studied in Omsk, but has only lived here for the last ten years.

I share with Kobylin my first, quite favorable impressions.

– I agree, at least they built excellent roads. Gas will probably be provided eventually. They built a thermal power plant in Adler - problems with electricity almost stopped. The village has become much cleaner, although before construction began it was greener. All that remains is to remove the various black touches. The administration should end the euphoria that they were not dispersed, and they should take care of our problems.

A sprinkler passes by, washing away dust from the asphalt path. It was impossible to imagine such a thing in the village just a few years ago, and there was nothing special to wash.

Kobylin is clearly an optimist, and an active optimist at that. As it turns out, there are plenty of black little things, it’s just that some of them are hiding behind brand new fences, while others are literally buried in the ground. Even at the beginning of the Olympic construction, the village, which was preparing to receive hordes of Games guests, was promised sewerage and gas. Gas pipes are connected, they stick out of the ground in almost every house. But there is no gas in them. “The gas workers were in a hurry, and as a result the pipe was simply laid incorrectly,” explains Kobylin. – When the test pressure was given, the pipe began to level out and float due to vibration. In some places it is located at a depth of 20-30 centimeters from the road surface, and according to the standard it should be buried almost two meters. That’s why they don’t give us gas - they don’t understand how it will work. Gas comes to our distribution station in the village, but it doesn’t go further because it’s simply dangerous.”

Now Kobylin expects that “smart people will think about how to fix this,” and, hopefully, local residents will be able to heat their homes not only with wood, diesel fuel and electric heaters. By the way, during the Olympic Games it was forbidden to heat with wood, so that the smoke coming from the chimneys would not spoil the decent picture. But the lack of sewerage could only spoil the atmosphere: in Mirny there is still a specific smell in some places. Unlike gas pipes, sewer pipes were not laid at all.

“The initial project was prepared by an organization from Rostov that deals with some kind of nanotechnology,” says Kobylin. – We wanted to make some kind of special vacuum sewer, because we are located in the lowlands, below sea level. We thought for a long time, then we realized that there was not enough money in the budget for this. As a result, the project was finally closed a year ago. What now - I don’t know, maybe there is a sewerage system on paper, maybe it was reported somewhere that it was built. I have no doubt that this is so.

From Kobylin’s point of view, the problem is not even that the promised sewerage system does not exist. What angers him much more is that the residents of Mirny were fed with promises until the very last moment. People built large houses, hotels with 3-4 floors. It is simply impossible to service these without a central sewer system: the only reasonable alternative - a septic tank - requires careful control over the drain, into which detergents and toilet paper. How to achieve such accuracy from hotel residents? As a result, most owners pour dirty water directly into the drainage system; So,

"Russian Seasons" in the village of Mirny

Apparently, they do it in my hotel, judging by the aroma spreading from the open hatch for some reason right there on the corner. From the drainage, wastewater flows into nearby lakes - wintering grounds for migratory birds - and from there into the Black Sea. In itself, such a system is not something unprecedented for Russian seaside resorts, but Kobylin explains that in the Imereti Lowland, located four meters below sea level, it is especially dangerous: “Drainage pipes become clogged and stop letting groundwater in. In three or four years, after a good rainfall, the village of Mirny will simply drown. Of course, the management will say: they shit in the drainage, so it’s their own fault. Where else to shit? The alarm needs to be sounded now. And who will do this if everything is already over, everyone has reported and the picture from the helicopter is beautiful?”

Sounding the alarm would not be enough for the energetic Kobylin. Looking out of his window onto the street at the end of 2012, he noticed that the gas pipes had already been laid, nothing was being dug under the sewer pipes, and at the same time they were going to lay asphalt. He realized that the Rostov vacuum nanosewage system was preparing to share the fate of many other innovative projects and remain, at best, a beautiful drawing, and sent a request to the local administration. The answer was extremely cynical: for such and such reasons there will be no sewerage system, but if you want it, build it yourself.

To my chuckle, Kobylin replies: “Why are you laughing? That's exactly what we did."

Having agreed with the owners of houses in his part of Mirny, Victor, with the help of a former classmate at the Omsk Automobile and Road Institute, made a sewer network project, and within several months, “opening the doors of offices with a horn,” in his own words, received numerous approvals. As a result, over the summer and part of the fall of 2013, residents installed a private sewer network. The planned Olympic asphalt had already been laid on top of it, and now in the right half of Mirny, when looking from the sea, the air is much fresher than in the left.

I look at photographs that chronicle the construction in detail. Kobylin, who in some photographs stands in person at the bottom of a ditch with a shovel in his hands, apparently carries this photo album in his car all the time. There really is something to be proud of. I ask how fair it is that part of the village is now in a better position. “If we had been warned earlier that there would be no sewage system, we would have reached an agreement with the entire village and would have built a network for everyone ourselves. Now we are ready to sell our sewer system to the administration so that they can continue to build it for everyone, at the price at which it cost us - it’s definitely cheaper than if they had built it themselves. But so far no one is having such conversations with us.”

Construction cost each of the cooperators approximately 185 thousand rubles. Big money, but a lot of it is here, apparently thanks holiday season and a wonderful climate that allowed them to harvest three vegetable crops a year, they could afford it. “People here have the opportunity to live a little better than in many other places in Russia,” says Kobylin. “And we have a little more time to think about how we live, and how we can make our lives better.” For him, the Olympic Games mean an opportunity for change that should be taken advantage of, regardless of the incompetent government. “I do this to my guys.” and said at the meeting: if there were no Olympics, Mirny would never have become so beautiful on the outside. Inside, a lot needs to be changed, and we will start doing it from below. changes, and then we will put pressure on management and get from them what we need.”

State Farm “Russia” is another village in the Imereti Lowland, it is located behind the Olympic Park, right on the seashore not far from the border with Abkhazia. Unlike Mirny, “Russia” has its own section of the beach, and with it its own problems.

Here we meet local environmentalist and social activist Natalya Kalinovskaya. I tear Natalya away from her conversation with the man in overalls - this is a representative of the responsible economic service who came at Kalinovskaya’s request to inspect the clogged storm drains. Kalinovskaya makes him lean straight towards the drainage holes, showing leaves, candy wrappers and empty plastic bottles packed under the bars. She has the loud and energetic voice of a person who is confident in her rightness and accustomed to defending her opinion. Clogged drains can lead to flooding - the most feared and most likely disaster here in the lowlands. Having dealt with the water utility, Kalinovskaya drops into the house for an impressive stack of documents and takes me on a tour of the village. Almost everything that catches my eye is criticized: here are the gas pipes that are already familiar to me, in which there is no gas (Kalinovskaya claims that the Olympic flame burned “from a cylinder,” although I am inclined to think that this is a local myth). Here are wooden pillars installed instead of old reinforced concrete ones. Here

Empty gas pipe at the Rossiya state farm

Drying cypress trees, new asphalt laid close to their trunks. Here are yellowing palm trees, stuck, as the ecologist explains, directly into a two-meter layer of crushed stone and sand, which was used to fill the lowlands for the construction of Olympic facilities. Judging by the story, for almost every tree, for every flowerbed and piece of sidewalk, Kalinovskaya, at the head of a group of local residents, fought tooth and nail, and sometimes this struggle ended in victory. Here, as in Mirny, at first glance it is very clean and cozy; I can only notice the shortcomings after prompting. However, I guess that it was precisely for the sake of this first positive impression that everything was done.

We go out to the central square. Around the brand new but non-working fountain, teenagers with toy pistols are running after each other. Elderly women are sitting on a bench.

– Are you admiring the fountain? - Kalinovskaya calls out to them, who seems to know all the local residents without exception.
– Yes, Natasha, we just wanted to talk to you about him. We come here every single day, but it doesn't work. Well, at least watch it once!
- And this is a gift to us from the governor, singing and dancing fountain, costs eight million rubles. To turn it on - there's a special booth - guys from Krasnodar must come, we don't have such smart ones here. They press the button and it starts working. This is if there is a holiday or someone important is coming. Very beautiful, by the way!
“Well, we can’t find these boys,” the women get upset.

In general, there is a special attitude towards Krasnodar residents here: according to local views, all troubles are to blame not so much on the distant Moscow authorities, but on the middle link, most often at the level of the administration of the Krasnodar region. A mythology has developed according to which somewhere there, in Krasnodar, the full-flowing financial Olympic Amu Darya diverged to irrigate the pockets of officials and businessmen, never reaching the Imereti Lowland.

Having learned that I am a journalist, the grandmothers immediately report that someone worked on the construction of stadiums and built “two two-story and one four-story” here on the state farm. This “someone,” of course, is from the outside, while the locals were left with only debts - people took out loans from banks to get a hotel license for 200-300 thousand rubles, and much fewer guests came to the Olympics than expected.

- It was the season last years? - I ask.
“It’s been four years since I’ve been gone.”
- Will it happen this year?
– Have you turned on the TV at all lately? There they send everyone to Crimea, but here in Sochi everything is supposedly very expensive, everything is for the rich.

Vladimir Putin said exactly this during a recent direct line: “After all, you yourself said that world-class and high-level hotels were built in Sochi. This means that there will be different categories of vacationers in Crimea and Sochi. In Crimea, the infrastructure is designed for people with low incomes; they will not be able to afford luxury hotels in Sochi.” The president’s words fit into the stereotype, because of which many Russians did not even seriously think about going to their home Olympics. At the same time, residents of Mirny and the Rossiya state farm convinced me that during the Olympic Games it was possible to stay here without any problems for a rather modest amount of 500 to 1,500 rubles per day per person. In a normal summer season, you can spend the night for 250.

After briefly discussing the gas problem (the grandmothers heard on TV that it would be supplied in the summer, but Kalinovskaya refuses to believe it), we say goodbye and go to the embankment.

In my opinion, the word “embankment” is more consistent with the city bank of the Neva or Moscow River. I can imagine the sea embankment in Odessa or Nice. At the seaside state farm “Russia” you expect to see a beach. However, there is no beach here anymore.

A narrow strip - about five meters wide - of pebbles and stones separates the sea from the gentle concrete slope. At the top there is a pedestrian road with benches and lanterns, and a red bicycle path is marked along it. In all this heat, even at 22 degrees in April, there is not a single tree on the stone structure.

“And here we had a hundred-meter beach,” Kalinovskaya ironically points to the concrete slide.
- Why was this built? For beauty?
“This beauty is washed away by the sea every time.” When there is a storm, everything here is covered in stones, these benches hang on those trees, and then the Ministry of Emergency Situations pumps out water in the village.
– Where will people rest now?
– Walk along the embankment
– Where can we put umbrellas and sunbeds?
- That's all. Walk or lie on concrete at 37 degrees in the shade.

The clean pebble beach was a competitive advantage of “Russia”, distinguishing the village from most coastal resorts. If in Sochi almost the entire coastline is divided between hotels and sanatoriums, then the Imereti coast, from the mouth of the Mzymta to the border river Psou, was famous for its publicly accessible wide beach, for which many tourists stopped right here, thirty kilometers from temptations big city. The embankment on a concrete embankment, however, was erected not only for decorative purposes: the cargo port built at the mouth of the Mzymta, which served the construction of the Olympic Park facilities, was stopped

New beach and embankment at the Rossiya state farm

Lathering on coastline river pebbles. Without this natural process, the entire Imereti Lowland, and with it the stadiums, risked being washed away into the sea. The multi-kilometer embankment should serve as protection from storm waves, but, according to Kalinovskaya, it copes with this function poorly. Alternative projects that use world experience in the construction of such structures, the ecologist is sure, could preserve the beach and provide reliable protection to the lowlands. “We are not against beauty, we are normal, adequate people. We're just saying it could have been done differently. Leave the beach at its width and then make two-tier terracing. It would be cheaper, and no one would be washed away - neither people nor the embankment. You see, a natural monument of world significance, protected by UNESCO - here it is, filled with concrete. But no one listens to us, we are locals, we are fools.”

“We know how to paint our lips,” Natalya sums up. “I said right away: they’ll catch up with the bears and gypsies, play the balalaika, treat them to caviar and pour vodka. And so it happened. They say it right on TV, people, go to Crimea before they mess it up. They are happy there now, and then, like us, they will live at the construction site for three or four years.

The sun is rapidly sliding into the sea, the screams of the youth resting on a narrow rocky strip near the shore are becoming louder, and the sound of broken glass is heard. Kalinovskaya decisively takes out her phone and dials the number of the district police officer:

- Darling, have you been to the beach lately? Come on in, otherwise our beautiful youth have gotten naughty.

I ask if she is too strict: Friday evening, south, sea, and no one seems to be fighting yet.

“They’re not fighting yet, and they’re not drowning anyone yet.” And at least let them clean up after themselves and take care of at least the good things that are left.

Kalinovskaya sets off home with a firm gait, along the way greeting everyone she meets and discussing in whose pockets the village gas could have ended up. I decide to walk straight along the embankment to Olympic Park to finally see the stadiums familiar from sports broadcasts without looking through the fence. The area is quite crowded: rare off-season tourists, local fishermen rushing on bicycles to the pier for the evening bite, athletes (apparently undergoing some kind of training here) on evening jogging. I pass the pier, gradually there are fewer and fewer passersby, and a disgustingly familiar three-meter fence grows on the right. Soon the Olympic venues appear behind it. I hope that somewhere in this fence there will be a wicket or gate leading to the desired Olympic Park, I walk a kilometer or two and come to a dead end: right in front of me, the same fence crosses the embankment and goes into the sea. On the left, the waves of the Black Sea crash against the stones; on the right, behind a high fence, the famous Olympic fountain dances to Tchaikovsky's waltz. I turn around and wander back along the alley of half-dried palm trees stuck in the dusty gravel, until in the distance, illuminated by fishing lanterns, like a Christmas tree, appears again. New Year's garland, pier.

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 it is the 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.

3.
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.

4.
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.

5.

6.

7.
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.

8.

9.

10.
And this is already September 2009, still the same Bolshoi Ice Palace with already visible outlines.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.
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.

16.

17.
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.

18.

19.

20.
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.

21.

22.

23.

24.
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.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.
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.

31.

32.
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.

33.
This kind of Sochi Olympics was imagined at the very beginning, in 2007, when no bunnies and leopards had yet been created.

34.
And, as proof of involvement, I am on the Olympic sports ground, wearing a helmet with Olympstroy symbols, in 2009.

 

It might be useful to read: