OREANDA-NEWS. 357 420 people voted in the first week of a competition to select symbols for new 200 and 2000 ruble banknotes on a dedicated website (Твоя-Россия.рф). Overall, the users sent 3,458 symbols. Twelve cities out of the total offered by the users collected 5000-plus votes and found their way to the competition website. This said, Novosibirsk became the first city with two symbols selected by the Russians – the Bugrinsky Bridge and the Novosibirsk State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet.

302 784 people used social networks to vote and 54636 persons sent their SMS messages.

According to the competition rules, a symbol shall collect at least 5,000 votes to qualify. As of 5 July, the interactive map has the following symbols to select from: the Motherland Calls Monument (Volgograd), the Golden Bridge (Vladivostok), the Monument to the Scuttled Ships (Sevastopol), the Citadel of Naryn-Kala (Derbent), the Monument to Salavat Yulaev (Ufa), the lake of Baikal (with reference to Irkutsk), the Heart of Chechnya Mosque (Grozny), the Vostochny launching site (with reference to the city of Tsiolkovsky), the Kremlin (Kazan), the Monument to the Defenders of the Russian Arctic during the Great Patriotic War (Murmansk), the Defensive Wall (Smolensk), the Novosibirsk State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (Novosibirsk) and the Bugrinsky Bridge (Novosibirsk).

Citizens of Russian biggest cities – Moscow and Saint Petersburg – take the lead in the voting. Although they cannot offer symbols of their own cities, they turned out to be very active in offering sightseeings of other Russian regions. The second runner-up is the citizens of the Krasnodar Territory.

This is how top 10 most active Russian regions currently look like:

1. Moscow – 18.03% of the total voters;

2. Saint Petersburg – 7.93%;

3. the Krasnodar Territory – 5,38%;

4. the Moscow Region – 5.23%;

5. the Sverdlovsk Region – 4.65%;

6. the Republic of Bashkortostan – 3.33%;

7. the Novosibirsk Region – 2.78%;

8. the Republic of Tatarstan – 2.69%;

9. the Samara Region – 2.59%;

10. the Primorye Territory – 2.52%.

Symbol qualification does not always depend on how active citizens of a certain region are. Statistics shows that users often prefer to vote in favour of symbols they like although they are outside their regions. One needs to mention in this connection a kind of dispersion of opinions in the selection of sightseeings in one and the same city or region which prevents them from being qualified.

The all-Russian selection of symbols for new 200 and 2000 ruble banknotes was initiated by the Bank of Russia. Never before the Russians could offer and select symbols for new banknotes by themselves. The competition will be a three-step procedure with 7 October 2016 being its final day when the winners will be announced.