Hello, friends!

You, of course, have heard about dead abandoned cities, abandoned villages, villages and towns, of which there are a lot, not only in the post-Soviet space, but throughout the world: in the USA, China, Japan, Germany and so on.

Yes, today I want to talk about the ghost towns of Russia. And not those that, due to their tragic (or not so) fate, have become part of the tourist trails, but about those that are not so well known to the general public, but no less interesting.

So, friends, if you are here hoping to find information about Pripyat, which, frankly, has already set your teeth on edge. Or about the tragic fate of Kadykchan or Kurshi, then I will upset you - in this article they are deliberately ignored. There are several reasons, and one of them, at least the one, is that it is better to share information and impressions about such cities after visiting them.

Dead cities and tourism

A relatively new genre of "post-apocalyptic" (post-apocalyptic) has gained wide popularity over the past half century. This is reflected in films, and in books, and in games. More and more photographers, directors, people of other creative professions, and just thrill-seekers visit abandoned places.

Some people look for inspiration there, for others, dead cities are a blank canvas on which to create. And someone wants impressions and new emotions. Now it is already clear that this, whatever one may say, is another direction for tourism. Let not the most popular, but definitely very interesting. Such cities allow you to see a different life, to touch something mystical and creepy.

Abandoned settlements of the Central Federal District

Most often, such an unenviable fate in small settlements, whose inhabitants worked at one, city-forming, enterprise. It closed - the settlement "closed". Sometimes everything is much more tragic, a vivid example of this is Pripyat.

My list, rather, belongs to the first category. These towns and villages "fell victims of economic recession" rather than natural or man-made disasters. Below are 20 dead settlements in Russia, which are located in the Central Federal District (photo attached).

Not quite a ghost, some houses are still alive. The history of this military town is eerily typical: the military unit was disbanded and everything was abandoned. Barracks, hangars, a canteen and so on, all this is slowly crumbling.

The object is quite well-known in certain circles of lovers of abandoned places.

Remember the forest fire in central Russia in 2010? So, this village stood in the way of the destructive power of fire. The private sector burned out almost completely, the boiler house, garages and gardens burned down. People fled, leaving their property behind.

Almost untouched by the fire were only high-rise buildings. At the time of 2015, Mokhovoe is a completely dead village.

This is Belevsky district. Chelyustino, presumably, has been abandoned since 1985. There are 24 houses left in it, there are no people.

Well preserved. In some houses, even closets with clothes were found.

And this is a residential area. I don’t know what is sadder - a ghost town or THIS.

Glubokovsky has a typical fate for a working mining settlement. After the closure of all the mines, about 1,500 people still lived in it, but in the 90s of the last century, people gradually began to disperse.

The proximity of the district center saves the village from complete extinction, but ... what effort does life in it cost? It's not even a small town.

Kostromka is a completely extinct settlement in central Russia, of which there are hundreds. This village is not one here, there are several more of the same nearby.

There are several houses left, all in disrepair.

The once large village is now living its life. Some houses are well preserved, this can be seen both in their carved architraves and in their internal condition (there are household items in good condition).

Over the past few years, this settlement has been completely deserted. Now Korchmino is a ghost village.

Another of the many dead villages in the Yaroslavl region. Everything that can be taken from there has already been taken away, everything that is impossible is slowly rotting.

The once rich village, with large houses and yards (almost every yard has a barn, a bathhouse, outbuildings) is slowly dying.

The exact name is unknown, there is a possibility that this village is called differently. Nearby is another similar village. It is difficult to find them, since the main mentions remained on old maps.

Inside, everything is as usual: several plundered, destroyed houses, in which you can still find household items.

“This strange place Kamchatka” has been empty for about 10 years. Once this settlement belonged to the collective farm named after. Chapaev. The collective farm collapsed, the same thing happened with the village.

You can't reach this village (except by tank), so it's better to walk. At the moment, several houses in poor condition have been preserved in Dora, but earlier life was in full swing.

The village was connected to the outside world by a narrow gauge railway built in 1946. At the moment, several destroyed bridges in the vicinity remain from it.

A small village with 10 houses, now only 2 have survived. For 4 years the village has been completely dead.

We were in the same house (pictured), on the table there was a letter from the mother from the “zone” from her son.

Another ghost village, but already in the Belozersk region. Empty, presumably, since 1995.

Several houses and baths near the river have been preserved. The houses are of the Northern Russian type - on a high basement with a passage in the back of the house. Inside are some pieces of furniture and household items. Everything is in bad condition.

A very old village in the Vologda region, founded on a water trade route in the 13th century. The settlement flourished in the 18th century, and in 1708 it became the center of the Charond region and received the status of a city. The population at that time was about 10,000. This did not last long.

In the 1770s, the city of Charonda became a village again, and by 1917 there were less than 1,000 people living in it. Today, a dozen houses remain in the village, and the number of inhabitants is 2 (more in summer). The village is extremely inconvenient: there is no land road there, there is no electricity (all the poles have long since rotted and fallen into the swamp).

Khmelina is also an old ghost village in the Central Federal District of Russia. It was founded in 1626, there were 700 households, a mill, factories, a collective farm, a school and a shop.

However, since the 70s of the 20th century, the inhabitants gradually began to disperse. As of November 2017, no one lives in the village anymore. Houses are abandoned, only a few are used as country houses.

An almost dead village in the dense forests of the Kostroma region. Average condition: there are several houses almost untouched by time.

There are 4 more abandoned villages near the village.

Remarkable place. In the vicinity of this farm, in the late 1980s, a stone labyrinth was discovered, which is several thousand years old.

By the way, it is believed that this labyrinth is a place of power.

Some of the houses are huts with thatched roofs, they look cool. At the moment, the farm is almost completely abandoned.

Ghost villages on the map

The map is very approximate. Firstly, not all villages could be applied to it, and secondly, those that were applied may not be entirely correct. You understand, abandoned cities in Russia, and not only, are not always easy to find.

But, you can roughly orient yourself, all areas are correct.

On this, perhaps, everything. I am finishing the list of dead cities and villages. But this is just one of many. I have not included many more areas of our vast Motherland.

P.S. All information about the once settlements and photos are taken from urban3p.ru

Photographers have seen the ugly side of Russia, which contrasts sharply with the luxury and grandeur of Moscow, with its beautiful decoration and magnificent architecture. A series of photos show the harsh reality of the people who live in the abandoned villages of Russia northeast of Moscow.

“Pictures from Russian life” is quite creepy: abandoned villages in the Moscow region and the Kostroma region were photographed by Liza Zhakova and Dima Zharov from St. Petersburg while traveling through the “Russian desert”. In the photo published by the Daily Mail, poverty, unemployment and drunkenness of the last surviving villagers.

Sasha is trying to restore his house, which is falling apart in the almost abandoned village of Yelyakovo
Photographers Liza Zhakova and Dima Zharov from St. Petersburg published a photo chronicle of their journey through the "Russian desert". They report that it is not uncommon for an entire village to have only one resident left. Liza and Dima published a full cycle of photos on Zhakovazharov.ru.

Lesha - a former miner, lives in the village of Spirdovo; fills his day with hunting and drinking in an empty village

There is no electricity in Lesha's house (with hunter friends)
The photographers told the Daily Mail that they believe the Russian government left these villages on purpose to force people to move to other places.

The publication Roads and Kingdoms reports that the population of the entire Kostroma region is 660,000 people. This area covers 23,000 square miles, which is about the size of West Virginia.
Russia's wealth is mainly concentrated in large cities. This means that villagers suffer from unemployment, low wages and lack of social security compared to those living in cities.

Hunter

Village hunter, Lesha's friend

There is no electricity in the house

Lesha has 10 children from three different wives, they all left the village
One of the people left in the village is a man named Lesha, who now lives alone in the village of Spirdovo. Photographers spoke to a former miner who receives a minimum pension payment. He does not have to pay electricity bills, which reduces his costs.
Lesha said that he is the father of ten children from three different women. He also detailed his relationship with alcohol: “I've been drinking for 10 days now. I drank 6-7 bottles, and I'm already in firewood. It doesn't matter if I die today or 10 years later - it doesn't matter."

The other person the photographers talked to is Sasha, he is from a village in Yelyakovo. He also hunts for food and says he has noticed a decrease in the number of wild animals.
But Sasha is not interested in moving. He said: “I don’t like cities at all, I can go there for four days, but no more - I can’t stand it any longer.”

Sasha lives alone in the village of Yelyakovo, he does not want to go to the city to live.

Zoya Timofeevna and her husband are the last inhabitants of the village of Asorino
Alexei Fedorovich and Zoya Timofeevna Chernov are the last inhabitants of the village of Asorino. Husband and wife keep livestock but have stopped working. Like Lesha, they also talked about drunkenness. They told the photographers: “There are binges, if you think about it, there are. The problem is, we have plenty of time. If there's still some alcohol left and I have to work, damn it, I'll work. If you drink again and again, then you need more and more. And how can you work when you're drunk..."

Alcoholism is a problem in rural areas of Russia as well as urban areas. The Lance study showed that 25% of Russian men die before the age of 55, and in the first place - due to excessive use of alcohol and tobacco.

The Russian village is slowly dying out. This is relatively weakly noticeable in the south, very noticeable in the middle lane and obvious in the north. During a trip to the Vologda Oblast, I was personally struck by the huge two-story log houses, abandoned with all their utensils and already partly looted, standing in the middle of the wild gardens of old villages. The kingdom of desolation and silence. Dead village. And the neighboring village burned down in the spring with grass burning, when only one inhabitant remained in it.

Pal came from outside, and the remaining grandfather could not do anything. While trying to extinguish other houses, his house caught fire. I didn’t even have time to pick up my passport, so everything burned down. The remains of the furnaces - scrap bricks - were dismantled for construction sites, and in place of the houses there were only low, gentle mounds of earth, on which the bed frames that fell from the second floor, crumpled and burned, stand. This grandfather greatly missed his once populous village. The children took him to the city, but for the summer he, not listening to anyone, returned. He set up a hut in his old garden under the apple trees, in the hut - a couch and a shelf, next to the entrance - a small hearth, under a canopy there are a smoked teapot and a saucepan ... As long as it's warm, he lives there every summer, wanders under his native tall poplars, under which he ran as a child , sits on the banks of the river and remembers the once big noisy village, and for the winter leaves for the city in a cramped apartment where there is no life for him, and only existence remains.

There are, of course, villages where two or three residential buildings remain, in which the last grandmothers live out their lives. Someone was taken to the city by children and grandchildren, someone remains on their own land. Near cities, the process is not so noticeable, since houses and plots are often used as summer cottages. But for most of the year, silence reigns there too. And if you drive away from the cities and from the highway, then it immediately becomes clear that no one has been there for a long time: lonely leaning poles of outstretched electricity, rickety houses, streets overgrown with grass and ... silence ...

Why is this happening? Does the country need a village? Is it possible to stop the degradation process? We will try our best to answer these difficult questions.

Why the village is needed: agricultural products

To begin with, let's try to deal with the question - why do we need a village at all? Does anyone really need it?

There is a fairly widespread opinion that the population of rural areas plays a small role in the life of countries. At best, it is ignorance of important facts.

Ivan Rubanov ("Expert" No. 22 (611) for 2008) writes:

“Looking at agricultural statistics is like a headshot. Since the beginning of this decade, the cost of imported food has increased by about 30% per year, and by last year reached almost $30 billion. The once leading agrarian power now buys products no less than it produces itself..

In fact, we are "fighting" for the first place in the world in terms of food imports with Japan. At the same time, Japan is in a unique situation - the Japanese, in a sense, have no other choice: the population there is larger than in Russia, and the territory is two orders of magnitude smaller. Those. it is physically extremely difficult for them to produce a large amount of agricultural products. Our sharp increase in net food imports is mainly due to the increase in oil prices. Below is a graph of growth in food imports by years:

It is interesting that if Japan ranks first in the world among developed countries in terms of supporting (subsidizing) its agriculture, then we support it rather poorly, and the level of support is constantly decreasing:

Source: "Expert" No. 22, 2008

Once upon a time, Russia was the leading agrarian power, and now more food is imported than domestically produced. In fact, this means the exchange of non-renewable resources for renewable ones. Agricultural imports are almost equal to the cost of Russian gas exported to Western Europe.

The depressingly low efficiency of agriculture and, in particular, high losses at the stage of processing agricultural products were often cited as one of the significant shortcomings of the Soviet Union. Only according to official statistics, more than half of the potatoes, for example, rotted on the way to the consumer. In the course of liberal reforms in recent years, the situation has deteriorated dramatically. Firstly, direct state support has fallen by about 30 times (!) As a result, if in the mid-80s it was possible to buy 3 tons of diesel fuel per ton of grain, then in the late 90s it was 10 times less. This had a dramatic impact on profitability, and hence on the interest of farms in the production of agricultural products. Imagine a situation if, for example, you used to have an income that was not too big, but allowed you to feed your family, clothe, put shoes on, and buy a car, and go to relatives in other cities, and then your salary was reduced 10 times. What's the point of doing this kind of work? People stopped doing it. But when the former collective farms and state farms ceased to exist, this caused the degradation of the entire surrounding infrastructure. For example, there was no one to clean the roads in winter (indeed, there was no one to support the equipment that was able to do this). And to stay without a road in winter is not a test for every family. As a result, the remaining people left the villages en masse.

However, back to the state level. Industrial food production fell at an alarming pace. Since the situation had to be saved somehow, customs duties on food imports to Russia were drastically reduced, which caused a wave of imports. A large number of companies entered into this new business, the results of which can be seen in any grocery store today. Even in rural areas, Polish apples, Chinese pears and Finnish cheeses are now sold in shops. Bananas have long been cheaper than cucumbers.

Russia is dying

Table 1. Comparison of customs import duties by country.

*Excluding cocoa — 50%. Sources: Serova E.V., IPC, APE

As you can see, only the US has lower tariffs on average, but there are some very well thought-out agricultural support programs that make the US the largest food exporter in the world. Those. not only feed their own population, twice the population of Russia, but also export food on a large scale. In this sense, looking up to the United States in terms of openness of agricultural customs barriers with diametrically opposed domestic agricultural policies is an extremely unwise approach. By the way, even in such a situation, the United States uses prohibitive duties on agricultural products (more than 300%), while the use of prohibitive duties by Russia is clearly too strict a measure in relation to Western producers.

Since it has become fashionable for us to refer to the Americans, we will quote their scientist Marion Ensminger:

“Food is both a responsibility and a weapon. Responsibility because one of the most important rights is the right to food and its consumption in abundance. On the other hand, it is a weapon, because in politics and economics, food plays a huge role and has more power than cannons or oil.”.

Recently, it has been openly admitted that the USSR was defeated by these weapons - food shortages have seriously undermined people's faith in the viability of the government. It is all the more surprising that modern Russia is confidently following the same path.

Often, trying to justify the low efficiency of Russian agriculture, they blame everything on the climate, they say, we have a zone of risky farming. At the same time, they somehow forget that Russia is in 4th place in the world in terms of arable land (in the first place, by the way, the United States). Moreover, in our country about 40% of the world's chernozem area is concentrated - soils with the highest natural level of fertility (!). Also, when studying statistics, it is easy to notice that one of the world's largest food exporters is Canada, whose climate is very harsh, especially compared to the south of Russia.

Once I happened to fly by plane from Seattle (Northwest USA) to New York (Northeast USA). At some point, looking down, I was surprised by an even square grid of roads with a step of about a kilometer, between which there were plowed fields. In some places, as a rule, at the corners of neat squares, trees grew and farmers' houses stood. And such a picture stretched as far as the eye could see. I looked down and thought - what a powerful state will. In the same place, most likely, there were already some fields and houses. But someone came, said, drew the road on the map with a ruler - and everything was embodied on the ground over a vast territory. There was a convenient network of roads raised above the fields, passable at any time of the year, from which the fields are relatively easily accessible. And the picture went on and on. Near cities, farmland ended briefly, but soon continued along the same grid. One state succeeded another, but this only led to a change in the grid spacing (state laws allow themselves certain liberties regarding general policy). And such a picture below continued for about an hour and a half, i.e. something like 1500 kilometers.

When you take off by plane from Moscow, a completely different picture opens up. Yes, there are also fields, but it is immediately noticeable that most of them are not plowed up. Moreover, plowed gravitate towards the roads. It is interesting that the state border of Russia and Belarus is remarkably visible from a height. Immediately upon leaving Russia, it is clear that literally everything has been plowed up, every piece of land. There are, of course, nuances related to the efficiency of agriculture (at the state level, everything is required to be plowed up), but we are talking about state policy, i.e. what the state wants. And three examples were given above, showing how you can see the cardinal difference in public policy, as they say, with the naked eye. It would be desirable simply to pay attention.

What conclusions can be drawn:

• From the point of view of national security, Russia today is in a situation in which it has never been before in history, and which is much worse than the situation at the time of the assassination of the USSR. More than half of the food is imported, there are no serious stocks of it. In the event of conflicts, it has become much easier to put pressure on Russia - it is enough to close the borders. Our position in this regard, compared with the United States and major European countries, is radically worse; in fact, in terms of food security, we are on the opposite end of the scale from them.
• The world's population is increasing by 80 million people a year, while the area of ​​world agricultural land has not only stopped growing (all available land has been plowed), but has been gradually decreasing since 1985 (soil depletion, land drying up). As a result, the area of ​​agricultural land per inhabitant of the Earth has been steadily declining for many years, despite the fact that the yield has not actually changed. As a result, a significant increase in food prices is predicted for the coming decades and, possibly, serious shocks in lean years (not all countries can afford to buy food). The United States in this situation, even if the dollar depreciates, will act as a country that chooses whom to provide food assistance. Russia - as a country that will seek opportunities to buy food (agriculture cannot be restored in a short time).

Village and land

In a situation where agricultural products began to cost less than the fuel needed to collect these products, the only value that large agricultural enterprises possessed was land.

With the adoption of the new Land Code, which allowed land trade, many farms located near highways and near cities were either immediately bought up or went bankrupt and bought up. At the same time, agricultural activity was either stopped or left only as a “cover”. The highest value in Russia is not agricultural land, but building land. Transferring land into a category allowing development is a complex procedure that requires time and money. At the same time, the law formally requires agricultural land to be cultivated, and if the land is not cultivated for 3 years, it must be withdrawn. The strictness of our laws is compensated by the flexibility in their implementation. As a result, only part of the land is plowed up (usually the fields that are visible from the road), which makes it possible to reduce the size of all types of costs and not to think about the cultivation of fields located in the depths of the territory (i.e., most of the land). As a result, even in central Russia there is a large percentage of fields that have not been cultivated for 15, and in some places for 20 years.

The main blow in this situation was not even in agriculture, but in rural areas. If earlier there was a bad, but the owner here, now he has been replaced by an outspoken temporary worker. The land trade is the real Klondike. The rise in prices in some places near the cities amounted to tens of thousands of times. Under such market conditions, it turns out to be profitable to “hold” the land for as long as possible, which is what the vast majority of owners do. At the same time, they have current expenses - the same land tax, and there are still some residents, workers of former farms. If they are not fed, they will start writing letters and so on. Therefore, it is desirable to give some kind of income. As a result, people are invited, for example, to cut down the remaining surrounding forests. Everyone, including workers, understands that there are no prospects for such an approach in the middle zone (where there is a lack of forests). The only consequence is that people are more likely to go on a drinking binge.

Conclusions:

• The vast majority of modern landlords, who own large territories through Moscow firms, are not interested in the development of these territories and behave like "temporary workers", whose task is to somehow "change hands" before selling the land. The presence of local residents is rather a minus for them and a burden on the territory, which affects their priorities and decisions.

Village and administration

Contrary to popular belief, the local administration at some point ceased to be interested in the development of the countryside. People, incl. enthusiastic about the creation of new rural projects, thanks to which the number of people in the villages will increase, they think that they should be supported. But it's not.

More precisely, at the level of personal relations, a specific head of a district or village administration can support a project, but it must be clearly understood that from the point of view of the local budget, they, as a rule, are not interested in such projects.

As has been said above more than once, the production of agricultural products for the most part has long been below the level of profitability. This is not an accident, but a pattern due to a number of quite objective factors. Almost any head of the district has repeatedly observed another promising project, which, instead of the planned large return, either barely balanced on the verge of profitability, or was completely closed. Low confidence in new projects is based on real experience.

At the same time, villagers need to be provided with a school, medical care, a telephone, a fire brigade, repair the road, hire equipment to clean the road in winter, repair the power line, pay for lamps burning in the village at night, pay for losses in the line and in the transformer, etc. . And if the village ceases to be a settlement or everyone leaves from there, then these very tangible expenses for the meager local budget can be omitted. As a result, for the destruction of the village as a settlement, it is now enough that there simply is not a single registered resident left in the village, and the local municipality will be more interested in this situation.

In fairness, we note that this is not the first serious reduction in the number of villages. If in the 18-19 centuries peasants often settled near the cultivated fields in villages and settlements, then in the 20th century there were two waves. One was collectivization in the 1920s and 1930s, the other was the consolidation of collective farms in the 1950s. Small villages then ceased to exist. Now, after the catastrophe in Russian agriculture, which has lasted for 20 years, the villages are disappearing catastrophically.

Conclusion:

• The rural administration is placed in a position where it is financially interested in reducing the number of villages, which leads to a decrease in the number of rural settlements. When the former village ceases to be a settlement, it becomes noticeably more difficult to revive life in it, since the administration is not only not obliged to contribute to this, but often opposes it.

Conclusion

Someone not too familiar with the subject might say:

“Some kind of too gloomy picture has been drawn, this cannot be. After all, someone fed the 140 million people of Russia in the 90s, incl. after the default, when we couldn't buy groceries?"

What can be answered... Below is a diagram of the structure of agricultural production by categories of farms (in actual prices; as a percentage of the total).

On Military Review, in the National Security section, we try not to lose sight of a topic that, despite its apparent remoteness from the issue of security, plays one of the primary roles in it. We are talking about the demographic indicators of Russia and the accompanying demographic phenomena and processes. Today's consideration of this issue is connected not so much with the general Russian demography, its indicators and manifestations, but with a narrower direction. This direction is a Russian village. And there is no mistake here - it is the Russian village. Namely, those rural areas of the Russian Federation that have been inhabited by Russians from time immemorial, and which today (with all the seemingly positive demographic processes) are experiencing enormous difficulties.

For starters, there are official demographic figures from Rosstat, which summed up the results of the population assessment of the Russian Federation for 2016. The indicators of the Federal State Statistics Service indicate that the permanent population of the Russian Federation in 2016 increased by about 200 thousand people compared to 2015 and amounted to 146.5 million citizens. For any representative of the authorities who has at least some relation to demographic reporting, these data can, as they say, uncork champagne: there is an increase, but go into details - "from the evil one" ...

However, equidistant from both liberal whining about “#everything is lost” and pseudo-patriotic bravura slogans in the style of “demographic problems are completely resolved”, we can say with confidence that population growth in general is one thing, and quite another is the issues of the titular nation. Yes, the current constitution seems to “forget” about the existence of such, but this does not negate the fact that it is the Russian people (in the broadest sense of the word) that is the state-forming for Russia. There is no talk of any, thank God, “exclusivity” of the Russian people, but at the same time it is quite possible to call it strange the unwillingness of those in power to raise such an acute issue as the demographic problems of the Russian population, the problems of the Russian village, the Russian hinterland.

Why do the mentioned powers that be prefer not to start talking about such a problem? Yes, everything is simple. As soon as this issue is raised at a high (or relatively high) level, a beautiful and vivid picture is immediately blurred that everything is wonderful with demographics in Russia. Moreover, blurring the picture, by definition, should lead to the need for those in power to start working more intensively, and not everyone is ready for intensive work in such a matter - it just so happened ... The softer the chair and the more special phones in the office, the more often it happens that it is more difficult with an intensive in matters of solving domestic Russian problems ...

However, again - to the statistics of Rosstat. Historically, in Russia (since the start of statistical research in 1913) there has never been such a large gap in the size of the urban and rural population as in recent years. The data show that at the end of 2016 there were 108.6 million city dwellers in Russia, and 37.9 million rural dwellers. The percentage ratio: 74 percent to 26. According to short-term reports (January-February 2017), the percentage of the rural population fell below 26 for the first time, reaching 25.9%. Close to the current parameters were in the USSR (RSFSR) in the era of collapse - in 1990-1991, when the ideology that the country did not need the development of agriculture, because "there are friends around", and these " friends" will provide us with food, because "we are building a democracy, and this is more important than growing wheat."

Today, thank God, people have begun to realize that growing the same wheat is much more useful than building a pseudo-democratic system imposed by the West. However, unfortunately, such considerations are still clearly not enough to solve all the problems of the Russian village.

If we take the statistics for the constituent entities of the Russian Federation with the overwhelming majority of the ethnically Russian population, then the percentage of villagers is even lower - on average, about 22-23%. In a number of regions, the figure has already dipped below 20%.

So, even official statistics show that the Russian village is actually dying out. Here you can talk a lot about how this is cunning and that there are villages that follow the path of development, but in the whole country, let's be frank, there are hardly a significant number of them.

The reasons for the problems with demography in the Russian countryside have not changed in any way over the past few decades. The main problem is the lack of a proper number of jobs, which entails a whole mountain of social and economic problems. In other words, the problem would be solved at least partially if state investments for development were directed not only to the development of the Chechen village, but also to the development of rural areas in other regions of Russia...

And here, a person who is familiar with government programs may object, saying that the Cabinet of Ministers, headed by Dmitry Medvedev, is already implementing a program that is ultimately designed to partially solve the problem with jobs in rural areas. Indeed, there is such a program. It is described on, headed by Alexander Tkachev. The essence of the program is concessional lending to farms. The chain is something like this: a farmer working “in the countryside” receives a preferential loan from a bank for his specific project, then he implements this project with the involvement of peasant personnel, while simultaneously developing both his own economy and the infrastructure of the village.

Everything seems to be great, and what is especially great is that Tkachev promises bank loans to farmers at a rate of less than 5% per annum. During the speech of the head of the Ministry of Agriculture at a government meeting, it was stated that a number of banks included in the program issue loans to our farmers for nothing at all - at 2-3% per annum - below the inflation level. The state, they say, still compensates.

However, in reality, the program is, oh, how difficult. In reality, there is no question of getting an ordinary farmer a loan from a bank (even a state-subsidized one) at 2-3% per annum. Banks both issued at best at 14-15%, and issue. And these statements are not unfounded. Your obedient servant - the author of the material - talked with several farmers who own agricultural land of different sizes, on the subject of "soft loans". And none of them, as they themselves said, managed to get a loan at the low interest rate mentioned by Tkachev, although they submitted all the necessary documents for obtaining a soft loan.

And here is what the Minister of Agriculture himself said about this, speaking in the government:

As of February 22, the Ministry of Agriculture included 1,420 borrowers in the register for a soft loan totaling over 134 billion rubles. Short-term loans in the field of crop production are planned to be received by more than 640 borrowers in the amount of more than 38 billion rubles.

An attempt to find out who these 1,420 lucky borrowers who received soft loans were unsuccessful. This information is kept secret for the time being with the following reasoning: banks do not have the right to disclose data about their customers. Yes Yes...

In practice, it turns out that ordinary farmers are not the happy owners of soft loans provided by banks under the state program. Not at all those who really live in the countryside and are ready not only to receive funds for their own production, but also, as a result, to invest in the development of rural infrastructure - the development of schools, first aid centers, the opening of sports sections for young people, the construction and repair of roads. Loans are received by those who are commonly called "agrarian large" - who, in the pursuit of personal profit, is not ready to pay attention to the "social sector", but is ready to bring Central Asian guest workers to the Russian village in order to be able to get even more "profit". I received a loan at 2% per annum - quickly rebuilt, for example, an oil plant sparkling in the sun, brought in fifty "gastrics", and the village ... "what a village ... let him drink more ... why should I pay attention to this on their problems...” The village stood as it stood with rotten and rickety huts, gaping empty eye sockets of windows, and so it stands. And in the reports - everything is wonderful: "there is a backbone enterprise - an oil plant." And the fact that “the plant is separate, the village is separate”, those who read these reports diagonally, are of little concern.

In this regard, the question is: are our effective managers aware of which way the implementation of the “agricultural” program is actually going, and that a very, very narrow circle of people has access to it? Or is this the very case in which reporting is everything, and the fate of people in the outback is the tenth thing? .. And if so, then what kind of demography is there ...

For 20 years of "reforms" more than 20 thousand villages have disappeared from us. Just think about it - three villages die every day in Russia, and this process is on the rise. In 17 thousand still living villages there are no permanent residents, that is, summer residents come there for the season. In 33 thousand, an average of 1.76 people live, in the remaining villages and villages of 14 thousand - 7.8 people. Lonely old age in the village has become the norm. There are farms in the Altai Territory where calves get 500 (!) Rubles a month. And people work there, they have no way out, there is no other work there. 2.5 thousand rubles salary on the farm, this is also the norm. And how can the village survive with such earnings?

And what successes in agriculture do the country's leaders tell us every day - after all, the villages are disappearing? Here I am about it and the same words. Now small towns and single-industry towns have begun to move towards the dying village. After all, a salary of 7 thousand rubles is the norm there, and 20 thousand rubles is generally the height of dreams. In addition, all these cities were built by the communists and they are simply decaying and no major overhaul, if any, will help these cities. The centuries-old foundations of Russia are being destroyed. There is a genocide of the nation, we are also dying out and silently. And "privatization reforms" are still going on. And the country has no prospects - the oligarchs will take care of it. It is necessary to change capitalism to a welfare state, and only then will all the assets and resources work for the country. And the country will not die.

By the way, Russia is the only country in the world that is dying out so quickly in the 21st century, this is the conclusion made by German sociologists. It seems to me alone that Russia is being cleaned from the population? Willingly or not, but the government does it and it means that it is responsible for it. Russia occupies one of the first places in the extraction and export of minerals in the world. But the people deserved a minimum wage of 7,200 rubles, while a State Duma deputy 450,000 rubles. Why is there such a gap in wages, the people in Russia have become second class? Crazy money from the sale of resources is spent on the army of officials and security forces, but the lion's share of them remains in the West, and they do not reach the people. Money and resources are simply squeezed out of Russia, but the people turned out to be superfluous in this vast territory. But it is necessary to make sure that the reformers become superfluous. Russia did not deserve death. So it is necessary to "leave" all stuck from the life of our richest and most beautiful country in the world.

Interesting data came across: $ 53 billion was spent on preparations for the Olympic Games in Sochi 2014. The weight of the entire money supply spent on the Olympic Games, if the amount is decomposed into 100 dollar bills, is 642,000 kg. To transport such an amount, 11 railway wagons with a carrying capacity of 60 tons will be needed. How much money was stolen from this fantastic amount is known only in the Kremlin. But they are modestly silent about it. Such times. Hold on, people will have a holiday on our streets, only we all need to work for this result.

A poem from the net, just on topic:

Villages die silently
Without a groan, without sorrowful tears
Only the wind-reveler silently
Breaks earrings from birches.
Villages die quietly
Yards are overgrown with weeds
And no cheerful cry is heard
Barefoot funny kids.
And the huts stand lonely
In half-huts of worn roofs,
Crooked like old women
Guardian of serene silence
And the smoke from the chimney does not flow,
The bar does not ring about Lithuanian,
And in the morning no one seeks
Hurry to the nearby woods.
No one will cut with pleasure
Miracle - white fungus-fungus.
Ah, once with such pleasure
We collected them in boxes.
And not rye in the fields is earing,
Warm gold, pleasing to the eye,
There, wheatgrass and nettles bush,
Exposing yourself
Everything! Everything is not the way it once was.
The earth is overgrown with weeds
Villages die quietly
Only sad about the former poplar.