Wh**at are the academicians doing on Sparrow Hills? All progressive rural humanity is watching Yuzhnoye Butovo. And will composer Khachaturian attract the homeless and drug addicts? ** Scientists strongly dislike Education Minister Fursenko. In their view, this malicious comrade has set himself the goal of destroying Russian science and is pursuing it systematically. That is how they interpret his attempts to reform the Academy of Sciences. The minister’s claims that the Academy has long since stopped doing science and is instead busy, more or less successfully, exploiting its colossal real-estate holdings are rejected by scientists with anger and high rhetoric. We do not know who is really right and who is to blame, but those who attended the recent rally of residents of Moscow’s Gagarinsky District on Sparrow Hills are left with nagging doubts. Judge for yourselves: According to the latest expert surveys, Sparrow Hills is the cleanest park in Moscow in environmental terms. Local residents—and indeed all of us—would like it to remain that way. And scientists, it would seem, should be more interested in that than anyone. Stroll quietly down the shady paths and invent something brilliant. Or at least dream of a Nobel Prize. But no. At present, Sparrow Hills is threatened by two very large construction projects that are supposed to be built right on the territory of this protected nature reserve: Kosygin Street, property 2: a colossal residential complex. And the land plot designated for it is currently under the control of—attention—the Institute for Physical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The other scandalous project is on Kosygin Street, properties 7 through 13. It is to be launched by—attention—the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. And the scientist-builders, without the slightest embarrassment, told the outraged public that there was no problem at all. So what if part of the park gets cut off? We’ll tack on some land somewhere else. Let us hear from Irina Abalkina, a deputy of the Gagarinskoye municipal council: The nature reserve “Sparrow Hills” is a specially protected natural area. It is unique for Moscow because it is located in the city center. It is the high bank of the Moscow River, where natural vegetation has been preserved and where plants and animals listed in the Red Book (the official register of endangered species) can be found. In recent years, attempts to build on this territory have become more frequent—residential buildings above all, administrative buildings, and so on. There are quite a lot of such projects. There was* a public information session for residents about construction at 2 Kosygin Street. The client is the Academy of Sciences. They brought pretty pictures showing that there would be a residential building there. Residents asked: how can a residential building be placed here if this is reserve territory and housing construction is prohibited here? It is being proposed—well, in order to observe the formalities—to add another territory to it, one located by the University building, by the main building of Moscow State University, that is, to attach part of another park’s territory. It is an interesting collision: after all, that park is separated from Sparrow Hills by a fairly large and wide traffic corridor. In other words, it is an asphalt road with cars traveling in both directions, and how one can be combined with the other is not entirely clear to us. You will of course ask: scientists or not, who cares. But how can this happen in a park—indeed, in a nature reserve? It is directly prohibited by law. You cannot just brazenly start construction there. That is what you would think, because you are naive and believe a park is where the trees are. But no. A park is where the boundary is. And the boundary is wherever an official has drawn it. And officials have one very simple, and at first glance harmless, procedure: boundary clarification. Look here. There is a reserve. Trees are growing, birds are singing. Suddenly there is construction, noise, uproar, everyone is outraged. But an official simply takes an eraser and a pencil, rubs out the old boundary and draws a new one so that the construction zone no longer falls within it. That is all. They just “clarified” the boundary. Another construction project? Clarify it again. So yes, of course you cannot build on parkland—but you can arrange things so that the land stops being a park. And again, Irina Abalkina: Quite by chance, residents learned that there was not only a construction project for this address, but that the territory was also supposed to be removed from the reserve. There are practically identical attempts at other addresses. In other words, the entire part of Sparrow Hills that runs along Kosygin Street is slated for development. For some of these addresses the projects have been canceled; for others, court proceedings are underway. Residents, civic groups, and environmental organizations are trying to preserve this territory as a natural area and prevent any quiet, non-public discussion of changing its boundaries. Most likely, in the near future residents of the Gagarinsky District will file a collective complaint in court. They know perfectly well, of course, that suing Moscow developers in Moscow courts—developers with unlimited financial resources—is extremely difficult. But the struggle must continue in any case, and citizens will no doubt go on fighting. For our part, we will send the text of today’s program as an inquiry to the Russian Academy of Sciences and ask the learned gentlemen why such ugly things are happening under its cover. All of Moscow—and not only Moscow—is anxiously following events in Yuzhnoye Butovo. But there are people watching the conflict with special attention: Kurkino, Zhulebino, Molzhaninovo, Nekrasovka, and many others. These are Moscow’s villages. There are quite a few of them, and tens of thousands of people live in them. Almost all of these villages are to be demolished and replaced with high-rise apartment blocks. And whereas previously the overwhelming majority of village residents simply dreamed of being rehoused as quickly as possible—after all, in some homes people literally had to carry buckets to fetch water—now many want much more than just an ordinary apartment. They want compensation. The figure of $200,000 per sotka of land (100 square meters, or 0.01 hectares) demanded by the residents of Yuzhnoye Butovo has gone to many people’s heads. By those calculations, every Moscow villager would receive well over a million dollars. Though in such cases one should always remember the line from an old joke: he may want it, but who is going to give it to him? Gifts from foreign embassies have become a real headache for the Moscow city government—above all, gifts from the countries of the former Soviet Union. They have taken to presenting Moscow with monuments to their famous compatriots. And not only do they donate them, they also say: we want the monument to stand right here. Most often, they propose sites near their own embassies. It seems awkward to refuse. You cannot exactly say, “To hell with your gifts.” That would not be diplomatic. The result is conflict with local residents. One such scandal has only just died down, over the monument to Abai near the Embassy of Kazakhstan at Chistye Prudy. Right now protests are in full swing against a monument to Heydar Aliyev near the Baku cinema. And now another one is next in line. This time it is the Armenians. At their suggestion, a monument to the composer Khachaturian is to be installed in Bryusov Lane. Local residents, naturally, immediately wrote a collective letter of protest. In their view, first, the monument will take away most of their small park; second, they consider it inappropriate to place the statue right next to the Church of the Resurrection at Uspensky Vrazhek; and third, they strongly dislike the Armenian embassy’s idea of building a musical площадка (an open-air music area) by the monument. Residents are convinced it will attract no one except homeless people drinking alcohol and drug addicts. Echo of Moscow. Urban Development Chronicles. June 24, 2006.