Panorama FACES

Javdet Suleimanov, the Doctor of Technical Science, Professor of Kazan State University gives almost all his time free from the academic carrier to children. He is heading the «Salat» («Talent») project which is well known not only in Tatarstan but beyond its borders as well. This project unites thousands gifted children giving them the chance to show their talents in different fields of social life. The «Salat» community is supported by many companies and enterprises of the Republic, including «TAIF», 'SMP-Neftegaz», «Tatneft». Today the community represents a special intellectual space for scholars, students and post-graduates of Russia and Tatarstan. All of them are the participants of the «Salat» summer camps system; the talented school-children are getting prepared to the republic and to the all-Russia subject competitions with the professors of Kazan institutes of higher education.

Children who get acquainted with the university job, know many lecturers personally, study from them, and becoming the students, they feel at home at the institutes.

Besides, among the most prospective trends of work with young people in Tatarstan «Fansar» («Intellectual Constellation») should be mentioned. Its purpose is to create basic mechanisms for search of talented children and young people and work with them. This project is the initial stage of the «Fansar» («The Temple of Science») republic academic town for the youth, which may become a factory of skilled personnel in future.

Support to families having many children in Tatarstan has become the policy of government significance. Allowances are paid to such families and privileges in communal services, school catering, infant schools costs, summer rest organization. In 2000 the Ukaz on granting housings to families having five children and more was issued. Today there are over 40 thousand families having many children. Families with only three children are also accounted as having many children. Women decorated with «Ana dany» («Maternity Glory») medal founded in 1999 by President Mintimer Shaimiev's Ukaz are especially honored. Women who managed to bring up five and more children in a worthy manner are awarded with this medal. A monetary reward is contributed to it. Traditionally the President himself presents the medal on the eve of the Mother's Day. Rezeda Galieva from Kazan is among those who were decorated with this medal. Nikolai and Rezeda Galievs have seven children. Last year they moved to a new six-bedroom flat.

What do you expect to see on the shelves of a cookery expert? Well, perhaps, books with the recipes, or books on cookery of other countries. You won't find anything of this kind in the cabinet of Mr. Khisamutdinov, the director of one of the most famous restaurants of Kazan — «Tatarstan». His shelves are jammed with huge volumes in marketing, business, sociology, economics. It appears that above all Mr. Khisamutdinov is also a Candidate of Social Sciences and a Doctor of Economic Sciences. What do you think of it? Remember, that he is full out with job at the restaurant, writes scientific monographs which have become manuals for thousands students in Tatarstan and other regions of Russia, and he also delivers lectures at institutes of higher education.

What does he need the restaurant for? His life is too busy without it. «First of all, it's a huge inflow of new people and new acquaintances. The more I see people, the richer I become in moral aspect. Besides, many guys who worked with us, are now running other restaurants in Kazan.

— Will it be correct to say that you brought up the elite cooks of Kazan?

— Well, it may sound exaggerated, but quite close to true...

The news that somewhere near Kazan lives a «strange» man who is persistently building the so-called Temple of Seven Religions, caused our interest at once, so we decided to have a look at it with our own eyes.

Turning the last turn, we literally ran into a huge palace which seemed to have been used as a scenery to the «Nutcracker» ballet. A lot of multi-colored domes of this many-sided building told us in their own language that the man who erected it had a vivid imagination which aspired him to embody his fantasy in this scale construction.

Ildar Khanov happened to be this very man whose working day was at its heights after 22 P.M. Later we learnt that usually Ildar does not sleep more than three hours a day, goes in for yoga and eats exclusively vegetative food.

Since early ninety-s, from the moment when Jesus visited Ildar in his dream and told him, that from that moment on he should be constantly busy with his development, Ildar had been building his temple, in which he would like to combine all world's religions known to him, thus putting a stop to the conflict between different religions and to prove practically that peaceful co-existence of people on this planet is possible.

Ildar told us about his plans (having seen what he has created we think that they do not sound fantastic). He is planning to build a big complex — «The Universal Temple» on coast of Volga River. There Ildar wishes to arrange a rehabilitation center those who were for injured in military conflicts and to train children in sports and yoga, to enable people to study philosophy, arts and many other things.

Ildar Khanov is already engaged in educating children from neighboring settlements, he is training them unarmed self-defence and is planning to construct a pier on Volga and to bring some old submarine, where children could also go in for scuba diving. Besides, this man is a gifted healer, or, in his own words, he can, like an x-ray, examine a human body and to correct different defects or cure diseases.

Ildar is curing people every day. Those who wish to recover from drug addiction come to him (Ildar is sure, that today drugs are the most serious problem for school children who are left on their own) wives bring their husbands who are drinking heavily.

Talking to Ildar, you come to think, that his plans are so enormous, that they seem unreal to common people. Only diligence and persistence supported by true divine gift are capable to bring his plans to life. And, seeing the results of Ildar's work, you begin to believe, that everything is possible. Sometimes help comes to him from foreign people quite unexpectedly and such help is almost always unselfish. Doesn't it look like a certain goodwill from the Heaven? Goodwill to human selfless devotion.

— In the course of time, I have come to belief, — says Ildar, — that each person has both positive and destructive features in him from birth, though, certainly, in different relationship, though. Therefore bringing up with the only aim to protect the young generation from negative influence is intolerable, because any feature can gain a victory. It is necessary to develop only positive, spiritual features, using the experience of humanity accumulated during ages. The basic purpose of the Universal Temple, which I have been constructing for years is to accumulate the positive energy of the main sixteen world cultures in one place, so that people, primarily young people, who come here, could absorb everything good and kind created by all previous generations by just attending hobby groups, going in for sports, listening to music or looking at pictures.

Mikhail DOVZHENKO

We are walking along a noisy street named after Bauman, the street is in the center of Kazan. The holiday of the young people has just ended, and the rushing down stream of excited young men and girls seems never-ending.

— I love just to be in the crowd here. To be in the center of the Kazan youth. Actually, I am still a very young man, — says Ravil.

Today this young man whose name is Ravil is a colonel of police.

Ravil is telling me about his family, which left Chistopolski Region during famine, and then returned came back; he is telling me about the father who used to be a groom in the village where Ravil grew up. «It was a very important and respectable post in the village, I must say» He is speaking about his brothers, one of whom is a president of the republican federation in kickboxing, the master of sports in boxing, the other brother is the full knight of the Orders of Glory.

— You see, I don't want to speak with pathos, but my brother is just the example of Tatars whose whole life is devoted to selfless service to Russia.

Ravil left for Moscow to study.

— Only at the university I have understood, that I was Tatar, — admits Ravil. — Being the third-year student I was sent Czechoslovakia for practical work. Everyone came to congratulate me on my birthday. Somebody remembered that I could play the guitar and sing and asked me to sing. I started singing. And only then, for the first time in my life, has understood, that it was something mine. That I am Tatar, that my native land is Tataria.

How simple Ravil is, I thought , walking with him about Kazan at night-time. Simple and complicated at the same time. Otherwise anyone — whether me, or somebody else — could easily explain the reason of such love for the native land in this person. What is the sense of this daily service to his native Tatarstan? I cannot explain it at once. I can understand. And in order to explain it, one should be Tatar. Is it necessary to be Ravil? I do not give the family name of my hero deliberately, because it seems to me, that there are many Ravils in Tataria.

Mikhail DOVZHENKO

Kazan is a beautiful city. Probably the reason for this is availability of so many beautiful people. You wish to get acquainted and to talk with all of them. This girl could be immediately notices in street crowd, because she looked happy and carried a small bunch of lilies of the valley in her hands and was smiling. I could not find out a lot about her: her name is Zulfia, she is a physician, she loves her profession and she loves her city. And it is quite enough to feel happy.