Judicial LiteratureTula – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

The cancellation of the LiteraTula book festival led to a lawsuit between the sponsor and the organizer of the event. The Oktava company, the owner of the creative cluster where the festival was to be held in May, filed a lawsuit against the organizer of LiteraTula, Irina Rocheva, for 827,000 rubles. The debt was formed last year when the event had to be canceled due to the epidemiological situation. The parties agreed to hold a new one, but this year it was also canceled – this time at the initiative of the regional Ministry of Culture.

The first meeting of the lawsuit filed by the Tula LLC Oktava against the entrepreneur and organizer of the LiteraTula book festival Irina Rocheva will take place in the Arbitration Court of the Tula Region on September 29. The company requires the defendant to pay the amount of the advance transferred under the sponsorship agreement concluded in 2020 in the amount of 770 thousand rubles, as well as interest in the amount of 57.4 thousand rubles. The total amount of claims is, therefore, a little over 827 thousand rubles.

The festival “LiteraTula” has been held in Tula since 2016. But the next event, scheduled for September 3–5, 2021, was canceled because the government of the Tula region and the department of Rospotrebnadzor considered it “inappropriate” due to the epidemiological situation. “The finished festival – with paid tickets for more than 90 speakers, hotels, T-shirts, posters, a new website, PR work, with more than 100 preliminary publications – was canceled seven days before the event, citing the recommendations of Rospotrebnadzor,” Kommersant reported. Mrs Rocheva.

According to the organizer, at the request of the Tula Region Committee for Tourism Development, the organizers were not returned the payment for hotels due to the “difficult situation in the industry”.

And the refund for the tickets “did not bring a significant replenishment.” “It was no longer possible to cancel the payment for labor and services, so we just decided to postpone the festival for a year. With what money to make it, it was not very clear to me then. But then, miraculously, I received a grant from the Presidential Fund for the festival, a residence and an award, because the general sponsor had already made its contribution,” Ms. Rocheva said.

This year the festival was to be held in the Oktava cluster on May 13-15. But at the end of April, the Ministry of Culture of the Tula Region announced that the organizers did not provide materials for the preparation of LiteraTula and its holding in time. “Given the reputational risks to the participants and visitors of the festival, it was decided to refuse to hold it on the specified dates,” the department explained the cancellation.

“In less than a month, we were again not recommended for holding. Referring to the fact that I did not submit to the Ministry of Culture a list of speakers, their topics and books that will be sold at the fair, all 10 tons,” recalls Irina Rocheva.

She decided that the festival would be closed “until better times”. Shortly thereafter, she was forced to close her Witness bookstore because there were no buyers for it, and leave Russia. Now the organizer of “LiteraTula” is in Armenia.

Oktava LLC insists that “the necessary information on the program and speakers of the festival was not provided within the agreed time frame.” “After that, it became clear that, unfortunately, it would be impossible to hold the festival on the original dates. We were ready to consider alternative formats and terms, we were in touch with Irina at the initiative of the cluster, trying to find a solution that suits everyone, but we did not receive any alternative proposal for several months, ”says Galina Goncharova, PR manager of the Oktava cluster. According to her, the amount of the claim is significant for the company and Oktava is not ready to lose it forever. “The cluster team was forced to prepare and send a claim, and if they didn’t receive an answer, they sent it to the court,” Ms. Goncharova concluded.

Alexander Tikhonov, Yaroslavl