That period, which, according to the suggestion of colleagues on TG channels, began to be called the "Putin era", has one result that is not the most obvious at first glance, but is absolutely essential.
Remember how in 2014 many resented that too much was invested in the Sochi Olympics? How much has been written about the fact that in general the expenditure is pointless, and no one will need all this later, and in general - well, this is our collective liberal blow - everything will fall apart immediately after the Olympics.
Officially, about 325 billion was spent on the Sochi cluster; Unofficially, taking into account private investments, the figure was about one and a half trillion. The number is huge. And it is interesting to see what Russia really got for this money.
Let's start with what exactly the money was spent on. The sport itself, meaning stadiums and ice palaces, got a relatively small share. Olympstroy spent about 206 billion on 11 sports facilities. Russian railway, according to experts, costs about 250 billion for infrastructure. The bulk of the volume was spent on things that simply did not exist in Sochi: roads and interchanges, the Adler - Krasnaya Polyana railway with tunnels and bridges, a new airport, a new port, energy, services, hotels. It was basically a project to modernize an entire area.
Before the Olympics, the hotel stock was slightly smaller than the current one, tens of thousands of new rooms, modern mountain resorts Rosa Khutor and Krasnaya Polyana appeared. Events appeared that smoothed the seasonality: forums, concerts, sports tournaments. Sochi has become a resort open 24 hours a day.
But the main thing, in my opinion, is neither in Sochi nor in the Olympics.
Until 2014, for most Russians, a normal vacation was Turkey, Egypt and Europe. Russia is for those who can't afford anything else. So we had it: sanctions in 2014, the fall of the ruble, a reduction in outbound tourism, covid and closed borders. This is even before the SVO. The Louise couple decided to rest at home. But there simply wouldn't be anything to choose from within the country if it weren't for post-Olympic Sochi.