Abandoned village.

To the memory of my grandfather: Akimov Ivan Grigorievich.

“The most recent census found that of Russia's 155,000 villages, 13,000 have been deserted, and another 35,000 have seen their populations dwindle to fewer than 10 inhabitants.”

“Do you miss Russia?” - somebody asked me. “Yes” - I answered. “What do you miss the most?” - asked somebody again. “My village” - I said.

It’s a small village - just four houses surrounded by fields and forest. It’s situated 200 miles from Moscow, in the Tverskoy region. My grandmother and grandfather bought a holiday-house there 25 years ago. Grandmother was originally from this area. That was why they chose this place. I remember my grandmother asked: “ Vany,” she called her husband this. “Can you stop the car?” Grandmother went off from the car and stood for a long time looking at the carpet of wild flowers, ocean of yellow fields, ribbon of narrow river, and line of green forest… Why do I like this place? It’s difficult to explain. It’s all together: feels, sounds, views, smells, memory, style of life… When you are in the city you are always running somewhere, like a hurrying harrier. In the village you can stop and look round. You can take time and spend it doing something enjoyable. You can do lots of things that in the everyday life you haven’t time for. When you are in the city you haven’t time to sit on the stairs of a conservatory and listen to the rain or look at the stars at night or go out for a walk to admire the views. I enjoy doing it. I like walking and looking at the sunset when the sky changes its colours – blue and red and yellow and purple. And after in the still of night I love looking at the stars, trying to find a falling one. Moon is also my close friend. Sometimes it’s lighting for me like a huge spotlight and sometimes it’s hiding in the clouds like a skulking spy. If you get up early in the morning and go out to the field you’ll find yourself soon in the middle of a twinkle carpet or a crystal miniature city. Of course it’s just a field, but use your imagination and look down. You’ll see the dew on the scarlet grass like strings of pearls and spider webs that stretches like glittering cotton. It gives me the creeps then I look at this fantastic “city-carpet”. Do you know how loud the sounds of crickets are? When they start their concert you have the feeling of millions, billions, trillions of little violins playing round you. Some people hate this sound. They have enough of the noise every day of their lives. But I find it very relaxing. Just sit and listen! I also like the frog’s orchestra with the conductor dragon-fly in the pond, and the song of the nightingale. Of course it’s all very sentimental and silly. But it’s that I love to do as a relief from the effort and stress of everyday life. Sometimes in a busy bus I close my eyes and the village appears like a ghost. Or sometimes a similar sound or smell brings me back to the familiar place. And I feel warm and safe myself.

As you understand I grew up in the city, but every summer I spent in the village. I can say that I was a lucky child. There were several children of my age in the every house of the village. We were playing from the early morning to the evening. We built cosy houses and superb castles from old blanket and dry branches. We cooked delicious salads and appetizing soups from wild flowers and dirty stones. We baked cakes and tarts from road sand and pool mud that were unbelievable tasty. We organised concerts and performances for our parents where we were modern artists and popular singers. We dressed in the old clothes and coloured our faces, imagining ourselves beautiful princes and powerful kings. We set up our own competitions where we judged each other like stern umpires. And in the evening was time when we sat round grandmother who told us the stories from old times, from her childhood.

It was stories about this area and local life. Grandmother told us about Christmas time. She said that just her family had a Christmas tree and that they decorated it with sweets and apples. And on the Christmas day kids tried to win these sweets, dancing and singing and doing different kind of tricks. I just imagine my grandmother dancing and singing… The little actress of Christmas. That’s what she said about herself. “Little Tony, the actress of Christmas.” She told us about local food. They made homemade cheese with big holes inside. They boiled the milk and after used a special pressing machine. Grandmother said that it was the best cheese that she ever had tried in her life. They also made homemade sausages. They used several kind of meet that mixed all together. They filled this mixer inside of intestines, and smoked it for several days in the fireplace. I close my eyes and again imagine the pressing machine for cheese, the smoke equipment for sausages… It is so unusual, so uncommon and so unique. Grandmother also told us about her family. Her father was a good-looking man, very cheerful, light-hearted and sunny. That was why people in the area call him “Garden”. Garden because the garden in spring is very lively, fresh and bright. “Look, Garden is walking,” they said. And that was why when my great-grandfather came to get passport, he said that his second name is “Garden”. My grandmother’s second name was also “Garden”. My great-great-grandfather was a Tsar groom. Grandmother said that he was the best tsar groom. It made her feel proud. The Tsar’s favourite horse was very nasty and great-great-grandfather was the only man who could harness it. He had a secret. Then he harnessed this “devil-horse” he usually used a big metal tongs. He used one hand for holding the horse’s nose with the tongs and used another hand for harness. He was a very strong man. He probably could harness any horse. He also said: “Happiness is not a horse, you cannot harness it”. I think he also was a clever man. Grandmother didn’t tell much about her mother’s family. All that I know is great-grandmother taught languages. I have a picture of her. It’s dated 1916. A woman in the nice dress, curled hair at the forehead, high lace boots and a watch on her arm stays in front of the studio wall. Many people said that I look like her. It makes me feel happy: to think I have something in common with this woman on the yellow picture. Unfortunately it’s the only picture I have left after my great-grandparents. All other was destroyed in the fire. Grandmother said that her family was richest in the village. Many people were envious of this. So one man wrote an accusatory letter and sent it to the communists. At the same time one woman in the village heated the bathhouse. She wasn’t very careful. A fire started. The village was burned. My grandmother’s house was also burned. The next day when the communists came to arrest the family and send it to Siberia they didn’t find evidence of wealth. All that they find was ash. Even the big gold box with the jewellery inside – the family treasure disappeared in the fire or became a little gold river that penetrated underground. It’s a strange to think about, but it’s true all the same. The misfortune became happiness for the family. Just because of this silly woman the family avoided arrest. If she hadn’t heated the bathhouse that day, I wouldn’t be here to write this now. A silly woman can change history. I don’t really believe that all grandmother’s stories were true. I already say that for me it was something unreal, fantastic and dreamy, like fairytales. But it was what grandmother told. It was the kind of thing she liked to tell. There were lots, lots of stories. One off her interesting stories was about abandoned and lost village. It was situated in the middle of the forest. She lived there when she was a little girl before the collective farms formed. The government wanted people be to all together and working all together in the collective farms. That was why people from my grandmother’s small village in the forest moved to the bigger one. Lots of the other small villages were left too. Fifty years later grandmother tried to find her old village. A place can get very deep into your bones. And when you leave it behind, you leave part of yourself. She said that her father liked unusual trees and he had lots of trees like these round the house. “If I find unusual trees in the forest, I find a place where a village was before,” she said. But, of course, she didn’t find anything.

Two years ago my husband and I spent three weeks in a village. It was an exciting time for both of us. We went to the forest for walking, to pick up berries and mushrooms, and went to the river for fishing. We enjoyed nature and each other. The best season to pick up mushrooms is late summer and autumn. But even in early spring you can find early mushrooms hiding from you like rabbits between brown leaves. The season for berries is middle summer and autumn. My favourite berry is blueberry. I like it with sugar and milk. Mushrooms are nice fried with onion and potatoes. There are some interesting inhabitants in the forest too: bears, mooses, wild boars and beavers. Nearly every day my husband was walking and looking for hiding birds and animals. He carried a gun too. Of course he didn’t want to kill any animals or birds. They are so beautiful. I think the gun gave him a feel of power or protection. I joined him several times but after he said that I am walking like an elephant – I started stay at home or walk by myself. “I want to see a moose,” he said. “I don’t need elephant near me.” It was a challenge for him to find and see the moose. He’s spent many hours walking through the forest, crawling in the swamp and slowly freezing in the bushes in search of them. One day he came back home and looking like a cat who swallowed the canary. “I saw him!” That’s the end of the world! Before in the village we made many preserves by pickling, salting, drying and conserving. I am very good at this. I know several tasty recipes. For pickling cucumbers, for example, you choose small vegetables about five centimetres long that you stand in a jar or wood cask like boys standing toy-soldiers inside a metal box. You put horse-radish, garlic, dill and leaves of blackcurrant between the cucumbers, like a sales-assistant wraps souvenirs in the paper. You boil water – about 500 millilitres. You place in the boiling water two spoons of salt, several doves, several black peppercorns and several laurels for making a salt liquid or salt solution. You pour this salt solution into the jar with the standing “soldiers-cucumbers” and leave it uncovered for a day. Next day you pour out of the jar the salt liquid and reheat it. You sink again vegetables into the hot liquid and leave it in a dark, cold place. In a month you have sharp, spicy cucumbers that you can eat with other food. My grandmother taught me this recipe. I am really proud I take something from her. That time that we were in the village while my husband was looking for the moose and other treasures I made some preserving – mushrooms in vinegar with added spices. It was lovely.

Time doesn’t stand still. Eight years ago people from the first house moved to a bigger village. Our village was too isolated for them. Grandmother died six years ago. Our house has changed. The second and third houses were left several years after. The lady from the first house became too old to visit village. Another family built a new holiday-house just near Moscow. Grandfather was the last man who regularly visited the village and this year he died. The summer when we were at the village was the last time that I saw him. When my sister called me and said that he died, I thought: “What’s a nice man gone”. I also thought: “What would be with our village?” It’s still on the map, but nobody lives there anymore. This summer my sister visited our village for one day. She said that robbers had been in the house. They had broken the roof to come inside and then broken the door that connected the corridor and the room. What would be with this place in 50 years? Maybe I, like my grandmother, will tell my grandchildren about happiness but an abandoned and lost village.

P.S. This winter my friends and I spent New Year in my village. The village came to life again. After we undertook a trip to the Archangelsk region using local roads and staying in traditional rural villages. Many of them are very picturesque and pretty but they are shrinking in size or abandoned altogether. Most people migrated to towns and cities because the collective farms broke up, wages fell down, no job left and there is nothing to do. Schools, shops and post offices closed. Life is ebbing out of the Russian villages. The villages are dying off. What would be in fifty years?

01/2005