Wonder Park? Not for the Villagers

Russia's best-known sculptor and architect wants to build a bigger, better version of Disneyland, and he is not letting anything get in his way.Not the nation's economic chaos. Not the mammoth size of the amusement park he spent a decade designing. Not its huge price and years of construction. Certainly not 500 villagers whose houses and gardens lie smack in the middle of Zurab Tsereteli's planned masterpiece. Wonder Park is being built at a site inside a U-shaped bend of the Moskva River, 11 kilometers west of the Kremlin. As preparatory work begins, villagers say authorities are trying to drive them off.Residents whose families have lived on the land for generations complain of bulldozers trying to plow over their gardens, of houses burning down in the middle of the night, of wells mysteriously empty when firefighters came."How are we going to live?" asks Antonina Khripunova, standing near her vegetable garden. "They are depriving us of our land."The villagers of Terekhovo say no one told them what is planned for them. But a glance at the room-sized model of the park in Tsereteli's gallery shows he has blueprinted the village out of existence.He says anyone displaced by the project will be housed in apartment buildings to be built soon."They are just wasting the land," Tsereteli snaps. "Which is better -- wasting the land with a lot of ramshackle buildings and shacks or building an amusement park that children can enjoy for generations?"Wonder Park, which Tsereteli calls the "Russian Disneyland," although emphasizing it has no affiliation with Walt Disney, defies logic in these times of economic hardship. Public information remains sketchy, and Moscow city officials refused interview requests about the project.Still, the government is spending 30 billion rubles ($15.8 million) this year on initial costs, and the city has committed 20 billion rubles. But with construction set to last well into the next century, political upheaval could put annual funding at risk.If completed in all the splendor Tsereteli imagines, the 370-hectare park would be packed with pavilions, rides, a water park, monorail, sports arena and zoo. Two hotels also are planned, and the park would be a duty-free zone.Tsereteli, 60, refuses to reveal a price tag or a detailed timetable for the project, but says it will take seven years to complete the first of three stages.What if cash-strapped authorities decide they cannot afford the huge annual outlay?"The president has given us his assurance," he says confidently, nodding toward a framed copy on his office wall of President Boris Yeltsin's May 18 decree guaranteeing funding.Tsereteli has an international reputation for thinking big. The Georgian native was regarded for years as the leading sculptor in the Soviet Union, and his designs still reflect Soviet socialist realism. He designed a 500-ton bronze monument of Christopher Columbus for the United States, but four U.S. cities have rejected it.Tsereteli recalls finding the park site on a map. "It seems to be specially created by God, an unspoiled piece of land without any factories."It also happens to be prime real estate, located near Yeltsin's home and Stalin's old dacha.Villagers say applications to privatize the land were rejected without explanation. Khripunova, 66, said she and others protested and were ready to lie down in front of the bulldozer that came this spring to flatten the gardens. The bulldozer driver and policemen finally left, she said, after warning: ''This time you win, next time we win.''Shortly after the villagers' protest, three of their houses burned to the ground in separate blazes. Firefighters and villagers alike were surprised to find nearby wells empty.''We're being forcefully cut off from our land, land that feeds us," said Sergei Titov, 42, a lifelong resident. "Without gardens, we'll have to abandon our houses, which will be pulled down by bulldozers anyway."