Makhachkala. CC BY 2.0 Un Bolshakov / Flickr. Some rights reserved.On 7 February, a new post appeared on Ramazan Abdulatipov’s Instagram page. The post concerned plans to build a “historical park museum” in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, as part of a new network of museums called “Russia, my history”. “After a broad public discussion, which has been conducted for the first time on this kind of issue, I have decided to assign territory on Imam Shamil Avenue for this project. The Moscow developers of this project have approved this territory as the most suitable for a historical park,” wrote the head of Dagestan. The Makhachkala residents who had been following this decision closely in the past few weeks breathed a sigh of relief, before calling and congratulating one another.
Abdulatipov’s post did contain one worrying paragraph, however: “Some people have decided to use this project as a PR stunt, stirring things up and disinforming people, telling them that the museum would be built on the territory of the Lenin Komsomol Park.” To parse out Abdulatipov’s words: several ministers and indeed, the head of Dagestan’s own press service had been suffering from delusion, and there’d been no confrontation between residents of Makhachkala and the authorities whatsoever.
The reality is somewhat different.
