A year ago it was reported by the news agencies that a tourist tour “Follow The Way Of The IOC Valuation Committee” had been opened in Sochi. “From now on any tourist may feel like an international expert” trumpeted the media. So I decided to follow the way, but that of the IOC Coordinating Commission instead of the above mentioned one. Last week this commission was inspecting preparations for Olympiad 2014. 

While on my way in a taxi the radio exclaims “Russia has stood successfully her first examination!” The taxi driver bursts into laughter. Well, he has a good reason to laugh. 

A year ago the media told about students walking with suitcases and bags around the unfinished air terminal of the Sochi airport. They had been hired to pretend to be passengers, for a modest fee.  The airterminal complex not being completed yet, it was “opened” for two days only in February 2007 on the dates of arrival and departure of the IOC Valuation Committee.    

So first thing we went to the airport where the Coordination Commission had arrived by “two regular direct flights from Vienna and Geneva” (as it was alleged by Dmitry Chernyshenko). Well, the new air terminal is still closed. I saw the boarding to a regular flight to Yerevan go on through an antediluvian hall. That means the hosts of the future Olympiad just repeated the show this year, opening the place for arrival and departure of the inspecting guests. I attempted to find out when it is expected to complete the construction, but failed to pass through control post. I was advised to make an enquiry to Airbazel, a branch of Basic Element which is one of the major shareholders of the Sochi airport. Airbazel asked for an official request to be made and said it is necessary to wait. So we are waiting.       

It’s mere eviction, why are they discontent!

I had to go twice to Nizhneimeretinskaya Bay. In the morning I only managed to get to the settlement while the roads leading to the “Olympic facilities”, intended to be shown to the IOC Committee, were blocked by the police.   

Old people were working in the kitchen gardens adjoining their houses.  

“I live off this land” told me Nina Nikolaevna Smirnova. “We have already harvested the radish. Now it’s necessary to plant something else for the next harvest. And if my house gets demolished and I am given a room somewhere, how am I supposed to live? You know our pensions are small. And I have worked 30 years in the sovkhoz (a kind of soviet collective farm) and it gave me this land. ”   

Nina Smirnova’s kitchen garden is hidden between some complete and unfinished private hotels. The entrepreneurs bought the plots there intending to start a holiday tourist business. Now those buildings are to be demolished too. The minister of regional development Dmitry Kozak stated again the other day that all the owners of property in the eviction zone would be paid honest compensations. But if all those hotel palaces – million dollars each - were compensated their market value, it would take half of the Olympic budget.     

True, most part of the settlement dwellers, Old Believers, live in modest huts. But they have plots 20 hundred square meters each. So if they are paid honest compensation for this land it would also take million dollars per family.   

Many Sochi dwellers are convinced that all the happening is being done so that to oust them from the coast, to make the coastal plots vacant and to give it up to the Moscow oligarchs, all that being done at the public expense. Most people just do not believe the promises by authorities about allotting them compensating plots there on the coast and about compensational payments. Two years of waiting, rumors and unkept promises have made people resist eviction persistently.   

After the IOC Commission left, having observed the Olympic “facilities” – that’s a big violet tribune intended for better observation of the local bogs and a white marquee exhibiting the models of the Icy Palace and other sports constructions – it became known about dramatic events with Nizhneimeretinskaya Bay inhabitants participation.  

Battle At The Cemetery

According to estimation by the police, there were about a hundred locals wishing to meet the IOC commission members. They realized that all the approaches would be blocked by the police, so they had come early morning to the local cemetery, situated several hundred meters from the above mentioned tribune, hoping to be ale to get to the IOC delegation from there. However, the police had encircled farsightedly the cemetery.     

When they saw the cortege, the protesters spread out their “No reservation” posters in English.  

At that moment one of the deputies Sochi Administration Head approached them and began threatening. Then he attacked a pregnant woman who was shooting all the happening on the video. The woman was protected by her husband and other men who gave a thrashing to the official. The men were detained and released a few hours later.   All of them received summons to see the investigators, on same day. 

However, authorities decided not to make up an international scandal and the justice’s court just fined everyone for 1,000 rubles for disobedience to the public servants and organizing unauthorized meeting. The official version of the local inner affairs department is that there was no fight at the cemetery at all and no special means were used by the police units.

Alexei Malkov, the head of information department of the city administration, told me officially that all the eight deputies of the city’s head are working and none of them bears any traces of bashing. 

I was keenly interested to know the news about eviction: Imeretinka dwellers were summoned to the mayor’s office just before the visit by the IOC commission and were shown a map with official signatures and stamps on it. The map allegedly defined the borders of the taken away territory and depicted the location of the newly allotted place for the Old Believers settlement. That was an absolutely new document to the local people. Mr. Malkov refused flatly to show me that map or at least tell me what exactly is depicted there.  

…It is not known whether the IOC delegation noticed the “unauthorized meeting” at the village cemetery. But it must have seen preparations for Olympiad. According to the news agencies, the commission was content. The question is what it remained content with. Models of sports facilities? There are no ready Olympic constructions in Sochi and everything is to be started from zero level. Then it is not clear what kind of examination Russia has “passed” successfully and what exactly made the coordinating commission admire.