This Tuesday, a Yasnaya Polyana agreement on cooperation in the Tula region's social and economic development (the region's northern border is 110 kilometres away from Moscow) was signed in Moscow by the Yasnaya Polyana director Vladimir Tolstoy, Tula governor Vassily Starodubtsev and business people working in the region.
"The Yasnaya Polyana agreement is one that for the first time makes industrialists and cultural workers real partners rather than foes," said the great writer's grandson Vladimir Tolstoy in a RIA interview. The agreement is to serve above all the ecological improvement of the region, according to him.
"The museum will use its international links to attract investors to the modernisaton of production capacities, above all chemical works, and to the construction of up-to-date purification installations. For its part, big business will help the city better its social infrastructure, in particular, to reconstruct and build new sports facilities and cultural centres, "said Tolstoy.
"I hope this will be helpful in resolving the museum's problems as well. This is above all the construction of a depository we have long cherished to have and a major tourist infrastructure with a congress centre that can be used for staging international theatrical, music, literary and film festivals," reports the museum director.
The president's plenipotentiary in the central federal district, Georgy Poltavchenko, said at the signing ceremony that "a new mass movement bringing together government officials, business people and cultural workers is shaping up." Poltavchenko expressed hopes that other areas of the central federal district would follow suit.
"The Tula region does not account for rich natural resources-instead, it has amassed spiritual wealth connected with great figures in culture, with artists and writers, with Orthodox shrines. And the unity of business, power and culture for the development of these wonderful nooks of Russia sets a telling example for others," said Poltacvchenko.
Minister for Culture and Mass Media Alexandre Sokolov promised support for the Yasnaya Polyana agreement. "It is for the first time that culture, economics, business and power have come together. What matters a lot is that medium and small business is also involved. We shall be spreading this experience," the culture minister said in a RIA interview.
