Capital Status — a Nizhny Novgorod Region brand and a namesake development program for Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street from the S.V. Kirienko era. The popular nickname is Kulichnost.
Background
The minds of many native Nizhny Novgorod residents are plagued by an inferiority complex about their own city. Rather than fighting to preserve the history of their homeland — which has plenty to show — they immediately want to be mistress of all they survey, and so they attempted to declare their collective farm the "Kazan, Russia's Third Capital" (they obviously can't aspire to the first two, and by now can't manage the third either).
Capital Status was actively cultivated in Nizhny Novgorod by Nemtsov, who in the 1990s was striving for federal power and, in the opinion of local political analysts, was pulling the regional center up along with himself. After his departure, the idea was actively championed by the former presidential envoy to the Volga Federal District, Kirienko Sergey Vladilenovich. He managed to launch a large-scale city development program and secure federal budget funding for it. The program was never completed — it stalled after Mr. Kirienko moved on to become a caretaker prime minister.
Afterward, officials regularly recalled the brand, the need to develop it, and to formalize it legally, since a city's image is a tool for attracting attention and, as a consequence, money. However, they only seriously addressed the issue after Nizhny Novgorod was officially stripped of its status as the third capital.
"Capital of the Volga Region" instead of "Russia's Third Capital"
Local officials began preparing to register the "Third Capital" brand as early as 2007, when Nizhny Novgorod Region Deputy Governor Irina Borisovna Zhivikhina attended the international ITB trade fair in Berlin, where she spotted an advertising banner reading: "Kazan, Russia's Third Capital."
The deputy governor was outraged that Kazan had unilaterally claimed such a prestigious status for itself. Ms. Zhivikhin immediately instructed her subordinates to register intellectual property rights for the brand "Nizhny Novgorod — Russia's Third Capital," and threatened the Kazan city administration with a lawsuit. The content of that lawsuit remained, unfortunately, a mystery forever, as it never materialized.
It then emerged that the proposed brand could not be registered with Rospatent, since under federal law the graphic elements "Nizhny Novgorod" and "Russia" cannot be protected as trademark elements. The slogan had to be trimmed to the phrase "Third Capital."
Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod filed their documents with Rospatent at roughly the same time, but the Tatar capital ultimately prevailed, having submitted its application a few days earlier. Kazan did not stop at the "Third Capital" brand, adding variations such as "Third City" and even the inelegant "Russia's third capital."
Having irreversibly lost the status of third capital — first on economic indicators, and now thanks to overly nimble Kazan officials — Nizhny Novgorod Region filed around ten applications with that same Rospatent.
Among them, alongside the main entry — "Capital of the Volga Region" — were "Heart of the Volga Region," "Heart of the Volga," and so on. Thus, for a mere 200,000 rubles (the total spent on trademark registration), Nizhny Novgorod fairly quickly recovered its "capital" status, earning the right to call itself the "Capital of the Volga Region."
Criticism
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Renting a Name
According to Andrey Kirillov, director of H-ARS Company LLC, if one follows the letter of the law, Nizhny Novgorod may only use the "Third Capital" brand if it reaches an agreement with the Kazan administration and enters into a contract for the use of that trademark.
"The city administration is a legal entity, so in the event of unauthorized use it will be necessary to compensate the rights holder for all damages incurred," Mr. Kirillov added.
Kazan, for its part, makes almost no use of the "Third Capital" brand it obtained. At the "Days of Russian Culture" held in Cannes at the end of August of the current year, Kazan was represented very prominently, yet displayed no capital-city ambitions whatsoever. Experts cite two reasons for this: first, Kazan is already the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan; and second, the rights holder for the "Third Capital" trademark is an advertising committee that has no authority to engage in commercial activities.
The Nizhny Novgorod brand "Capital of the Volga Region," according to Vladimir Seleznyov, Deputy Minister for Small Business Support and Development, Consumer Markets and Services of Nizhny Novgorod Region, belongs to the state enterprise "Artistic Crafts." The trademark may be used on product packaging, in advertising, in entertainment shows, and so on. "It may also be used by travel agencies in the region that have concluded a contract with the rights holder," Mr. Seleznyov added.
Response to Criticism
Critics of the current authorities naturally did not miss the opportunity to draw public attention to the officials' blunder. According to Vladislav Yegorov, leader of the Communist Party faction in the Nizhny Novgorod Region Legislative Assembly, the appearance of the "Capital of the Volga Region" brand is nothing more than a feeble attempt to paper over the embarrassment of Kazan being named the country's third capital. "Nizhny Novgorod is perhaps not even in fourth place on this question, but considerably further back. But one must put a brave face on a bad situation," Mr. Yegorov stated. The DK experts, for their part, consider the acquired trademark generally beneficial for the city's image, while adding nothing substantial. Nizhny is the seat of the presidential envoy to the Volga Federal District, so it remains the administrative center of the Volga Federal District without any trademarks.
Why a Non-Existent Object Was Made the Foundation of the Nizhny Novgorod Brand
If registering a city's trademark is no more than a legal formality, then filling that brand with substance — according to Aleksandr Iudin, director of NISOTS — is no easy task: the city must live up to its declared brand. Work is being done in this direction, of course — the city is being tidied up and touched up here and there — yet the historic center is being gradually destroyed. The DK experts surveyed put forward various proposals for promoting Nizhny Novgorod, ranging from the old standbys "Russia's Pocket" and "Merchant City" to "Russian Detroit" and "City of the Arts." At the same time, they all agreed on one point: before pushing a single distinctive feature to the fore, the city's overall appearance must be addressed.
Through the efforts of the city and regional administrations, the central streets have been repaired in recent years — Bolshaya Pokrovskaya in particular — metro construction has gotten off dead center, roads are being repaired on schedule, and buildings are being spruced up. "The city's renewal is both heartening and saddening. Heartening because the city is visibly becoming more beautiful. But it is sometimes sad to see so many places that still look like slums," says Larisa Yershova, president of the Nizhny Novgorod City Bank joint-stock company.
At the same time, industry experts are puzzled by the construction and design of large-scale projects. This applies above all to the development of the Bor Floodplain — the Glob-Town project. The project's architects are Dante O. Benini & Partners Architects (Italy–United Kingdom) and JSC Nizhegorodkapstroy — a joint venture established by the Nizhny Novgorod regional government and the Moscow group SU-155. Only design work is under way at present, yet it has already consumed several tens of millions of budget rubles. The total investment in construction amounts to an astronomic 750 billion rubles for Nizhny Novgorod Region. Despite the fact that completion of construction is scheduled for 2035 and will be postponed repeatedly, it was Globe Town that was presented at the 2008 international exhibition in Cannes. This undoubtedly helped attract investment, but at the same time such a presentation transparently hints to foreign visitors that there is nothing to do in Nizhny before 2035.
Brand Development
Historic Center of the city — old "merchant Nizhny" with its architectural landmarks and museums — is, according to experts, gradually fading into the background. Alexander Iudin: "The History Museum is boarded up, birch trees are growing on the roof. Another museum was simply evicted — and that's supposed to be the city's brand." This is all the more striking given that it is precisely the old city that attracts tourists. "All tourists leave satisfied. Eight centuries of history aren't going anywhere," adds Maria Sviridova, General Director of the Rosa Vetrov group of companies.
What meaning will actually be invested in the brand "Capital of the Volga Region" remains unclear; that will be decided by bureaucrats. The majority of experts surveyed by Delovoy Kvartal lean toward putting the city's merchant history and its corresponding architecture at the forefront. Options such as "Russian Detroit" or "Science City" simply don't hold up to scrutiny. There are car plants in other cities too; the fate of Detroit itself after GM's bankruptcy is hardly enviable; and, finally, Opel was never sold to GAZ after all. As for "Science City," that brand has already been staked out by at least Novosibirsk and Korolev.
(*) Delovoy Kvartal, No. 16/17, 31.08.09