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| Aelita con | Brief Chronology |
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Chronicles of the first Russian Convent
 1980
Nobody was going to carry out a sc-fi festival at
all. Writer Vladislav Krapivin, publi-cist
Stanislav Meshavkin (the chief editor of
"The Urals' Stalker" magazine those days), writer
Yuriy Yarovoy and editor Vitaly Bugrov
have simply invented to estab-lish a prize for Russian-writing
sc-fi authors. And not more! The festival (or "Convention")
had been emerged around of the awarding procedure
absolutely spontaneously, so to say. And it became
so that it was the first real sc-fi Convention at
the territory of the former USSR.
In the course of time this action have accumulated
its own traditions, its heroes (both from writ-ers'
and fans' media), new prizes, and, no doubt, certain
legends:
1981
The first laureates of the "Aelita award"
became Arkadiy & Boris Strugat-skiy and Alexander
Kazantsev." Of course, the person of Arkady
Natanovich, who came to Sverdlovsk as a member of
the writers' duet to receive the beautiful statuette
made of semi-precious stones and metal, had attracted
the attention of numerous public - either local
one and from another towns. People came from afar
"to see Strugatskiy", and it turned out so that,
in certain degree, they had given the birth to the
Convention.
1982-1985
Gradually, the situation around the "Aelita-award"
started to become more clear. The solemn ceremony
with awarding procedure shifted into shadow, and
to the first stage stepped the possibility to communicate:
fans - with fans and writers, editors - with writers
and readers. Those, who tried themselves in writing,
got an unique chance to value their shy (or not
so shy) creativity by qualified "judges", escaping
annoying unnecessary tough editors in newspapers
and magazines, which they were especially those
days.
That was the real Convent already! The Festival!
And someone thought that it'd been certain "symbolic"
victory over "the System".
Well, of course, the figures of those who received
the regular award no way were forgotten - just on
the contrary: writers Zinovy Yuryev (1982
winner), Vladislav Krapivin (1983), Sergey
Snegov (1984) and Sergey Pavlov (1985)
stayed the main act-ing persons among this meeting
of sc-fi fans.
But, as it turned out, the sense of something "unrealhad"
appeared not only between the partici-pants of AELITA.
It is necessary to remember that at those times
the Soviet system still existed, and the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union couldn't allow any action
or movement, which didn't followed any clear scheme,
being controlled to the Party. Having suspected
certain "evil intention" and "dark design", officials
tried to cancel this "strange summit". In 1984 the
chairmen and mem-bers of many Sc-fi Fan Clubs were
called to come to local KGB departments, and the
editorial staff of the "Urals Stalker" magazine
had carried the Convention of 1985 semi-legally
at all (without sending official invitations).
1986
Oops!...
"Stop!" said sever officials to Convent organizers
at last. That meant: "We've had enough of your uncontrollable
actions. The USSR isn't something like shaming western
society!"
And the Convent had been close by force - just for
a whole year. There was no awarding of the prize
that year, nor any guests.
1987-1994
But everything came quiet in some time - both the
suspiciousness of the officials, and the activ-ity
of kgb-men. The gear of the AELITA started to move
again. Moreover, the Con had got new interesting
awards: "The Memorial Award by the name of Ivan
Antonovitch Efremov" ("The Efre-mov's award"), awarded
for outstanding editorial, organizing and cultural
activity in the field of sc-fi and fantasy, established
in 1987, and the "Start" award, one for the best
debuted book of the pre-ceding year.
The list of award winners during these years is
as follow:
But it was felt already that the threat had been
hanging over the Con. One could feel it by too of-ten
appeals to "people of good will" for help, which
originated from of the "Urals Stalker" editorial
staff , by the stress, having condensed in the air,
by the difficult financial situation in the country
at all. In summer 1994 in addition to all troubles,
the tragedy had happened: Vitaliy Bugrov
died. And this man was the chief of sc-fi department
of the "Urals Stalker" magazine and the leader of
the public organizing committee of the Con.
Difficult times really came to AELITA:
=þ ¢ºò¸ªòþòðûþ¸¹, ¢ºò¸ªòþòðûþ¸¹ ºöõ - ÿþ ¸ûø°úþü
¢ð¸ªvü þñ¨ð•õýø ü ÷ð ÿþüþ•¹¦ ú "û¦ô ü ôþñ¨þù òþûø"
þª ¨õôðú¡øø "L¨ðû¹¸úþóþ ¸ûõôþÿvªð", ÿþ òøªðò°õüº
ò òþ÷-ôº¿õ ýðÿ¨ öõýø¦, ÿþ ªþüº, úðúþù ¸ÿõúºû ªøòývù
ñõ¸ÿ¨õôõû ÿ¨þø¸¿þôøû ò ¸ª¨ðýõ, - ¢ªþ ýðô ¯õ¸ªøòðûõü
ýðòø¸ûð ºó¨þ÷ð.
1995-1996
These years the Con hadn't been held at all.
Unfortunately, this world stands on money, and all
the Cons as well. Money were needed for covering
all the expenses on delivery and accommodation for
guests of honor, for rather expensive prizes, for
renting halls and transport for guests, etc, etc,
etc...
It's necessary to say that AELITA is one of a few
Cons in the country, which doesn't charge any fees
from the participants - a person comes, and rents
a room, and lives in accordance to his finan-cial
possibilities. The prizes, rent of the halls for
meetings, transport, and so on - everything is pro-vided
by the Organizing Committee for the inpayments of
sponsors.
From the very beginning the only financial base
of AELITA was the "Urals Stalker" magazine. But
just before this time the magazine itself had gone
through twin bankruptcy of his bank and could not
support the Con.
Just for two years nobody could say what would AELITA
face in its nearest future - "to be or not to be".
1997-2002
1997 brought the answer, choosing "to be": the Con
would exist! The Yekaterinburg's Book Trader's Association
"Book Club" acted as a financial guarantor of AELITA
and the organizing part was taken by the newly created
The Regional Public Fund (RPF) - the festival "Aelita".
At the head of the RPF had stood Igor Khalymbadzha,
famous Russian bibliographer (mainly - in the field
of sc-fi), bibliophile, publicist and simply wonderful
person.
Reviled AELITA already had established a new award
- "The Memorial Prize by the name of Vitaly Bugrov"
("The Bugrov's award") , the award for the
outstanding editorial, biblio-graphical, literary
critical and compilation work in the field of sc-fi
and fantasy. The first laureate of this award became
the editorial staff under the head of Vladislav
Gakov, which created the first Russian "Sc-fi
and Fantasy Encyclopedia".
Again, the sad fate followed AELITA with irreplaceable
lost: just at the Eve of the Con in 1999 Igor
Khalymbadzha died. First was Vitaly Bugrov,
who died just in several days after "Aelita-94",
and now Igor. It seemed as if somebody was
going to leave the Con without its heart and soul.
In spite of continued difficult times the Con have
survived and went on though not so crowded like
10 years ago (150-200 participants instead of 1000
and more as in the early 90's). During these passed
years some other conventions appeared in Russia
(those in Moscow and St.Petersburg most significant),
but AELITA still was the most solid either by its
awards (well, there are no analogues to "The Aelita
award", "The Efremov's award" and "The Bugrov's"
award in Russia!), or by its age. From certain time
the judges of awards were numerous and international
(20 persons from Russia and Ukraine).
"Aelita-2002" became the Con of considerable
changes. For the first hand, the organ-izers (at
the head of Eygeniy Perm'akov and Boris
Dolingo), regardless of the deep-seated "tradition"
didn't satisfied with the situation in which the
Con had "frozen", and started to search new forms
and additional possibilities and topics for the
program of AELITA. For the second hand, Boris
and Eugeniy found some connections with interested
sponsors, who were ready to invest in the Con. New
Organizing Committee nowadays tries to preserve
this fact that there wouldn't be any fees for the
participants and guests. At the same time the task
is to con-vert the Con into the certain Event for
the city of Yekaterinburg - not only for the most
devoted sc-fi and fantasy lovers, but for the considerable
part of the city dwellers.
In addition to existing awards one more had been
added - "The Order of Sc-fi & Fantasy Knights" by
the name of Igor Khalymbadzha. This award is given
for the contribution in the devel-opment of the
Russian fandom.
L¸ªþ¨ø "L¤ûøªv"
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