The guest of the Tribune program is the Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council's Committee on Education, Science and Culture, the first President of Udmurtia, Alexander Volkov.
- Recently the Federation Council held the Day of Udmurtia. What projects were presented? What is well-known in Udmurtia apart from the arms industry?
- [Federation Council speaker] Valentina Matviyenko introduced a good tradition of plenary meetings on the Days of the constituent parts. When Udmurtia was given this honor, the government and the State Council of the Udmurt Republic, with the active participation of two representatives of the republic in the Federation Council of the executive and legislative authorities, began preparations for this Day of Udmurtia in the Federation Council. The goal was to present the Republic, its history, its present and the tasks that the republic would like to resolve at the present stage of the development of our country.
The support of our ideas by the Federation Council will enable the government of the Republic, the deputies of the State Council, to have the moral right to go to any ministry and continue to work on a particular project, so eventually to obtain the necessary federal support.
In 2007 we celebrated the 200th anniversary of Izhevsk small arms. The Kalashnikov assault rifle is already 70 years.
The Udmurtia region is the birthplace of Tchaikovsky. We restored the estate, where Tchaikovsky’s father lived and worked, where the composer was born. Tens of thousands of people come from all over the country to interact with this place.
The city of Votkinsk is not only the place where the great composer was born and spent the first 8 years of his life, a plant operates there whose director at that time was the father of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Today this plant provides the heavy defense of our country, producing the strategic missile complexes ‘Topol’ and ‘Bulava’, without which the country’s defense is impossible.
We have proposals not only on the small arms cluster, but also for the whole development of the industry, in order to support specific projects of the enterprises that provide the foundation of the republic.
The issue of formation of human resources is noteworthy, this is the modern training of personnel for any sector of the national economy, without which it is difficult to get out for some advanced positions.
One of the interesting projects is the creation of the research and education campus on the basis of the Izhevsk Technical University, which trains personnel for the military-technical field. This is true due to the fact that the Russian government passed a special training routine for the military-industrial complex.
Udmurtia occupies a position in the top ten in Russia in the area of livestock. We have restored not only the volumes of milk production of the Soviet period, but have also crossed the five-thousand line. If in Soviet times Udmurtia produced 650 thousand tons of milk, now it is already producing 730,000 tons of milk, and the head of state set the task of reaching one million tons. This issue is relevant as part of import substitution and food security. Russia underperforms 25% of meat and the same amount of milk in order to feed its people. Therefore, we count on support for this project. Increasing the number of cattle is required, and the construction of new livestock farms, processing enterprises. The republic needs a small amount, only 6 billion rubles to reach this result.
The factory ‘Elekont’ works in the city of Sarapul, which is ready to develop a electronic and radio-electronic policy in establishing current sources, energy storage, the development of ion batteries and supercapacitors with state support. Previously they were bought, and now we cannot buy them after the imposition of the sanctions.
- Are the South Asian markets open for us?
- One way or another, the situation was complicated in the enterprises of the electronic industry after the sanctions. This is primarily the military-industrial complex, it is space. We need to deal with it with our own forces.
In addition, we are talking about eliminating the consequences of the destruction of chemical weapons. On our territory we have built two modern large industrial plants. One has to destroy chemical weapons, on the other hand this process will be completed next year. Now we pose the question of the use of these areas. There is a modern engineering infrastructure. Such power should be used. Russia has invested tens of billions of rubles in them.
Next year Udmurtia we will complete a long-awaited bridge over the Kama River near the administrative border with Bashkortostan and the Perm region with access to Ekaterinburg. The investment project is estimated at 16 billion rubles. It is necessary to build the roads for it, we raise this issue as well.
We also raise the question of amendments to the Tax Code, because once we were promised that the taxes would be distributed approximately 50/50, but the Udmurt Republic sends 65% of its taxes to the federal budget, and the region’s revenue is only 35%.
- The government of the Republic has approved the budget of the region for the next year. The deficit amounts to 7.7%. How do you evaluate this figure in comparison with previous years? Is it enough?
- I was the president of Udmurtia for more than 13 years. We have always taken a budget with the maximum permitted deficit. For the budget of a region of the Russian Federation the maximum amount of the budget deficit is 15% of the revenues of the region, without taking into account financial assistance from the federal budget. This 15-percent deficit made everybody work. What don't I like today? When you open a newspaper, or switch on TV, everywhere you can hear appeals to save money and tighten belts. Why do we need to save? Isn't it better to earn money? Why don't we hear such points that it is necessary to make money in industry, agriculture, small and medium-sized businesses? Not just support, but earn money, producing proper volumes. We should not spend less. We should earn more. Well, we have cut the budget by 10%. We spend less money. We build fewer schools, kindergartens and sports facilities. Tomorrow their number will be much less. So it is a normal percentage of the budget deficit, it could be more.
- Did you receive a budget with a deficit for 13 years? Did the amount increase?
- Certainly, industrial production capacity is growing from year to year. We extract only 10 million tons of oil, but the money is also from the budget. Therefore, the major budget revenue generating base is objectively growing from year to year. The budget deficit makes us strain ourselves to earn money but, on the other hand, it is necessary to go to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development and prove that we need more financial support for intergovernmental relations. Do we have to build a new school instead of repairing a school under the threat of collapse? We should not wait for presidential decrees to provide children with new kindergartens.
If the governor monitors demographic indicators, it can see that the birthrate has been growing over the past 7 years. So we should not wait for the president's decree to build kindergartens. I don't see any positive prospects when we reduce the budget. It just hinders the development. The real money income of the population has decreased by 10%. It means that people will go shopping and buy an extra kilogram of meat, a piece of sausage. We will build fewer houses. A person should have purchasing ability, which forces manufacturers to produce goods, food, consumer goods and apartments. Therefore, it is necessary to make more money, rather than spend less.
- Alexander, we are in the studio of Vestnik Kavkaza. What mutual things do you have with the Russian Caucasus?
- I am thankful that Ramadan Abdullatipov became Deputy Speaker in 1993 during the first elections to the Federation Council. He has always been an active person. We became acquainted and I became a supporter of his ideas. It finally formed my good attitude to the Caucasus, to its people and culture. I was a delegate in both the first and second Congress of Mountaineers, and I took part in the International Assembly, led by Abdullatipov. I visited Dagestan and three times I was in the mountains where Ramazan Gadzhimuradovich was born. I visited the celebration of the 2000th anniversary of Derbent recently at the invitation of Ramadan Abdullatipov.
We arrived in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, and went through the streets. They are spacious and modern. I am very happy for Ramzan Gadzhimuradovicha, who has held the post of the head of the republic for 2.5 years and managed to make the city very beautiful. We stayed in a nice hotel, drove along good roads. The road to Derbent took us a long time. And then we spent the whole day in Derbent. We saw people who participated in the festival. They were really happy. They said that they hadn't seen new asphalt for 30 years. So now they have good roads, the sidewalks are made of paving blocks, the fortress is restored and the holiday was glorious.
Thanks to Ramzan Gadzhimuradovich I have often travelled to Dagestan in the last 20 years. I got acquainted with Rasul Gamzatov there and even sat with him at the table, proposed toasts. How they can propose toasts!
I have always had good relations with all the presidents of the Caucasian republics I have worked with, or continue to work with.
- Do you have any memories about the republics of the South Caucasus?
- Udmurtia is a national republic. We have more than 30 cultural and national associations. I am glad that I managed to build a House of Friendship, where all these cultural and national associations are under one roof. We have a large Armenian diaspora and diasporas of all the Caucasian republics. We have never had any ethnic conflicts in our republic. Everybody works, gets married, creates families, including interethnic families. It is a very important thing.
We have good relations with Azerbaijan. All horizontal relations among enterprises have been preserved. It seems to me that we are on the right track. I think that we have a good future thanks to the policy of our president.
- We have such a section in our program called ''From Kamchatka Territory to the Kaliningrad region." We ask our guests about the tourist attractiveness of the region they represent. What can Russian tourists see in Udmurtia? Is it worth buying a ticket and travelling there?
- It is so good that you ask this question. We often travel where we are allowed. As soon as we were allowed to travel abroad. Everyone started travelling to Turkey and other countries. But we don't travel in our country and don't know it. Two years ago I visited Lake Baikal for the first time. I was delighted, and I regret that I didn't travel there earlier. Every Russian region has its own peculiarities. There is a blessing in disguise – sanctions, restrictions, the exchange rate. They force us to travel in our country.
There was nothing to show in Udmurtia 15 years ago except for the Tchaikovsky Museum. Chiefs, presidents and prime ministers, deputy prime ministers and ministers and they were shown only Votkinsk. But now a day is not enough in Izhevsk in order to see everything. The main sights are the House of Friendship, and the Mikhail Kalashnikov Museum and Exhibition Complex, where a hundred-year history of small arms is collected, the embankment, the zoo and the circus complex. According to worldwide-respected director of the Moscow Zoo, Vladimir Spitsin, who heads the Eurasian Association of Zoos, the best Russian zoo is in Izhevsk. It is the newest, most modern and spacious. There are Ussuri tigers and polar bears are bred in the zoo. More than 600,000 people visit it every year. The circus complex is visited by 120,000 people, the Friendship House by 120,000 people a year. Do you imagine how many activities national cultural associations organize?
Within the framework of the Days of Udmurtia we presented the 'Kama Shore' tourist cluster. It is in the ancient town of Sarapul, which is located on the banks of the Kama River. A tourist can spend a week in Udmurtia at least, or travel to Votkinsk, Sarapul and Izhevsk.
