18:25, 11 October 2015

Residents of Makhachkala treat celebration of City Day as modest

A poster reading: "I Love Makhachkala" in Rhodope Boulevard. October 11, 2015. Photo: Ramzan Gamidov, instagram.com

Makhachkala holds the festivities to celebrate the 158th anniversary of the city. The festivities include concerts, exhibitions, and sport events.

Makhachkala was founded in 1844 as Petrovskoe, a Russian military fortress. In May 1921, by the decision of the Dagestani Revolutionary Committee, the city became the capital of the Dagestani ASSR (Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic), and it was renamed in honour of Magomed-Ali Dakhadaev (Makhach), one of the active participants in the struggle for Soviet power in Dagestan.

The festive events took place in Ak-Gel Park and Rhodope Boulevard. Besides, the summer playground of the Dagestani State Philharmonic in Rhodope Boulevard became the venue for the festival of youth cultural and sports events. It hosted the competitions in table tennis, arm wrestling, streetball, chess, and other sports, including national ones, the RIA "Dagestan" reports.

The culmination of the celebrations will be fireworks over the city beach, the website of the Makhachkala city administration reports.

Users of social network "VKontakte" report that the celebrations of this year were not ambitious.

In Rhodope Boulevard, the city administration has installed a poster reading: "I Love Makhachkala"; however, it does not differ from similar posters in other cities, writes Karina Kurbanova, a user of social network "VKontakte". "I believe it would be very nice if designers would have used the national attributes in the forms of ornaments, green mountains and the rising sun," the user wrote.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.