Andrey Kolesnikov about how Vladimir Putin visited the Stavropol Territory

On March 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in the Stavropol Territory and stayed for a long time in the Solnechny Dar greenhouse. What a gift Vladimir Putin’s visit turned out to be for the greenhouse workers, says a special correspondent for Kommersant. Andrey Kolesnikov.

The village of Solnechnodolsk is an ordinary Stavropol village, but not quite. The ends of the five-story buildings are painted in multi-story picturesque multi-colored paintings: purposeful people on the sports ground, at the disco… But here are geometric metropolitan landscapes, and abstractions in the spirit of Piet Mondrian and even Joan Miró, and here is the writer Leo Tolstoy in full growth, although he is sitting, well, just as if alive… Well, in the village these housing and communal services graffiti, only at first glance budget, are not boring.

In one small room there is Sberbank and the “Fish and Beer Restaurant”… Everything here is preparing for spring, everything responds to the calendar: the sun, the air, the people…

Greenhouses don’t care. The “Solnechny Dar” greenhouses of the ECO-Culture holding are simply huge. Tomatoes, just tomatoes, nothing but tomatoes. Tomatoes as far as the eye can see. Tomatoes in any direction.

They say there are still berries somewhere, but you probably have to bike to get to them. And it will be some other universe.

Almost right at the entrance to the main greenhouse is a strange device with a wide corrugated plastic pipe. Specialists of a narrow profile know it as a “soft drain”. The pipe is attached to a movable metal structure, which, in turn, is attached to the computer.

“Here,” they explain to me, “look: artificial intelligence in action!” The robot collects tomatoes (in a pipe.— A.K.), identifying them by weight and color (that is, apparently, by readiness.— A.K.).

“But of course,” I’m at a loss, “after all, you have different varieties here: green ones can be ready-made, and orange, and red…

– Artificial intelligence! — they triumphantly explain to me. “Let’s change it to a different color — and it works again!”

The chairman of the board of directors of the complex, Alexander Rudakov, hesitated and addressed the protocol service:

– Excuse me, of course… but I don’t understand why we can’t raise a toast to the president at lunch in the dining room?!

I can see from the faces of the organizers that they haven’t even managed to ban him from anything yet.

– Are there any problems? – they ask him.

“There are no problems,” Alexander Rudakov quickly explains. “Just understand, we always make a toast to the president anyway!” And here is such a unique case! And the president is also present! Can?

“It’s not possible, but it’s necessary,” they reassure him.

But the challenge in his eyes and voice still remains. It seems that he is primarily fighting with himself.

Two dozen ladies are chilling in the packing shop. They cool down, because only here is the temperature at which not tomatoes, but people feel good (and we must understand that everything here is in the name of tomatoes), that is, 20 degrees. In other rooms at this time of year, and at other times as well, – under 30.

– And which ones are the most delicious? — I ask the packers.

– Try it! – they insist. – Any color! Possibly unwashed!

No, it’s still not possible, I think. But then, of course, I try and realize that the most delicious are the green ones.

And the ladies are now saying that the red ones are actually, and only in this box, and not in that one, they are completely different. Yeah, the details are still being clarified.

– What type? – I ask.

– Cherry! – they explain.

– It is clear. What kind of cherry is it?

“We’re just packaging here,” they withdraw into themselves.

— Will the ground tomatoes start growing soon? – I still ask.

“But ours are no worse,” they predictably insist. “We even marinate them for the winter.”

You need to walk around here among them for at least an hour for them to start telling you their secrets.

And then it turns out that just recently, bumblebees were literally just flying in the greenhouses, doing the main business of their lives – pollinating. They rested in small cardboard houses, where they flocked themselves. So, the bumblebees, along with the houses, were removed for the president’s arrival (they said it was for a while).

However, some bumblebees, I noticed, survived and apparently continued to pose a danger.

Meanwhile, readiness No. 1 was announced.

One of the few male packers in front of my eyes quickly finished the banana and went to the conveyor. I was very surprised by the banana here, in this temple of tomatoes, but I realized, of course, that they were apparently simply fed up with tomatoes here.

– Turn on the conveyor! – the organizers commanded.

— There will be enough tomatoes for 20 minutes! — the packers honestly warned.

“We’ll make it,” the organizers ventured.

However, the president did not linger at the conveyor belt (he just asked me, excuse me, if I had tried tomatoes here. I honestly said that the most delicious ones are green ones. No, it didn’t inspire me). Lunch awaited him in the canteen with the workers. There is a format where there are ten days left before the elections.

The President was told that the greenhouses had been built over the past five years.

— They said that this is the largest farm in Europe, right? – Mr. Putin asked.

— The most important thing is that it’s the biggest in Russia! — Alexander Rudakov, from whom I was now mainly expecting a toast, got my bearings.

Yes, in this situation he turned out to be more cautious than the president.

— I read that in your youth you worked in a student group? — power engineer Vladimir Kultyaev came from afar. “Can you share your memories?”

– What is there to share? – the president asked again. – Take more – throw further! We worked in Komi, near Syktyvkar, went there for several years in a row… first we were engaged in construction… not even construction, but major repairs of wooden houses. You know, wooden houses designed for two families, with a veranda on both sides?..

“We know, we know!” the workers made a noise.

“We demolished these verandas,” summed up Vladimir Putin, “and the roofs were demolished, leaving the center.”

“The box,” they corrected him.

“Well, yes,” he agreed. “They built verandas and made roofs… It was necessary to carry such large logs and drag them up!”

“Thank you,” one might say, the energy engineer, who had his own task in this conversation, interrupted him. “Could you recommend practical training in our greenhouse to modern students?” We are really looking forward to them.

Late. The President got carried away. The power engineer was at fault for asking.

– In the conditions in which we worked… the conditions were difficult, construction, and then cutting down power lines – it was hard work, we had to thresh! There were some older people there… I was still snotty, of course… Why, I just came, and we mostly hired guys after the army… So the guys were stronger, but I came straight after school,” Vladimir Putin shrugged.

Yes, the president got carried away in earnest.

– I thought I was an athlete, honestly, I was a candidate for master or master of sports, what do I care about, some kind of nonsense… but it turned out that I wasn’t: by the end of the day I could barely drag my feet. And the older guys were stronger,” Vladimir Putin repeated.

But stronger only because he’s older.

“You know, I can tell you,” Vladimir Putin sighed. “I remember when I worked there for a week… excuse me, we went to the bathhouse… I felt like I was in the Hermitage!.. in this bathhouse… there was such a feeling of relaxation, absolute peace.”

At the same time, it became clear what feeling visited Vladimir Putin in the Hermitage.

“But we earned decent money there…” the president did not give the energy engineer another word. “We worked, of course, a lot, 12 hours or more.” Nobody followed any standards… but they earned decent money, at that time it was very decent money,” Vladimir Putin insisted. “900, 1000 rubles, some even more!”

And we already know this, we know… Then the ship, port wine and again a feeling of complete peace (see “In the first person. Conversations with Vladimir Putin”).

– How clean you are! – the president addressed the workers. – Everything has been licked clean! Everything is working! Now we looked, they showed us a new device for harvesting (tomatoes – A.K.), also made with the help of artificial intelligence and robotics (oh, I saw it. – A.K.), they will harvest four times more, than one person! But this will not lead to unemployment for you, no? — Vladimir Putin was worried.

They dissuaded him.

Managing technologist of Solnechny Dar Irina Enina waited a long time for the word and finally asked the president directly:

— Do you prefer cucumbers or tomatoes most?

Here, in tomato heaven, the question seemed to sound rhetorical. But it’s also provocative: what if there are cucumbers?

“It depends on what we eat,” Mr. Putin answered evasively.

It was then that I prepared for the toast that the head of the board of directors of Solnechny Dar, Alexander Rudakov, had suffered through.

But for some reason he apparently couldn’t muster the strength.

And for some reason, no one here has eaten anything at all yet, although this meeting, as you know, took place in the format of a lunch.

“To be serious, it’s both,” Mr. Putin generously added.

— We recommend trying our tomatoes! — Irina Enina offered generously, with all her heart. “They are the best!”

– Yes, I’ll try. Just put it down (apparently on the table – A.K.). He asked me to come visit and said that the old mother would be very happy, but did not leave the address (Vladimir Putin quoted Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov in this way. – A.K.).

And so it turned out that the tomatoes, that is, the only thing that should be right here under any circumstances, were not on the table.

Anything that could have gone wrong here? I didn’t understand at all, but not tomatoes.

Unexpectedly, a lecture followed on the history of tomatoes in Russia. Tucker Carlson would be bored.

“I have questions about work, but first I would like to talk about the positive,” one of the dinner participants warned Vladimir Putin.

That’s it, it was time to end this dinner, at which the long-suffering toast was never made.

Andrey Kolesnikov, Solnechnodolsk