This story began in 1992, when I was seven.
Going out onto the playground,
I realized that children with whom I'd played yesterday
didn't want to talk to me.
Having run home in tears, I asked my mum, "Why aren't they playing with me?"
She just said, "Because you are Russian."
"But I was also Russian yesterday", I pleaded.
A few days later, I came home from school
and found all our belongings had been packed,
and we fled that night from my hometown of Tyrnyauz in Kabardino-Balkaria.
I have never gone back to that town,
but have devoted myself to making sense of what happened.
I have lived, worked and studied in various towns, cities and countries.
I have completed a master's degree on the subject of conflict resolution.
I have worked at an international human rights organization.
Five years ago, I came back to Russia.
I saw that conflict and general division in our society
had reached a critical point.d
It is not just about ethnic groups.
Disagreement on policy issues,
differences in people's incomes,
all of these have created social tensions.
Big cities in our country are developing,
while small villages and towns are to be found in a poor state.
They are dying out.
I very often see that when travelling across Russia.
Here, for instance, you can see how much of a difference there is
in the population densities of different regions of our country.
The exodus of people from small towns and villages
is creating a very big problem.
In the big cities, the population density is growing,
and that creates a huge number of problems.
I've made the decision that I cannot simply look on at it;
I either have to do something about it
or depart.
I decided on the former.
At first, I didn't know what I should do exactly.
I have participated in election campaigns,
and more than once been an election observer.
However, all that led to nothing, nothing has changed in our society.
In terms of my theoretical knowledge of methods for dealing with conflicts,
I realized that one of the methods of connecting people
is through common cause.
It's about when different groups of people are caught up together.
They may not be particularly friendly towards each other,
but they all understand the value of resolving an important issue,
that the outcome of the issue is more important
than what they feel towards each other.
Here, it's important that a platform of common cause
creates an atmosphere where people begin to communicate,
listen to each other, and understand each other.
Importantly: to understand is not to agree.
However, it is crucial.
When I realized that common cause
would help to solve the problems in our society,
and looked at the size of our country,
I realized that my mission would need to take on a tourist format.
That's how Altourism came about.
What do I do with Altourism?
I locate active local residents in towns and villages throughout Russia.
Together with these people, we identify a common cause,
a cause that will really make a positive impact
on the development of this little town or village.
Then, together with the locals, we organize a trip to that place
for people who want to take part
in improving a small town or a village,
to make a contribution to the development of such a place.
We then take a trip there, and see what we find.
We might then sit down with the locals to identify what might form a common cause
that would help to make an even bigger contribution
to the development of the local community,
or move on to the next stage of development,
supporting the local residents in setting up a small business.
Why do they need support?
As I said, there's an exodus of people,
and leaving with these people, especially the younger ones,
from the small towns and villages,
are their ideas.
Tell me, please, who is not originally from Moscow?
Raise your hands.
(Laughter)
I can't see you very well, but I think that's about eighty percent.
But we don't want -
we are all bright, smart people here,
striving for constant development,
we here, in Moscow,
but that doesn't mean that we want our hometowns to fall into decay, does it?
This is what my hometown looks like these days.
When I left it,
it was like a little green paradise at the foot of Elbrus.
But this town actually has the potential of the Swiss Alps.
I don't understand why such things are happening in Russia.
"Common cause" is not my invention; it is international practice.
Organizations such as the UN and other international bodies,
they very often use common cause as an instrument
in the realization of, in the process of coming to, a post-conflict settlement.
Let's imagine a situation:
a village in which residents have been fighting each other.
The hostilities are over,
and an international body is tasked with maintaining a stable peace.
They notice that the water supply in this village has been destroyed.
They make an offer to the locals:
"We'll fund the water supply if you get together on it."
And this is when the stage is set
for the locals to start working together on the water supply,
to start communicating.
They begin to listen to each other, they begin to understand each other.
To understand - not to agree; to understand.
That's the really important thing.
This is the town of Tutayev in the Yaroslavl Oblast.
It was the first town in which we started working, more than a year ago.
Tutayev is separated by the Volga into two parts.
There's no bridge between them,
and the two parts don't really interact with each other.
The town's administration is on the right bank,
and this side is much the bigger, and is developing much faster.
The left bank is almost forgotten.
But its being forgotten has both its upside and its downside.
The downside is that there is no building regeneration,
and budget allocations have not been made to develop this area.
But what this side has is its beauty.
Although it is crumbling, it is not being destroyed on purpose.
There is no new housing development there.
We are just working with the left bank.
Lilia and Alexey are the main initiators of the positive changes on this left bank.
They are developing the Art House "Romanovo",
which is where our altourists stay.
This is our very first trip, which took place in April 2015.
Lilia and Alexei suggested that we, together with the local people,
might clear one of the squares of garbage.
At first, many local residents came out of curiosity.
They met us with disbelief,
but when our altourists withstood
being covered in snow four times during the day,
they realized we were serious.
And with that they became very motivated themselves.
They started talking with the altourists, and not about the weather.
For starters, they asked them:
"Is it true that you paid to come here to us in your free time
to help us improve our town?"
Can you imagine that every altourist had their own answer to this question,
if each was an entirely different one.
And this, our first trip, had a profound influence on everyone,
both on the altourists and the locals.
For the altourists though,
really, travelling across Russia was a very sad experience.
This is the Smolensk Kremlin.
You all know about it, at least from our high school history textbooks.
A huge number of our foes were defeated there
in different centuries, in different battles.
However, if you plan to go there, you will realize it's in a very bad state.
Getting up on the tower walls is an extreme sport.
But there is no tourist infrastructure for visiting this site.
That is very sad,
since when you travel, recharging your batteries,
you want to be inspired by positive emotions, not negative ones.
It is the distinct feature of Altourism's trips:
our tourists always come back home infused with positive emotions.
It is because they meet active local residents
prepared to do great things for their little towns or villages.
Something else that distinguishes our trips from others
is that we, together with the local residents, create new history
as we travel around.
And with that goes another very important fact:
each of our trips is unique, there will not be another like it.
And those tourists who go after us,
they will study the history
that we created with the altourists and the local residents.
After our trips, the local residents develop completely different ways
of building dialogue between each other.
They no longer moan that everything's bad, that nothing's done for them.
They start asking themselves and others:
"What kind of town do we want to live in?" "How do we make it like it?"
This is when we see the profound change
in their way of thinking, in their conceptions,
that's exactly what we are trying to achieve with Altourism.
People stop thinking "It should be done for us",
and start thinking "We can do it".
This is the important moment.
(Applause)
However, everything is not always as hoped,
other situations can arise.
For example, this is Torzhok, Tver Oblast.
We planned a trip here for the May Holidays.
To my surprise, we got the planning done very quickly.
There are local activists there doing a lot for their town.
Over the past year, they've really moved mountains,
but for our trip, they chose a large-scale project
that we weren't prepared for.
When they found out there was outside help,
they decided to go all out.
It was to smarten up this allée here.
But what happened?
We didn't get a group together, so we had to cancel the trip.
To my great joy, the locals came out anyway,
on the appointed day, at the appointed hour,
and they cleaned up the allée.
Despite these positive changes, the most important thing didn't happen:
as we weren't there, there was no change in their mindset.
Only those people came to the Saturday cleanup
who already understood
how important it is to do something good around you,
to change the world around you for the better.
But others did not come.
Our trips bring in those local residents who are just curious,
and then they become part of us.
I'll give you one more example,
when, looking for a common cause,
we, in fact, came up with the idea of setting up a small business.
It happened in the town of Kotelnich in the Kirov Oblast.
I went there six months ago
when I got to know that it's the biggest location for Permian reptiles.
And just recently, they opened a dinopark there.
It's very cool.
But then I realized that there is something more interesting in this area.
Locals began to tell me different stories.
I came to realize
that many cool photographers come from this part of the Vyatka Region.
But I also learned that in the town of Kotelnich,
the Museum of the Vyatka School of Photography was opening.
I tried Googling the Vyatka School of Photography
but didn't find any information.
However, after talking to people, I realized that it does really exist.
We needed to gather information, analyse it, and put together the details.
And if we really wanted people to know about it
as one of the most important tourist attractions in our country,
it somehow had to involve itself with its own financial history.
That's when I suggested
opening a hostel for photographers in the museum building,
a place people interested in photography would come to from all over the world.
They could have masterclasses given by Vyatka photographers,
and go on photo trips.
These then are three examples of our activities.
We are now working in six regions of Russia.
For the second year of our activities, that's great,
but on the national scale, it's actually nothing.
I would like to see the mindset of the majority of our people change.
I would like small towns and villages in our country to be developed.
I don't want young people to want to leave their hometowns
because they need to;
but that there's a good job where they are,
that opportunities exist there for their self-development,
and that there are interesting people there for them to talk to.
I would like moving to a small town or village
to become a modern trend.
Altourism can achieve that.
But we need to take action across the whole country.
And finally, I'd like to ask those people who raised their hands
to think that, in your hometown, village, you have there active people.
Introduce me to them.
And we'll move mountains together.
(Applause)