A stay in the international children's center "Artek" now costs on average from 30 to 60 thousand rubles for one excursion, depending on the services provided, but there will be a possibility of free vacations soon. The general director of the camp, Alexey Kasprzhak, declared that children will have to deserve this right: "A person who is successful in any area - in study, in sports, in art and so on - will be able to come to "Artek". What social group he represents, whether he is rich or poor - for us it will be unimportant".
"Artek" is the biggest children's camp in the world. It occupies 216 hectares - the area of this camp along 7 km of coastline. There are five parks, five mountain rivers, its own sources of drinking water, nature sanctuaries, Adalara's rocks, the Mount Ai-Dag, Pushkin's grotto. There is a crossing of eras in cultural and historical value in the Crimean "Artek". Monuments of architecture of the most ancient and of the present times are concentrated in quite a small space. Nearly 90 years ago a camp sanatorium for education of children of the young Soviet state was created here. During this time about 1.5 million people from 140 countries of the world had vacations at "Artek". In the last 20 years of the existence of the USSR "Artek" was a leader of the pioneer movement of the country, where meetings, summer lightning and festivals were carried out.
Around the 1990s "Artek" was a place with an uncertain status, and only after the return of Crimea to the structure of Russia has a new page opened. ""Artek" is large-scale. There are 350 facilities ad 10 children's camps in its structure. In the project we plan that there will be a 12,700-capacity stadium, a school designed for 1200 people, a seaport with a children's flotilla, a motor depot, 5 museums, 12 monuments, a film studio and other elements of infrastructure", Alexey Kasprzhak says.
The deputy minister of science and education of the Russian Federation, Veniamin Kaganov, considers "Artek" is a treasure not only for the Soviet Union, not only for the Russian Federation, but also all children, leaders, employees and heads who were related to its creation and development. Kaganov hopes that "Artek" becomes "an example of new approaches in education, in supplementary education, a place which attracts not only the most talented children from regions of the Russian Federation and the countries, but also is a beacon which other establishments of our country and other countries would strive to equal".
