Tver Region Governor Dmitry Zelenin has recently met with Yelena Shulgina, a representative of the Investment Programs Center (IPC) of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). As a result, they announced the start of the implementation of the plan for the construction of a network of hotel complexes in the Central Federal District, with the Orthodox Church making an important contribution to it.

Tver Region was the first region to be approached by the ROC Investment Programs Center for the conclusion of an agreement of cooperation and partnership. The ceremony of signing the agreement served at the same time for the Centers presentation.

The ROC Investment Programs Center has kept quiet until now. Suddenly it was materialized on the territory of Tver Region in the form of an elderly lady dressed much like a nun, that is, the above-mentioned Mrs. Shulgina. Prior to her current status as the IPC head she acted as an executive official at state and private companies (her previous postchairman of the board of directors of ZAO Quinta-Holding). In 2001 she accepted the proposal of OAO Rosgosstrakh to take up the post of the companys deputy director general by overseeing marketing and advertising.

According to Mrs. Shulgina, apart from the ROC, the IPC was founded by the central staff of the authorized representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Central Federal District (CFD), the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation and the Association of Russian Banks.

The plans of the Investment Programs Center are quite impressive. According to Yelena Shulgina, hotel complexes will be built, agricultural programs implemented and the institute of pilgrimage revived within the framework of the agreement". Owing to this, she said, the ROC will have sources of financing its charitable and social programs.

The first project of the Russian Orthodox Church in Tver Region presupposes the construction of a 12,000-15,000 square meter housing-and-office complex to the value of $ 10 million. It will include a world-level hotel complex and elite apartment blocks. Starting from 2006 the ROC Investment Programs Center is planning to launch the construction in the CFD of two or three such complexes per annum. This cooperation, Tver Region Governor Dmitry Zelenin believes, will give a mighty impetus to the development of tourism in the region. The tourist network and pilgrimage will develop on a top level meeting world standards. And this, in its turn, will give a strong impetus to the development of territories, the economy and the regions small towns", the Governor stressed.

After discussions of the free transfer of land, the ROC seems to have come to the conclusion that it would be more profitable to build hotels on this land rather than to cultivate it or grow cabbage and cucumbers. The more so that the Orthodox clergy has accumulated this kind of experience. Back to 1991 the five-storey Danilovskaya hotel with 116 de luxe and half-de luxe suites and three apartments was opened on the territory of St. Daniils Monastery in Moscow, a hundred meters from the Patriarchs residence. Initially the hotel was planned exclusively as residence for visiting members of higher orders of the clergy, priests and honorary Orthodox guests from abroad. However, today practically anyone can order even a half de luxe suite or an apartment, if he wishes, via the Internet. It is located in a quiet vicinity and an excellent view opens from its windows, the hotel offers a parking lot, currency exchange, a business center, a conference hall, two saunas, a water-pool, a barbers shop, dry cleaning, a laundry and a restaurant with its nine halls to accommodate various numbers of guests and with dishes for all tastes, bars, taxi orders and satellite communication for the guests convenience. All thisat a minimum price of $ 130-180 per day. So you will hardly meet ordinary pilgrims here. It looks like plans of this kind are afoot at the ROC on a countrywide scale.

There is no lack of sacred places in Tver Region traditionally visited by pilgrims, including those of a resort type and quite expensive. For Instance, the Nilo-Stolbenskaya Monastery, one of Russias largest, on which thousands of pilgrims converged in old times. The monastery looks like a veritable town built in the 18th century classic style on an island in the middle of Lake Seliger. It was closed down in the mid-1920s and the buildings were used as a labor camp for Polish POWs, as a training school for juvenile delinquents and as an aged peoples home. The monastery was restored to the Church in the 1980s. It was planned to organize the All-Union Tourist Center (incidentally, according to the restorers accounts, it was precisely in that period that the monasterys architectural complex was damaged even more than in the GULAG period). At present the monastery lives through the period of revival. The relics of St. Nil Stolbensky, the founder of the monastery, were returned to the monastery in 1995. Its giant cathedral has been restored. It was built according to one of the designs submitted to the competition for the construction of St. Isaacs Cathedral. The facade of the monastery complex facing Lake Seliger has been restored. Illumination is turned on on holidays.

An elite Gazprom rest center has been already built next to it. It is rather small but very expensive. It is always filled to capacity. Svetlitsa, a holiday-hotel that was built back in Soviet times, with Stolobny Island located close to it, is being also expanded. However, it is almost impossible both for pilgrims and ordinary holiday-makers to find accommodation here, for you have to make your reservations six months in advance. So its only obvious that the first of the ROC hotels is necessarily to be built precisely here.

The small town of Torzhok, with its magnificent Sts. Boris and Gleb Monastery complex is an ideal place for pilgrimage. The monastery was founded by Yefrem Novotorzhsky, a close associate of Prince Gleb who was Russias first saint. Apart from being famous for its sacred places, Torzhok serves as the start of the famous Pushkin Ring of Tver Region. It was here that the Sun of Russian Poetry regularly paid visits to his friends, and Anna Kerns tomb is to be found in the Prutnya Village, located in close vicinity to Torzhok. It was to Anna that Pushkin dedicated the widely known verse I Remember the Wonderful Moment. But you have to develop the towns entire infrastructure if you wish to promote hotel-and-pilgrimage business in Torzhok, that is, the public catering network should be developed by restoration of its old beautiful buildings looking quite shabby for lack of repairs over a long period of time.

Moreover, there is Staritsa in Tver Region which was Ivan the Terribles favorite township and the native town of Russias first Patriarch Joav. The Assumption Monastery, where prelate Joav started his service to the Church, is undergoing reconstruction, with Moscows top executive officials contributing to the process. There are also other objects of interest for tourists in the vicinity of Staritsa such as caves and landlords estates of old times.

There is a countless number of miracle-working water springs in Tver Region of which the Okovetsky holy spring, located in between Rzhev and Selizharovo, even now serves as the center of attraction for guests from Moscow and St. Petersburg. And last but not least, the Volga originates here.

The ceremony of consecration of the Volga Source is traditionally conducted by Archbishop Viktor of Tver and Kashin in the Volgoverkhovye Village on May 29. The Volga religious procession starts from water consecration prayers, and this year the procession will be held with prelate Nil Stolbenskys relics. The Volga religious procession is among the most significant events in the Tver eparchys life and it involves all cities of the regionfrom Selizharovo to Kalyazin.

St. Olgas Nunnery is currently in the revival stage in Volgoverkhovye. A system of lakes is located not far from it and the small rivulet, which takes source here and runs through them is slowly but surely transformed into the great Russian Volga River. Not a bad site for a hotel, eh?

True, the official Patriarchate sites on the Internet make no reference either to the signing of an agreement in Tver or to the fact of the IPCs existence. None of the ROC top clerics, so far as we know, attended the ceremony of signing the agreement. And it seems that having been compromised by their dealings in the sphere of tobacco, oil export and air carriages in the past few years, the Moscow Patriarchate would prefer to distance itself from the IPC. Although there is nothing wrong with hotel business which is quite promising both for the Church and the Region, but to earn profit and donate a part of it for the construction of churches, almshouses, for aid to orphans and the destitute and for hotels is after all the domain of merchants and bankers.

This is as a matter of fact what Alexii II was speaking about at the Moscow Clergy Eparchial Meeting held last December: The growing commercialization of many aspects of parish life is an alarming indication of the profanation of Orthodox consciousness, dwindling church authority, growing spiritual blindness Prelates engaged in social service know full well that a considerable part of our people now live in abject poverty. And when you ask a person why he fails to visit a church, he often replies: If you pay a visit to the church you must place a candle there, hand in notes or order a prayer service. But I havent got money to spareI can hardly make both ends meet. So my conscience prevents me from visiting the church. Thats the sad reality of our days.