Evgeni Chazov, celebrated heart surgeon and Director General of the All-Russia Cardiological Research-cum-Production Amalgamation, won the Order of Service to Motherland, 2nd class. This was what he said:
"You are decorating a man who has spent his lifetime promoting the achievements of zemstvos [19th-century Russian network of local health and education services] and the principles of Soviet health care, which the world acknowledged in the 1970s for the highest available standard. I am sure you will take pains to keep going those principles of free health service, which gives everyone the chance of all-round treatment to retain his life and health."
Ludmilla Verbitskaya, St. Petersburg State University Rector, received the same order, 3rd class. She pledged to introduce Russia's best educational patterns throughout Europe.
"My award comes as recognition of my university's endeavours. 200,000 have received degrees there throughout the 280 years since it was established. Now that the Bologna process has got going, Russia is one of the forty European countries who are working for an all-European educational network, and it is up to us [Russian educationalists] to make it accept Russia's best educational traditions," she said.
Yuri Oganesyan, top-notch physicist, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is research supervisor of the nuclear reaction laboratory at the United Nuclear Research Institute in Dubna, in the upper Volga reaches, north of Moscow. He was also awarded the Order of Service to Motherland, 3rd class.
"The table of elements-the good old Mendeleyev table we were all cramming at school-has been extended by another five elements. That is the fruit of our research for the preceding five years," he proudly reported.
Vladimir Trusov, another Dubna researcher, invited President Putin to his town. Director General of the Raduga government engineering R&D bureau, he won the Order of Service to Motherland, 4th class.
"We Dubna people are designing precision-homing weaponry and super-cruise missiles. We study elementary particles, and have discovered stability islands-physicists' slang for new elements," said Mr. Trusov.
Isaac Geichman, First Deputy Director General of the Skochinsky Mining Research Institute, also received the Order of Service to Motherland, 4th class. This was what he said to the federal President:
"My colleagues and I, we are all very uneasy about industry-related R&D, and coal miners' plight. We see the only ray of hope in personal supervision under which you have put mining."
Professor Georgi Zhitomirsky of the Moscow Aviation Engineering Institute, another winner of the Order of Service to Motherland, 4th class, appealed to the President to promote global exports of a pioneer attack aircraft, now in blueprints. "The plane will have fine fighting characteristics and will make a sensation as export item. It by far exceeds whatever analogues this and other countries have in offer. It is my institute's brainchild, and the Sukhoi R&D bureau is going on with the job."
"The craft will find its place in the world thanks to your promotion, Comrade President." That Soviet-style address, in Professor Zhitomirsky's support, came from retired General Valentin Varennikov, Russian Heroes' Association president, and second in charge of the veterans' affairs committee on the State Duma, parliament's lower house. The old soldier was awarded the Order of Martial Merits.
Berl Lazar, Chief Rabbi of Russia and Friendship Order winner, said he saw his award as token of this country's awareness that stronger pillars of its national community were among top priorities.
"Russia is groping for its national idea, and has come upon two concepts-a return to the roots of its spirituality, and tolerance and respect for one's neighbour," stressed Rabbi Lazar.
Evgeni Yevtushenko, one of Russia's foremost poets, was awarded the Order of Service to Motherland, 3rd class. In a soulful address, he recollected his dramatic childhood in the World War Two years.
"In 1941, the year nazi Germany attacked my country, Mother was going to the frontline and packed me off, all on my own, to stay with Granny in Zima, a tiny Siberian village. I had to cross almost entire Russia, the child I was. The journey took me four months and a half. I soon ran out of money and earned my living with songs.
"I shall never to my dying day forget a woman with a little bundle made of a polka-dotted scarf. When she untied it, a chunk of rye bread showed-her daily ration of 400 grams. She broke off a half, handed it to me, and asked to sing. I sang a song as I was devouring the bread with hungry eyes. Then she broke off for me a half of the half she had left to herself. That woman is to me a symbol of Russia-the country for whose sake I live and make verse."
President Putin never uttered a word of comment as he was hearing out all the 43 laureates' addresses. When all had had their say, he gave one answer to the whole audience:
"Men and women of many generations, all kinds of destinies, and a wide range of religious and political convictions are together in this room. They may have contrasting ideas of what awaits Russia and what it ought to do. Yet there is something they all have in common-gifts and dedication to their nation, which they are serving disinterestedly and with brilliant achievements."
Prominent among the laureates were Vladimir Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga; Ravil Gainutdin, High Mufti of Russia and president of the Muslim Board for European Russia; Taimuraz Bolloyev, Baltica Brewery boss; popular portrait painter Alexander Shilov; world-acclaimed pianist Nikolai Petrov; and several top-notch poets and actors.
The gala, in St. Catherine's Hall-one of the most opulent Kremlin rooms, finished with champagne on a long-established custom. Everyone who wished could toast the federal President and have an informal talk with him.
