In our troubled time of change, where every news is negative, it is great that the process of rebuilding the villages has begun and there is a positive result. Such villages are, perhaps, the hope for the salvation of Russia.
Gleb Tyurin came up with the idea of reviving the northern villages by organizing TOSs in them - territorial self-government bodies. What Tyurin did in 4 years in the Arkhangelsk outback, forgotten by God, has no precedent. The expert community cannot understand how it manages to do this: Tyurin's social model is applicable in an absolutely marginal environment and, at the same time, is inexpensive. In Western countries, similar projects would cost orders of magnitude more expensive. The astonished foreigners vied with each other to invite the residents of Arkhangelsk to share their experience at various forums - in Germany, Luxembourg, Finland, Austria, and the USA. Tyurin spoke in Lyon at the World Summit of Local Communities, and the World Bank is actively interested in his experience. How did it all happen?
Gleb began to drive around the bearish corners to find out what people there could do for themselves. Held dozens of village gatherings. “Local citizens looked at me as if I had fallen from the moon. But in any society there is a healthy part that is capable of answering for something.
Gleb Tyurin believes that today it is necessary not so much to argue about theories as to think about the realities of life. Therefore, he tried to reproduce the traditions of the Russian Zemstvo in modern conditions.
Here's how it happened and what came out of it.
We began to travel around the villages and gather people for meetings, organize clubs, seminars, business games and God knows what else. They tried to stir up people who had slumped, believing that everyone had forgotten about them, that no one needed them, and nothing could work out for them. We have developed technologies that sometimes allow us to quickly inspire people, help them to look at themselves, at their situation in a different way.
The Pomeranians begin to think, and it turns out that they have a lot of things: forest, land, real estate, and other resources. Many of which are abandoned and dying. For example, a closed school or kindergarten is immediately plundered. Who? Yes, the local population. Because everyone is for himself and strives to snatch at least something for himself. But they destroy a valuable asset that can be preserved and become the basis for the survival of this territory. We tried to explain at the peasant gatherings: it is possible to preserve the territory only together.
We found within this disillusioned rural community a group of people charged with positivity. They created a kind of creative bureau from them, taught them to work with ideas and projects. This can be called a social consulting system: we taught people development technologies. As a result, over 4 years, the population of local villages implemented 54 projects worth 1 million 750 thousand rubles, which gave an economic effect of almost 30 million rubles. This is a level of capitalization that neither the Japanese nor the Americans have with their advanced technologies.
The Principle of Efficiency
“What makes up a multiple increase in assets? Due to synergy, due to the transformation of disparate and helpless individuals into a self-organizing system.
Society represents a set of vectors. If some of them could be added into one, then this vector is stronger and larger than the arithmetic sum of those vectors from which it is complex.
The villagers receive a small investment, write the project themselves and become the subject of action. Previously, a person from the regional center would point his finger at the map: we will build a cowshed here. Now they themselves are discussing where and what they will do, and they are looking for the cheapest solution, because they have very little money. Next to them is a coach. His task is to lead them to a clear understanding of what they are doing and why, how to create that project, which in turn will pull the next one. And so that each new project makes them economically more and more self-sufficient.
In most cases, these are not business projects in a competitive environment, but the stage of acquiring resource management skills. For starters, very modest. But those who have gone through this stage can already go further.
In general, this is a form of change of consciousness. The population, which begins to realize itself, creates within itself a certain capable body and gives it a mandate of trust. What is called the body of territorial public self-government, TOS. In essence, this is the same zemstvo, although somewhat different than it was in the 19th century. Then the zemstvo was a caste - merchants, raznochintsy. But the meaning is the same: a self-organizing system that is tied to a territory and is responsible for its development.
People are beginning to understand that they are not just solving the problem of water or heat supply, roads or lighting: they are creating the future of their village. The main products of their activity are a new community and new relationships, a development perspective. CBT in their village creates and tries to expand the zone of well-being. A certain number of successful projects in one locality builds up a critical mass of positive, which changes the whole picture in the area as a whole. So the streams merge into one big full-flowing river.
The village is the cradle of Russian civilization
Russian civilization has developed in certain natural and climatic conditions. The cradle of Russian civilization, its matrix (the matrix is the mother, the mother is the main beam in the house, the support of the structure), which for centuries has constantly reproduced the Russian national type of character, is precisely the village.
The village as a grain of Russian civilization is unusually harmoniously built into the universe. It demonstrates extraordinary resilience, despite all natural and social disasters. In fact, the village way of life, its basic material elements have not changed for centuries. The conservatism of the village, adherence to traditional values, has always irritated revolutionaries and reformers, but ensured the survival of the people.
Life on earth is simple and understandable, it is directly related to the results of labor. A person is constantly in communion with God, nature, lives in a natural daily and annual rhythm. Culture is created by man, as a ritual of communication with the Creator. (Culture is the cult of Ra, the god of the sun. In Christian times, the cult of God the Father. Without the cult of God, culture gives birth to monsters, to which we are all witnesses today). The Russian world is a peasant world. The peasant is a Christian. Through culture, a person interacts with nature from birth to the grave. Everything in the village culture, each of its elements has a sacred meaning of communication with the Creator, ensures a harmonious existence on this earth, in this natural area. Therefore, the cultures of all peoples are so diverse.
Highly urbanized (living mainly in cities) peoples quickly lose their identity and become dependent on completely mythical values: virtual electronic money, composed under the influence of human passions and vices of culture. Their rhythm of life is interrupted. Night turns into day and vice versa. Fleeting transfers in time and space on modern means of transport give the illusion of freedom ...
“A nation is created on earth, and in the cities it is burned. Large cities are contraindicated for a Russian person... Only land, freedom and a hut in the middle of its own Pole serves as a support for the nation, strengthens its family, memory, culture of life in all its diversity.” (V. Lichutin).
As long as the village is alive, the Russian spirit is alive, Russia is invincible. Capitalism, and after it socialism, laid down a utilitarian, purely consumer attitude towards the countryside, as a sphere of agricultural production and nothing more. As a secondary, detrimental living space in relation to the city.
But the village is not only a settlement. First of all, this is the way of life of a Russian person, a certain way of all cultural, social and economic relations. The well-known economist of the 1920s, Chayanov, very accurately grasped the difference between the rural Russian civilization and the pragmatic and Protestant urban one in its spirit: “The basis of peasant culture is a different principle of profitability than in technological civilization, a different assessment of the profitability of the economy. By “profitability” was meant the preservation of that way of life, which was not a means to achieve greater well-being, but was itself an end.
The “profitability” of peasant farming was determined by its connection with nature, with peasant religion, with peasant art, with peasant ethics, and not only with the harvest.
This is the key concept that the leaders who grew up on the political economy of socialism still cannot grasp! Not the production of agricultural products should be the main point of application of forces for the revival of the village, but the restoration of the traditional way of life of the Russian people, which has developed over the centuries. It is the way of life that is the primary value. But when it recovers, then it will be possible to forget about production. A spiritually reborn village will do everything by itself.
This is not about bast shoes and kvass, although they are also about them. Technology does not negate tradition, tradition does not negate the development of technology. We are talking about the revival of the spiritual traditions of man's relationship with the earth, with the surrounding nature, with the community, with another person.
In peacetime, without war, the Russians today retreat from their rural ancestral home to the cities corrupted by civilization. Right before our eyes, rural Atlantis is sinking somewhere faster, somewhere slower into oblivion. There is a lot of tragedy in this process, but there is also a lot of justice. Fair according to the laws of spiritual retribution. In Orthodoxy - the law of retribution. Descendants are responsible for the sins of their ancestors. But in order for the sin not to multiply and be interrupted, the descendants must make every effort and live a pure life.
The earth is tired of carrying this negligent tribe on itself, tormenting it with drunken plows and thoughtless land reclamation, cutting down forests and polluting rivers and lakes with the waste of its activities. The earth throws him off his body, the Lord does not give procreation. Empty arable lands and hayfields are overgrown with alder - a green healing plaster. The earth is waiting for a real owner to be reborn to a new life.
Today in the village there are two processes moving towards each other. The life cycle of the village lumpen came to its logical end, through extinction. In terrible drunken torment, leaving no offspring suitable for reproduction, the heirs of those who, having violated all human and higher laws, coveted someone else's good eighty years ago, raised their hand against their brother, scolded the shrines, go into oblivion. The process of revival of the traditional rural way of life is going towards him through people who repented of the sins committed by their ancestors, through those who every day by word and deed connect the broken thread of times, revive traditions.
We, Russian people, some earlier, some later, left the village. Someone, seduced by urban prosperity, someone to avoid repression, someone to educate children. This means that the responsibility for the revival of the village lies with all of us. Whoever can, in whom the Russian and Christian spirit is alive, must, is obliged to stop the satanic wheel of rural devastation, destroying the Russian space, devouring the future of the nation.
The revival of the countryside is the revival of Russia. Orthodoxy and the village are the front lines of defense for Russian identity. We will revive the village - we will revive the root that nourishes the spirit and body of the nation.
A stern peasant grandfather with a bushy beard is looking at me from a photograph - my great-grandfather Mikhail. His children also left the earth once in search of a better life ... Time to return to normal.
- Father Kirill, do you have rural roots?
- I was born in the mining village of Artyomovsk in the Donbass. My father is a native of the village of Pereezdnoye, Voronezh Region, and my mother is from the village of Staroe Melovoe, Belgorod Region. As a child, I often visited these villages, especially Pereezdnoye.
In the Pavlovsky district, where Pereezdnoye is located, there were two functioning churches, but a lot of churches were destroyed after the revolution. In the neighboring village of Rassypnoye, on the dome of the bell tower, I saw a lot of marks from bullets. Once a priest from there came to Perezdnoye to bless Easter cakes and eggs on Great Saturday, and drunken men locked him in a shed, where he sat all night. The Easter service was disrupted ... Several decades after the massive closure of churches in these places, the servant of God Theodore, Fedor Kipriyanovich, baptized children and buried the dead. I was told that he was a fearless man, he suffered a lot for his faith. Sometimes, after the next christening, the local authorities would give him a scolding, take him to the field away from the village, and the next morning he was already in another village praying for the deceased. Never discouraged.
- And when did you start taking care of villages as a priest?
- Since the summer of 1991, then I decided to come to Perezdnoye to prayerfully commemorate my grandmother - my father's mother - on the day of the 20th anniversary of her death.
- How did you see the village then?
- I remember the conversation with the milkmaid. She complained about the extremely low cost of milk, which completely devalued her work. Then dealers appeared in the village, buying up living creatures for pennies. Refugees from the republics of the former Soviet Union were drawn in. Theft began to flourish.
I spoke with many leaders. They said about the same thing: high fuel prices make peasant labor meaningless, young people leave the village, people become drunkards. The head of the economy in the village of Leskovo - I consecrated his house and the building where the board was located there - told how shortly before that he fired milkmaids - for drunkenness (!). The latest news from there is disappointing: the economy in Leskov completely collapsed, all the cattle in Pereezdnoye were slaughtered.
“Is there really nothing that can be done to stop this evil?”
- The same leader said: everyone knows in which village houses they make moonshine or sell low-quality alcohol. And the police are inactive - the inviolability of a private home! Drugs appeared in the village... After the disco, syringes are lying right on the ground near the club. I am absolutely sure that people deliberately solder. Mortality is horrendous.
- Why did you install several worship crosses in the countryside, what is the meaning of their appearance in these places?
- Worship crosses in the villages have become the center of spiritual life. In total, we installed twelve such crosses in the Voronezh region. They organized small communities, supplied people with liturgical books. Thus, gathering at the crosses on Sundays and holidays, the inhabitants of these villages will not be cut off from the common conciliar prayer of our people.
- Have you also been involved in the restoration of rural churches?
- More precisely, they gave impetus to their revival. They came to some village where the temple lay in ruins, hung bells on a tree, started ringing. At first people did not understand anything, then they were going to the church. A prayer service was served, then a sermon, a common meal. Then we invite everyone to the labor hour. There were real miracles. After our appearance in the village of Eryshevka, a month and a half later, I receive a letter. Local residents report that they have already covered the roof, laid the floors, inserted windows and even planted flower beds around the church.
- What are you going to do next?
- I remember how in the village of Seryakovo the first service was performed on the patronal day for the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, and people asked us: "When will you open the temple for us?" And we say: "Already opened by this service." They: "And then what?". - "And then within a few days we will carry out a general cleaning here and build an iconostasis. You come here every Saturday and Sunday and, having prayed, after reading the prayers according to the charter, wipe the window sill, put a jar of flowers, and then do the same with the next window sill. That is, we are sure that, thanks to regular prayer, people will begin to feel drawn to the church. It often happens. Obviously, one should start not with making huge estimates, but with prayer. Prayer works wonders.
- Where do you work now?
- In the Tver region. Here the community has several houses. We have installed a dozen worship crosses, we are digging in the ruins of several temples in endangered villages. Here the situation is even worse. The Russian House magazine wrote that about 40 villages disappear from the map of the Tver region every year. One disappeared before our eyes - Rayki in the Likhoslavsky district. You can still understand the temporary suspension of the emergence of new settlements, but when those where people have lived for centuries disappear, it's terrible! The main reason for degradation and extinction is horrendous drunkenness and unemployment. Lots of abandoned villages. This winter a lot of southerners came. Land shares are bought up for next to nothing. On paper, there are more than one and a half hundred farmers in the region, in reality - three people, but after all, everyone received subsidies and benefits.
Drunkenness rampant. A local resident, a man in his 50s, said that half of his classmates had already died from singed vodka. I say: "Well, wait here for a couple of thousand Chinese who will populate your land." "Oh, don't," he retorts. "Then why do you drink too much and do not give birth to children?" - I ask him. But the answer is obvious: from hopelessness.
- What to do? You painted everything so darkly...
- It is difficult to give exhaustive recommendations. But ... it is necessary, finally, to begin systematic work to limit drunkenness; not to stifle the remaining rural Mohicans with taxes, but to subsidize them only for the fact that they still live on earth. You look what happens: from one endangered village to another, several tens of kilometers. The village is our rear, a reserve, in view of the coming inevitable cataclysms. We have written off $6 billion of Mongolia's debt, $23 billion of Iraq's debt, and allocate $1 billion for the national agricultural development project. Absurd!
The energy supply controller told about how grandmothers in the villages, who had drunk hard in the war, worked on collective farms for several decades, receive a pension of 1,800 rubles, and they are also forced to purchase new meters for 600 rubles!
The village needs serious financial support. It is urgent to carry out emergency work in collapsing rural churches, rural schools, post offices, libraries. There will be none - the extinction of the village will go by leaps and bounds. Targeted financial assistance is needed. It's important to bring people together. I believe in the power of the influence of Orthodox village communities, in the fact that they are able to heal any festering wounds...
Interviewed by Vladimir Alexandrovich FROLOV
http://www.russdom.ru/2007/200712i/20071233.shtml
Eccentrics live in the village of Mashkino, Torzhok District.
They are reshaping the local landscape in the manner of some Austrian, cultivating ridges, riding horses and weaving clothes.
They left the cities to lift the spirit of the Russians and revive the village.
We expected to see anything in Mashkino - Old Believers, fanatics, Slavic Nazis.
But not what they saw.
The road to Mashkin is full of potholes and winds like a labyrinth in the Murzilka magazine.
At the most dangerous fork, a stocky old man in a sheepskin coat and earflaps grows out of the ground and suggests the way:
- Directly - a large puddle, and to the right - Mashkino.
The village can only be driven by an off-road vehicle, but even its large wheels get stuck in the mud. Our goal is a white house at the end of the village, upholstered in siding. It is there that "ataman Beloyar" lives.
This valuable information was gleaned from a local resident Yaroslav, recorded on VKontakte as "Uncle Vedun". He also explained how to get to Mashkin, and said one of the main local rules:
- Be sure to take off your shoes at home.
Mashkino is a hilly village. On its steep slopes beds are laid out, the glass of greenhouses glistens in the sun. Below, under the hill, the tractor hums. A long narrow ditch was dug along the village. The white ataman's house is surrounded by yellow houses that look like large beehives.
We knock on the door:
- Does Beloyar live here?
- Here. But you have to wait.
A curly-haired man with a lush beard and bright blue eyes looks mockingly and goes into the yard to connect the gas cylinder.
- The chief should not only indicate, but also work himself, - he says, unscrewing the valve.
There is a stroller in the yard of the house. There, under a canopy, the baby Maria, the fourth daughter of Beloyar's seven children, sleeps. At first, the ataman is laconic. He only reports that "in the world" his name is Sergey Vasilyevich Kaidash, and Beloyar is a name for his own. He is a former banker, acting vice-rector of the Chelyabinsk State University, a Cossack foreman.
- I'll tell you everything in order, - he says to us, burning with curiosity. - In the meantime, let's go drink tea.
And we hurry to the next hut - to congratulate the local resident Natalya on her birthday. Along the way, we learn that now 17 adults and 20 children live in Mashkino. All children are homeschooled: they are assigned to a school in Bolshoi Vishenye, and here Irina, a teacher at Moscow State University, is teaching them.
- But Irina is not a teacher, - specifies Beloyar. - She's a tutor. It just helps you learn. And our task is to create an educational environment for children.
A thin boy with an ax runs out to the threshold of the hut. He has curls and cornflower blue eyes, like Beloyar's. This is his son Grisha, ten years old.
“By my arrival, you’ll chop the firewood that you can,” the chieftain affectionately orders.
Grisha nods willingly and disappears around the corner.
In his place, a migrant worker with a sallow face suddenly appears and asks Beloyar where to dig.
- This is a Turkmen, we call him Andrey, - then the ataman enlightens. - He has the nickname "little excavator": he plows from a to z. Did you see the ditch in the village? This he dug with a shovel, under the laying of the winter plumbing. Andrei is about to have a fourth child.
- How did he get here?
- I have a comrade Azir in Torzhok. I asked him to find a non-drinking family that could live and work in Mashkino. And he found Andrew.
- Is it necessary not to drink?
- Yes, - cuts off Beloyar. - We have a strict dry law, and you can not smoke. Two have already left. One drank, the other smoked.
So we learn the second rule of Mashkin and, having temporarily swallowed all the questions, we finally cross the threshold of the hut.
In the hut, a long table is lined with pies. It is noisy, cozy and full of people: men, women, children. All have kind faces and woolen socks on their feet.
Actually, this place is a school. Here, opposite the stove, there is a computer. A map of the Tver region hangs on the wall, and there are jars of pencils on the windowsills. The woman in a beige suede sundress is tutor Irina, professor of biology at Moscow State University.
The bearded guy Yura with a balalaika is a professional bard song performer. Here is a barefoot man, by the way, with a birch bark strip around his forehead. The fair-haired birthday girl Natalia in a toe-length sundress with patterns sewed herself. Children run around the room - all as one pretty, like angels. Many run up to Beloyar, hug and kiss him.
We are seated on the sofa, brought a cake and tea with lemon balm and oregano. Only then, Ataman Beloyar, aka Sergei Vasilyevich Kaidash, begins a story that is astonishing as everything around him:
- I am a hereditary Cossack, I grew up in Kazakhstan. With three higher educations, I am an engineer, an agricultural specialist, and a financier. Since 1989 he has been a businessman. Vice-rector of ChelGU, now I represent the interests of this university in federal bodies. And a little doctor of economics.
- Are you kidding?
- Why? I just don't like to talk about it, but I defended my doctoral dissertation. The idea of rural life has been around for a long time. Even in the Urals, we developed a project for the settlement of Cossacks in the village. But then the crisis got in the way.
- And why precisely Mashkino?
- We were looking for a place in all respects: energy, aura, local population ... We traveled all over the Ivanovo, Kaluga, Tula regions. And they found Mashkino. Firstly, there is a dead end here: if someone has come, it means that they have come to us. Secondly, this is a unique place between St. Petersburg and Moscow, the foothills of Valdai, 345 meters above sea level. There is a beautiful landscape and enough land to plan globally. The spirit is good here.
Ataman Beloyar speaks energetically and assertively. Each of his words weighs a pood. It seems that he knows the answers to all worldly and philosophical questions. He explains with dignity whose land it is, whose houses it is, and what fate awaits Mashkino.
- We recently saved the local collective farm "Lenin's Way" from bankruptcy, and now officially I am its chairman. We took ownership of what was left of the collective farm property: a stable, for example. Now, de jure, all this land is ours. But we do not want to be known as Vikings. We are not buying land, but succession. Therefore, it was important for us to live in peace with the locals.
- And how were you received here?
- Two years ago, when we arrived in Mashkino, two families lived here ... Everything was looted, destroyed. And here we are. We immediately said: either we have love to the grave, or war to death. While the middle. In summer, summer residents come to Mashkino who like to drink and take a walk. And we… mmm… adjust their behavior.
Sergei Kaidash talks about hooligan summer residents, and I think: why, in fact, are the Vikings bad? In the end, their arrival in Rus' was quite natural. I respectfully look at Kaidash: he seems to me Rurik.
Ataman Beloyar does not like unnecessary questions. He immediately dots the i's: they didn't just come to live and plant a garden. They have global tasks - such as the revival of the Russian village.
A village is not just a territory. It must be highly developed. We want to prove that it is possible to live and work in the countryside.
Similar ideas have been popular lately. And the Tver region is a tasty morsel for downshifters. But so far no significant changes are visible, and the villages of Tver are quietly fading away.
Sergei Kaidash does not look like a fanatic. His concept of an ideal rural life is thought out to the smallest detail:
- The main aspect of village life is education, - Sergei Vasilievich minted smoothly, as at a minister's reception. - There is a school - there is a village, and vice versa. I have been working at the university for many years. One day, my colleagues and I realized: a good applicant must be raised from elementary school. We combined several advanced programs into one and formed 100 experimental primary classes in order to modernize education at least within the region. And the results were stunning. Now I am implementing such programs at the federal level. For me, education is not teachers. This is the environment that surrounds the child.
Sergei Kaidash brought his children (and there are seven of them!) to Mashkino, because the environment here is good. Now their lessons are held in nature: in the forest, fields and meadows. Knowing nature: bugs, spiders, wind, rain - the guys study chemistry, physics, biology. Therefore, their knowledge is purely practical.
Adults here also actively listen to nature. They equip the land and reshape the local landscape according to the technology of the Austrian Sepp Holzer, the famous agrarian revolutionary, permaculture devotee.
Holzer's philosophy is to understand nature, not fight it, Kaidash explains. - All parts of the landscape design should be placed "wisely": ridges - to catch the sun, next to the field - a ravine, so that the water flows down. Everything must be in harmony.
Holzer calls it "permaculture", and we call it "forest garden" and "meadow garden". We like these words.
Last year, the eminent farmer came to Mashkino with lectures. Especially for him, a white house was built, in which Sergey Kaidash and his family now live. The Cossack is in solidarity with another position of Holzer: on the ground you need to work with your hands.
- Industrialization of agriculture leads to its disappearance. If we now drive combine harvesters here, build large livestock complexes, Mashkino will perish. Because there will be one button and two people. And what about the rest of the hundred? The village should give people work.
- And how to force people to work in the countryside? Especially - pampered townspeople?
“Forcing them to come to the village and just plow is unrealistic,” Kaidash reflects. - Our main goal is to teach people to live on earth without fear. The one who runs away from himself will not stop here. And the one who came to live will live.
People of different beliefs live in Mashkino: Orthodox, Old Believers, Muslims, atheists…
However, at a general village meeting, the inhabitants decided to form a Cossack farm in Mashkino.
Not all Cossacks are here. But from the 11 farms that are now formally ours, we will build a village. My social task is the development of the Cossacks. Not as an ethnic group, but as a spirit. As with the Russians: let's return spirituality to our homeland - it will rise.
The spirit is the main, but not the only thing they cultivate. Ataman Beloyar does not hover in the clouds, but stands firmly on the ground. His favorite sentence: "We are without fanaticism."
The project provides for the economic development of the village and the Torzhok district, so far mainly due to tourism:
- We are developing eco-, agro-, ethno-tourism, - vice-rector Kaydash enumerates. Professor Irina is sitting on the arm of the sofa, smiling and nodding in agreement. - “Agro” is our land. "Eco" is a merger with nature. And "ethno" is folklore. All three components can exist together in a village. Folklore is especially important. TV, computer - they only take energy. And folk art - returns. Moreover, our task is not to export products from the village, but to attract consumers here.
In this case, the "stanitsa" have achieved considerable success. For two years now, Mashkino has been organizing a “family vacation” for fans of eco-agroethnotourism in the summer: three shifts of two weeks each. Recently, vacationers created an enthusiastic group on VKontakte called Mashkino Forever. And with the money of tourists, Sergey Kaidash organized a free vacation in Mashkino for children whose fathers died in hot spots.
In the summer, tourists live in "hive houses" with four beds. They work on the ground, ride horses, eat and dance.
Dzhigitovka and folklore festivals are held in Mashkino. Craftsmen work all summer: potters, carpenters, blacksmiths and other craftsmen. After resting in Mashkino, some decide to stay here forever. This happened, for example, with the birthday girl Natalya, who this year moved here for permanent residence with her daughter.
And now a round dance is spinning around her: the neighbors congratulate Natalia, jumping on the withered grass and singing at the top of their voices:
Let the soul, like a bird,
spreads its wings,
With your love
Covers the earth.
We go on a tour of the village. The first point is a stable where a dozen horses live. They are just as beautiful and joyful as people - except perhaps without downy socks. Many residents, including 13-year-old Daria, the chieftain's daughter, are professional horse riders. There is already a real arena for show jumping. The plans are to make a hippodrome and hold races.
Behind the stable is a farm where two cows, goats and chickens live.
From the hill you can see the new Mashkino, almost rebuilt according to the “smart” technology of Sepp Helzer. The pond is three meters deep. The excavator is digging another pond: they will cascade.
- There will be gardens. And here we made a drain channel so that the fields would not be flooded in the spring. And the ridges are broken where the sun's rays are caught, - the chieftain plainly explains. - We connected three streams underground - and now a spring is beating here.
And he leads us beyond the field to show some outlandish hills, where currants and raspberries grow up to two meters in summer.
The landing force, which landed on the land of Torzhok and developed a violent activity here, of course, attracted the attention of local authorities. In Mashkino, a stream of “checkers” at all levels stretched: a prosecutor, a veterinarian, four police majors, a SES, Rospotrebnadzor, guardianship authorities ... The UBEP charged them with illegal business.
But no one found anything to complain about:
- The prosecutor's office tried to initiate at least some kind of criminal case, - recalls Sergei Kaydash. - But we cannot be convicted, therefore we try to live according to our conscience. The greatest security for us is complete transparency. The inspectors come, and we give them tea, we don’t whisper in their ears, we don’t give bribes ...
Beloyar again repeats the main commandment: they came in peace. And the second postulate: in order for the village to live, it is necessary to correctly form the environment. Daria gallops past on a bare horse. The younger girls, seeing her, squeal with delight.
- This is the right environment: when the elders are an example for the younger ones, - Kaidash screwed up.
Walking through the village: summer trefectory, kitchen, pantry. The winter refectory is wrapped in a blue and red banner of "United Russia", the letters "Shevel ..." are read. Now the floor is broken there, because in the summer they "danced until the morning." This is an ideological felling of the village: on the wall hangs the charter of the settlement and other commandments by which they live in Mashkino. The most important of them: "Without love, everything is nothing."
Suddenly, a bearded head appears from the underground... We shudder.
- Vanka, is that you? - calls the ataman.
Good fellow Ivan, with whom we had tea an hour ago, is now repairing the floor in the refectory, dragging bricks. Daily work is the norm of life for adults and children. And it is joy, not pain. “The biggest crime was committed by the one who began to punish with labor,” Beloyar comments.
Let's take a look at the workshops. In the carpentry workshop - wood shavings, in the pottery workshop - a kiln, a large and small potter's wheel and pots. One of these days, a dressmaker girl is coming to Mashkino for permanent residence and will also work here. These workshops are the forerunner of production, when the village will earn money itself.
The last exhibit is a bathhouse where tourists wash their clothes in summer.
- Do you also wash in basins? - I look at Beloyar.
- What do you! - Kaidash mutters. - We have a washing machine. I say: without fanaticism.
- So who are you anyway? - at the end of the conversation, the question that was asked first arises. - Are you a community?
“Community is a sacred word for me,” cuts off the ataman. - It cannot be created artificially. To become a community, people need to eat a pound of salt. We are a hostel of people who want to live and work on the earth. There is a saying: a fish rots from the head. But the revival begins with the leaders. Now we have a lot of people coming. I, as with you, talk and offer them: live. And then how it goes. If a person comes in peace, we will accept him.
What is happening in this village has five names: a village, a hostel, an eco-village, a project ...
But in my thoughts I call it simply Mashkino - as a phenomenon that has not yet been on Tver land, and maybe in Russia.
And I want to believe that it is forever.
Russian civilization has developed in certain natural and climatic conditions. The cradle of Russian civilization, its matrix (the matrix is the mother, the mother is the main beam in the house, the support of the structure), which for centuries has constantly reproduced the Russian national type of character, is precisely the village.
The village as a grain of Russian civilization is unusually harmoniously built into the universe. It demonstrates extraordinary resilience, despite all natural and social disasters. In fact, the village way of life, its basic material elements have not changed for centuries. The conservatism of the village, adherence to traditional values, has always irritated revolutionaries and reformers, but ensured the survival of the people.
The Universe is a living organism, but created, and God is Living, not created and not born, eternal, the Creator of the life of the Universe. The named totality defines the concept of “Life” in the ultimate sense ... "> Life on earth is simple and understandable, it is directly related to the results of labor. A person is constantly in communication with God, nature, lives in a natural daily and annual rhythm. Culture is created man, as a ritual of communion with the Creator. (Culture is the cult of Ra, the god of the sun. In Christian times, the cult of God the Father. Without the cult of God, culture gives birth to monsters, which we all witness today.) The Russian world is a peasant world. The peasant is a Christian. Through culture, a person from birth to the grave interacts with nature.Everything in the village culture, each of its elements has a sacred meaning of communication with the Creator, ensures a harmonious existence on this earth, in this natural zone.Therefore, the cultures of all peoples are so diverse.
Highly urbanized (living mainly in cities) peoples quickly lose their identity and become dependent on completely mythical values: virtual electronic money, composed under the influence of human passions and vices of culture. Their rhythm of life is interrupted. Night turns into day and vice versa. Fleeting transfers in time and space on modern means of transport give the illusion of freedom ...
“A nation is created on earth, and in the cities it is burned. Large cities are contraindicated for a Russian person... Only land, freedom and a hut in the middle of its own Pole serves as a support for the nation, strengthens its family, memory, culture of life in all its diversity.” (V. Lichutin).
As long as the village is alive, the Russian spirit is alive, Russia is invincible. Capitalism, and after it socialism, laid down a utilitarian, purely consumer attitude towards the countryside, as a sphere of agricultural production and nothing more. As a secondary, detrimental living space in relation to the city.
But the village is not only a settlement. First of all, this is the way of life of a Russian person, a certain way of all cultural, social and economic relations. The well-known economist of the 1920s, Chayanov, very accurately grasped the difference between the rural Russian civilization and the pragmatic and Protestant urban one in its spirit: “The basis of peasant culture is a different principle of profitability than in technological civilization, a different assessment of the profitability of the economy. By “profitability” was meant the preservation of that way of life, which was not a means to achieve greater well-being, but was itself an end.
The “profitability” of peasant farming was determined by its connection with nature, with peasant religion, with peasant art, with peasant ethics, and not only with the harvest.
This is the key concept that the leaders who grew up on the political economy of socialism still cannot grasp! Not the production of agricultural products should be the main point of application of forces for the revival of the village, but the restoration of the traditional way of life of the Russian people, which has developed over the centuries. It is the way of life that is the primary value. But when it recovers, then it will be possible to forget about production. A spiritually reborn village will do everything by itself.
This is not about bast shoes and kvass, although they are also about them. Technology does not negate tradition, tradition does not negate the development of technology. We are talking about the revival of the spiritual traditions of man's relationship with the earth, with the surrounding nature, with the community, with another person.
In peacetime, without war, the Russians today retreat from their rural ancestral home to the cities corrupted by civilization. Right before our eyes, rural Atlantis is sinking somewhere faster, somewhere slower into oblivion. There is a lot of tragedy in this process, but there is also a lot of justice. Fair according to the laws of spiritual retribution. In Orthodoxy - the law of retribution. Descendants are responsible for the sins of their ancestors. But in order for the sin not to multiply and be interrupted, the descendants must make every effort and live a pure life.
The earth is tired of carrying this negligent tribe on itself, tormenting it with drunken plows and thoughtless land reclamation, cutting down forests and polluting rivers and lakes with the waste of its activities. The earth throws him off his body, the Lord does not give procreation. Empty arable lands and hayfields are overgrown with alder - a green healing plaster. The earth is waiting for a real owner to be reborn to a new life.
Today in the village there are two processes moving towards each other. The life cycle of the village lumpen came to its logical end, through extinction. In terrible drunken torment, leaving no offspring suitable for reproduction, the heirs of those who, having violated all human and higher laws, coveted someone else's good eighty years ago, raised their hand against their brother, scolded the shrines, go into oblivion. The process of revival of the traditional rural way of life is going towards him through people who repented of the sins committed by their ancestors, through those who every day by word and deed connect the broken thread of times, revive traditions.
We, Russian people, some earlier, some later, left the village. Someone, seduced by urban prosperity, someone to avoid repression, someone to educate children. This means that the responsibility for the revival of the village lies with all of us. Whoever can, in whom the Russian and Christian spirit is alive, must, is obliged to stop the satanic wheel of rural devastation, destroying the Russian space, devouring the future of the nation.
The revival of the countryside is the revival of Russia. Orthodoxy and the village are the front lines of defense for Russian identity. We will revive the village - we will revive the root that nourishes the spirit and body of the nation.
A stern peasant grandfather with a bushy beard is looking at me from a photograph - my great-grandfather Mikhail. His children also left the earth once in search of a better life ... Time to return to normal.
VOLOGDA, March 11. /TASS/. The Russian village can become a driver for the development of the country's economy, a center for ensuring food security, a point of demographic growth and the preservation of cultural heritage. The issues of rural revival are discussed in Vologda by representatives of the federal and regional Public Chambers of the Russian Federation, civil activists and officials at the first regional forum for the development of rural areas "The Village is the Soul of Russia".
"In my opinion, the value of the forum is that activists, NGOs, representatives of business and government gather on the same platform, and they can work out common decisions here," Alexander Brechalov, secretary of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, told TASS.
Village problems
Among the main problems of the village, the forum participants named bad roads, small aircraft destroyed in the post-Soviet period, which was the main transport artery to the ranks of remote northern villages, a poor level of medical care, an active outflow of the young population from the villages due to lack of jobs, high average the age of the population of villages and the lack of personnel even for bureaucratic positions.
“We can’t find the heads of rural district administrations now. Now we are faced with the fact that no one is going to this position. That is, we can’t even head a rural settlement, let alone force it to work,” said the chairman of the Public Chamber of the Arkhangelsk Region Dmitry Sizev.
The villagers are discouraged from cultivating land by low prices for agricultural products, the authorities of the Vologda Oblast believe. "The modern village is one of the sore spots of the Russian economy. The extinction of the village, unfortunately, has become noticeable and systemic. There is a continued strengthening of the urbanization process in many regions of the country, literally emptying rural areas. This has become a problem not only for regions with a high level of development agriculture, but also for us - the stronghold regions of Russia's agro-industrial complex," said Alexei Sherlygin, First Deputy Governor of the Vologda Oblast.
The head of the Tarnogsky district of the region, Sergei Gusev, stressed that in order to preserve villages and develop their potential, it is necessary not only to raise prices for agricultural products - the main source of income in the countryside, but also to develop road and social infrastructure, build new housing. The first results of this work in his district, which for three years in a row receives up to 150 million rubles. subsidies per year, yes. But this is not enough.
Support for rural NGOs - a driver of village development
The decision on additional financing of rural projects can be made this spring - it is planned that the President of the Russian Federation will sign a decree in late March or early April on the creation of a grant operator to provide subsidies to NGOs whose projects are aimed at developing small towns and Russian villages.
"All last year, the Public Chamber at the Community forums discussed the idea of creating a new grant operator for NGOs implementing their projects in the countryside. We heard many proposals from activists and NGOs and forwarded them to the president. He supported our proposals, and we hope that in the near future a grant operator will appear who will support projects only in the countryside and in small towns," Brechalov said.
And although residents of small settlements note that there are not so many officially registered NGOs with real projects in the Russian outback, Brechalov reassures that NGOs registered in large cities, but whose work is aimed at accelerating the development of villages, can also receive a presidential grant.
According to the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, there are 220,000 registered NGOs in Russia, of which, according to experts, 5-10% of the total number of non-profit organizations are registered in the villages. For example, in the Altai Territory, where the proportion of "living" villages and the rural population is large, 65% of all NGOs in the region are registered in the capital of the region, 25% - in other cities, and only 10% - in villages.
From culture to economy
The forum "The Village - the Soul of Russia" has been held in the Vologda Oblast for several years, but earlier the attention of this project was paid to the preservation of cultural traditions and customs. Now it was decided to deepen the program of the forum and touch upon not only cultural issues, but also social and economic ones. In this format in Vologda, and in Russia as a whole, this forum is held for the first time.
"In order not to oppose culture to the economy and vice versa, we have come to the conclusion that the project "The Village is the Soul of Russia" today sets a broad task - this is the preservation and development of the village and the return of residents to the village. The Russian village is the reproduction of a healthy and creative person, a repository of traditions and moral foundations of the people, the basis of national identity, control of the territory and integrity of the state, food independence,” said Valentina Pogozheva, the initiator of the series of forums “The Village is the Soul of Russia”.
The final recipe for the development of Russian outbacks will be developed and adopted at the All-Russian Forum, which is scheduled to be held in Moscow in June.
Statistics
According to the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, only in the period from 2002 to 2010, the number of rural settlements decreased by 8.5 thousand, including due to the fact that a number of rural settlements were included in the boundaries of cities and urban-type settlements, and as well as their elimination by decisions of local authorities in connection with the natural decline and migration outflow of the population. At the same time, the census recorded 19.4 thousand rural settlements in which the population actually did not live.
At the beginning of 2014, 37.1 million people lived in villages, while in 2000 this figure was almost 39.5 million people. The area of arable land for 10 years has decreased to 115 million hectares against 132 million hectares, the area of agricultural land - up to 196 million hectares against 220 million hectares.
The forum noted that villages in the northern regions and the northeast of the country are mainly under the threat of extinction due to more difficult climatic conditions, remoteness of settlements from each other, less fertile than in the south, soil, poorly developed road network .
