The New Year is wrapped in camouflage – Newspaper Kommersant No. 213 (7414) of 11/17/2022

The Moscow authorities decided to find out from the townspeople how widely it is worth celebrating the New Year in the capital. During the online voting, it is proposed to choose: to celebrate as in “last years”, to celebrate, but without mass festivities, or not to decorate the city at all for the holidays. At the same time, the mayor’s office promises to support the participants in the special military operation and emphasizes that “it is not necessary to purchase New Year’s constructions.” Meanwhile, the city councils and prefectures have already announced competitions for New Year decorations, but there have not yet been large-scale city-wide purchases for this purpose.

Voting on how to celebrate the upcoming New Year, announced Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin. It is proposed to choose from three options: celebrate “just like in previous years”, “make a New Year’s decoration of the city, but not hold mass concert events”, do not decorate the city at all and do not hold concerts. “Even in the most difficult times, the inhabitants of our country decorated the Christmas tree, gathered with family and friends … So, during the Great Patriotic War, citizens celebrated the New Year, in spite of everything, congratulated each other on the holiday,” says in the communiqué voting on the Active Citizen platform.

Mr. Sobyanin recalled that during the Great Patriotic War, “every penny counted,” but in Moscow, “to spite the enemies,” they still held a “holiday for children and adults”: “The worst thing is when people and the country fall into depression, forget about traditions renounce human pleasures. “Maybe it’s better to count not the savings on holidays, but the income from them, which will allow us to send many times more to support the participants in the special military operation,” the mayor noted. He expressed confidence that “there is no need to purchase new New Year’s constructions, but in general the city should be decorated and friendly,” but he suggested that the townspeople decide this themselves during the survey.

According to Kommersant’s estimates, every third constituent entity of the Russian Federation has already decided to save money on New Year’s holidays in one form or another due to a special military operation and partial mobilization. We are talking about the rejection of concerts, fireworks and festivities in order to help the fighters and their families. Such statements were made, for example, by officials in the Pskov, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov, Novosibirsk, Amur, Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk and Saratov regions. At the same time, officials were not ready to give up children’s matinees (at the time of counting Kommersant at the end of October 2022). As Kommersant’s sources in the presidential administration explained, the final decision to organize New Year’s celebrations was at the mercy of the governors, but they were advised to pay attention to sociology.

In Moscow, only A Just Russia-Patriots-For Truth (SRPZP) was the only party in favor of cutting spending on New Year’s celebrations. In October 2022, the SRPZP faction in the Moscow City Duma sent a corresponding appeal to Sergei Sobyanin. It was proposed to cut the budget in terms of “adult mass celebrations, entertainment events, fireworks and lighting”, leaving New Year’s funding untouched for children. The Socialist-Revolutionaries offered to use the saved money “for the purchase of thermal imagers, protective equipment, food packages and support for the families of mobilized Muscovites.” The SRPPP was going to lobby for the initiative in the form of an amendment to the Moscow budget, but in the end, the faction, together with United Russia and the pro-government association My Moscow, proposed that the rest of the deputies adopt the budget in an accelerated mode without amendments. In the end, this is what was done.

Sources of “Kommersant” in the capital’s mayor’s office refused in principle to discuss the topic of budget cuts and reduced activity for the New Year holidays, calling it “very painful.”

Around 100,000 people voted in Active Citizen by Wednesday evening. At the same time, more than half of the respondents were in favor of the New Year’s decoration of Moscow, but against the concerts.

It should be noted that the city councils and prefectures have already carried out a number of public procurements related to the New Year holidays in the fall. So, in September 2022, a tender was announced for the New Year’s decoration of Bibirevo in the amount of about 3 million rubles, and on November 8, the prefecture of the SAO of Moscow decided to purchase “New Year’s artificial illuminated spruces” for 8.9 million rubles. for the design of the district. In October 2022, VDNKh ordered the design of the territory with “art installations with a New Year theme” on the public procurement website in the amount of almost 4 million rubles.

At the same time, there are no city-wide large-scale tenders like the Journey to Christmas festival on the public procurement portal yet. At the same time, in 2016, the authorities allocated at least 3 billion rubles for the celebration of the New Year and Christmas with decoration in the “Italian style”, RBC calculated. In 2017, the head of the Moscow Department of Trade and Services, Alexei Nemeryuk, estimated the estimate for preparing Moscow for the New Year and Christmas at 930 million rubles. In 2019, about 825 million rubles were spent for these purposes, while only 561.7 million rubles were spent on decoration and New Year trees.

Alexei Firsov, founder of the Platforma social design center, calls the logic of the authorities “rational from the position of the city as an economic structure”: “Around the New Year, especially in cities smaller than Moscow, a small business industry is built – gifts, parties and so on. It would be wrong to remove this component from the city.” It is noteworthy that Sergei Sobyanin, announcing the vote, proposed “not to finish off small businesses that employ millions of people with artificial restrictions.”

“People need a break from everyday life at the end of the year. Throughout the year, negative energy from the news background accumulated, and after mobilization, Russian reality moved away from the fact that the events in Ukraine were just a media picture,” says Mr. Firsov.

In addition, according to him, the holidays are “like two weeks of hard drinking without fireworks and illumination – a big risk to increase depressive moods.” “In general, people will perceive the New Year holidays as a normal move of the regional authorities, if there is a certain sense of tact. In Moscow, a rather large stratum, about 70%, needs a holiday without reservations. For the rest of the townspeople, gestures are important, emphasizing the complexity of the moment, ”summed up the sociologist.

Alexander Voronov, Kira Heifetz