ABSTRACT
Igor Kholmanskikh, the special representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Ural Federal District, delivered this grandiloquent proclamation at the river navigation festival “Great Waters” (Bol’shaia voda) on June 8, 2013. His words condense an entire system of fixed representations about the Chusovaia River which have come to seem natural to local residents: “main street,” “central arterial,” progenitor of the “Ural civilization” and the “Ural character,” a site of local history and a catalyst of memory for the people of the Urals. Only one definition of the river is missing, but even it is implied throughout the text – “beauty.” Denizens of the region take these characteristics as inherent truths, even though their origins can be traced to fairly recent sources.
