Meskhiyev Quits As City Culture Head
Published: August 1, 2012 (Issue # 1720)
Filmmaker Dmitry Meskhiyev, who served as the head of City Hall’s Culture Committee from November 2011, has resigned from his job amid speculation that his departure may have been prompted by the prosecutor’s office’s current investigation into the committee’s financial activities.
Meskhiyev himself said the sole reason for his departure was “an interesting job offer” that he felt he could not turn down. He declined to give further details.
Meskhiyev’s short tenure as head of the Culture Committee was marked by numerous conflicts with members of the local artistic community. Even his allies concede that he managed to make more enemies than friends during his period of state service.
For example, the official vigorously defended the merger between the legendary St. Petersburg film studio Lenfilm and the Sistema conglomerate.
The Vladimir Putin-backed plan was floated by Vladimir Yevtushenkov, president of the Sistema conglomerate, which has tentacles in industries as diverse as telecommunications, tourism, retail and oil. It calls for Sistema to take over Lenfilm, which the Finance Ministry valued at 105 million rubles ($3.5 million) in 2011, though some analysts consider the figure to be a knockdown price. The studio would then move to the outskirts of St. Petersburg.
But a group of independent filmmakers proposed in April that the studio be allowed to stay put, receive a cash infusion from the government, and regain access to its valuable archives, which were taken over by the Culture Ministry in 2002. They envision Lenfilm becoming a center of art-house filmmaking.
The first plan would create a partnership between Sistema and Lenfilm, which would merge with a production company in Yevtushenkov’s empire. The state would control 25 percent of the new enterprise, which would move to a new business complex on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Yevtushenkov would turn the existing studio on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt into a new business center and parking garage.
“What I want to say to the protesters is, ‘Stop panicking!’” Meskhiyev said back in April. “A merger between a studio that is essentially falling to pieces and a modern one is a good news story, not a tale of disaster.”
Yulia Strizhak, an adviser to St. Petersburg deputy governor Vasily Kichedzhi, said the city government strongly backs the merger as “the most rational solution.”
“The studio will stay afloat, which is the most important thing,” she said. “Importantly, there is an investor who is eager to provide money for the studio’s development.” Yevtushenkov has not said what investment he would make in Lenfilm beyond the initial purchase.
Maxim Reznik, head of the Culture and Education Commission of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, believes that Meskhiyev’s departure was inevitable.
“I was amazed by Meskhiyev’s appointment in the first place, considering his ardent support of the Okhta Center [the controversial skyscraper that was due to be built by Gazprom as its local headquarters in the historical center of the city],” Reznik said. “Okhta Center was hugely unpopular among locals, and especially in cultural circles. So many people hated him for that attitude alone.
“Most importantly, Meskhiyev lacked tact and employed force in delicate issues such as theater reform,” he added.
At the end of April, Meskhiyev offered Yury Butusov the job of artistic director at the Lensoviet Theater on one condition — that he stop all other work outside of this engagement. The director left City Hall flabbergasted. The proposal, he argued, was nothing short of serfdom, and his view received widespread support among his counterparts.
Meskhiyev also planned to introduce a new system for hiring artistic directors, executive directors and top managers of cultural organizations that receive funding from the city. Instead of a permanent employment contract, Meskhiyev wanted to offer them one-year contracts that would be reviewed at the end of the year — and then potentially replaced by three-year contracts — thus greatly increasing the dependency of employees on the state.
Even before joining the city government, Meskhiyev often made public statements that defended and supported City Hall’s policies.
In December 2010, when the city’s ex-governor Valentina Matviyenko found herself under an avalanche of criticism for failing to keep the streets of St. Petersburg clear and safe during massive snowfalls, Meskhiyev, at his own initiative, produced a statement of support.
Responding to an open letter sent to Matviyenko by the popular St. Petersburg actor Mikhail Trukhin, who accused Matviyenko of not respecting residents and urged her to resign, Meskhiyev defended the governor.
“I am surprised you put all the blame on Valentina Matviyenko,” Meskhiyev wrote in his blog. “The governor provided vast funds and resources to deal with the problem, and if too many local officials are unable to do their jobs, then they should be held responsible, not Matviyenko. The only thing that you can do by writing such a letter is irritate the situation.”
However, Vyacheslav Notyag, a member of the liberal Yabloko faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, speculated that Meskhiyev’s departure could be connected with the investigation into the committee’s spending currently being conducted by the city’s prosecutor’s office.
Notyag himself sent a parliamentary inquiry to prosecutors in June, asking them to investigate spending on the May 9 Victory Day celebration.
“No tender was held, and the assignment, worth 23 million rubles ($715,000) was simply assigned to KramerCo. production studio,” Notyag said. “Two other competitors did not meet the requirements set by City Hall, and so the order simply went to Kramer. Also, the festivities could not have cost more than 7 million rubles ($217,600). It looks like a corrupt scheme to me. I foresee a lot of work here for the prosecutors.”
City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko defended Meskhiyev and sent an official response to parliament in which he said that “there had been no financial mismanagement or abuse in organizing the celebrations of the May 9 festivities.” The prosecutor’s office has extended the duration of its investigation to Aug. 10.
A replacement is yet to be announced for Meskhiyev.