Kommersant (Moscow) - February 26, 2008

Kremlin hosts Person of the Year awards

Last week, Petrovsky Hall of the Kremlin Palace hosted the Person of the Year 2007 awards ceremony. Both the ceremony and the reception were held in a dignified and stately atmosphere. The biggest surprise of the evening was the introduction of the Person of the Year in Show Business nomination, which saw Dima Bilan as the lucky winner.

The Person of the Year award is the most prestigious of all awards granted by RosBusinessConsulting (RBC). Meanwhile, along with the guest pool, the nominee pool can also be considered fully formed (as some people’s names drift from one category to another and back again from year to year). General Director of Aeroflot Valery Okulov, for instance, who won one of the grand prix last year, had previously received the award in 2004 and was named Person of the Year in the Top Manager category in 2003. It is quite possible that Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Alexander Zhukov, who won the award this year, will be named Person of the Year again in the future. Back in 2005, he received the grand prix and this year he won the award in the special nomination “For contribution in the bid to host Olympic Games in the city of Sochi.”

Another example of an existing trend in the selection of Persons is Mayor of Chelyabinsk Mikhail Yurevich. A year ago, he was named the best leader of a municipal institution, and this year – the best head of a city with a population of over one million people. Yurevich is certainly a prominent leader, but it is somewhat hard to believe that there is no one better than him in all of Russia’s municipal institutions.

The award’s organizers demonstrated a great desire to move forward, however. So, unlike last year, when theater producer Yuri Lyubimov and film producer Nikita Mikhalkov were named the best in the Person in Culture nomination, this year Iosif Kobzon received the award in the same nomination, while a completely new nomination was introduced for the new hero, Dima Bilan – Person of the Year in Show Business. When receiving the award and certificate, Dima Bilan attempted, unsuccessfully, to make an impressive and graceful acceptance speech, but ended up simply thanking his producer Yana Rudkovskaya, as usual. Meanwhile, even the speeches of more experienced nominees raised some eyebrows. Kobzon, in a very formal tone, announced the following: “It is a great honor to receive this award in this hall, as I have been serving my country and art for 70 years, and will continue to do so.” Considering this, even his first cry as a newborn was made in service to the country and art. A speech made by another prominent fig ure - coach Tatyana Tarasova, who won the award in the Person in Sport nomination - was similarly expressive. Having thanked Channel One for the Ice Age project, she said, “You see, when they brought us in, we had already accumulated so much in our heads…” Fortunately, the acceptance speech by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov proved to be a truly exemplary speech.

An honest expression of hope for change came in the master of ceremonies’ reminder that, according to the award’s charter, the acting president could not be named Person of the Year. At just this moment, the audience livened up and obviously began to ponder the prospects for next year. You could clearly see RBC General Director Yury Rovensky’s eyes shining.

Once it became clear that two out of four winners of the grand prix were unable to attend the ceremony (Gazprominvestholding’s General Director Alisher Usmanov and Prime Minister of Russia Viktor Zubkov), all of the guests were invited to proceed to the reception, which was also very traditionally done in the Kremlin-style. The dough in the pies was slightly dry, and the caviar on canapes a bit too salty.