The secret of the prosperity of "Lipetsk Holland"

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The correspondent of the "Russian Planet" visited the village, recognized as one of the most beautiful and comfortable in Russia "Berendeevo Tsarstvo", "Lipetsk Holland", "Lipetsk Switzerland", "forest pearl" - whatever they call the village of Preobrazhenovka. That allowed the previously unpromising settlement to enter the association "The Most Beautiful Villages of Russia" and four times in a row to become the winner of the Ministry of Regional Development competition "The Most Comfortable Settlement", the correspondent of the Republic of Poland found out.

Led by a chapter

The village of Preobrazhenovka, Dobrovsky District, is located on the outskirts of the Lipetsk Region, in protected forests. There is no production here, no farmland - forest and forest all around. Ten years ago, after the rains, it was only possible to drive here on a tractor, and in the spring, due to flooding of rivers, the village was cut off from the mainland for 2-3 months. Now all the streets are asphalted, gas is supplied to the houses, there is a telephone and the Internet in almost every house. The village of 316 courtyards has its own high school, a swimming pool with a gym, two shops, a sports complex preparing to open in the new academic year, and even a landscaped beach with changing cabins.

When asked how they managed to achieve prosperity, the locals proudly answer: "Led by the head."

- Vera Trofimovna Popova began the improvement of the village. Under her, gas was supplied, the roads were made, the pool was installed. And her son Anatoly Anatolyevich (the current head of the village - RP) continued. He does a lot for the village, - says the native resident Valentina Gorbacheva.

- I have been living in Preobrazhenovka for 23 years. Over the years, she has changed a lot, - Elena Andreeva smiles at her unexpected pun.

Both women harvest chokeberry. In the center of the village, next to the school, a lot of it is planted. So that the good does not disappear, the women explain, they will freeze the mountain ash, fortunately, freezers are installed in the school cafeteria, and in winter the students will receive fortified compote.

Lipetsk Holland

The whole life in Preobrazhenovka is twisted around the school. According to the head of the rural settlement and the former headmaster of the school Anatoly Popov, the small-scale educational institution has become the so-called town-forming enterprise for the village and served as a source of its real prosperity.

“After all, both the roads and the pool in the village appeared thanks to the schoolchildren,” says Anatoly Popov. - In 2005, when I was the director of the school, we created the first cooperative in the region. We grew flower seedlings. First for yourself - you need to improve the territory, and then for sale - summer residents asked. We built a good greenhouse at the school. At first, we were naughty for this, because there was nothing of the kind. And our revenue reached 500 thousand rubles. The kids were getting paid. We opened an off-budget account at the school, where money from the sale of seedlings was received. When co-financing programs began to operate in the region - ruble for ruble, we already had the soil prepared, and there was a good nest egg. And whoever is the first gets everything. In two years, we rolled all the roads into asphalt, built a swimming pool - we used extra-budgetary funds of the school as well. How we were checked here: OBEP, everyone who can - where does the money come from in the village.

The school cooperative still brings money to the village - up to 70 varieties of tulips are grown in greenhouses. In the spring, all the flower beds are planted with them. In the summer, they are replaced by fragrant petunia. True, the school as a small school is always trying to "optimize", although its appearance and equipment can be the envy of any city school in Lipetsk.

- We have only 70 students at the school. They offered to transfer the children to the neighboring Krivets. But our school is a three-time winner of the All-Russian competition "The Best School of Russia", says Popov with pride. - Children take places in Olympiads, participate in sports competitions. The first places from the regional sports days were not brought, but we did have the second and third places. This is despite the fact that the school does not have a gym: it is not necessary in a small school. But on September 5, we will hand over the new sports complex, and the guys will go there to study - they will have more opportunities.

Popov admits: he left school reluctantly. She asked her mother - she wanted to transfer the village to good hands. And the residents also believed that their school director, who had protected a small educational institution from optimization, was able to bring the village out of the laggards.

- We have a difficult situation in the village in 2010 - 10 people applied for the place of the head. And after all, many went there not to do better for people, but to get land, - says Popov.

Almost the entire village came to the elections in 2010. With a 99% turnout, 98% of the votes were cast for the headmaster of the school, Anatoly Popov.

Lipetsk Switzerland

Popov began modern transformations in the village with the introduction of a tax on landscaping and garbage disposal. Every Thursday a garbage truck drove around the village. It took almost a year to teach local residents to put garbage in bags, and not throw it into the forest.

- It was very difficult for the first three months. We collected a full garbage truck in only two weeks. I asked teachers and social workers to support me - who, if not us. Moreover, our people are distrustful. It happens that the authorities began to do something and quickly finished - they like to do ostentation here, so the people are cautious. And only when it entered the system that every Thursday we collect garbage, then a full car began to be typed. Then people started calling and complaining: "The car drove through all the streets, but did not come to us." Something has changed in the consciousness of people.

Self-awareness is at a high level here. There is a rack for bicycles at the store, and none of them are fastened - it is not accepted to steal. In a small but hilly village, a bicycle is the most reliable means of transportation. Litter-bins are only near public buildings, but the village is simply licked clean.

Popov's next "battle" was the "battle" for light on the streets of the village. The simplest thing was to replace the poles and hang 140 LED bulbs on solar panels, the most difficult thing was to teach power engineers that from now on the village pays according to the meters, and not according to the standard.

- Electricity is expensive and becomes more expensive every year. IDGCs and gas companies are monopolists and the most impenetrable offices, - complains Popov. - For a year we fought to pay by the meter. We have solar-powered lanterns. Therefore, in summer and winter, on clear days, we do not pay for lighting for months. When it is cloudy and rainy, then yes, you have to take electricity. But due to the fact that we pay by the meter, and not at random, we pay much less.

When people saw that the money was going into business, everyone began to pay the tax: both local residents and summer residents. Every year there are more and more summer residents here - today there are 70 families.

The so-called improvement tax can be seen everywhere: it is in the paving slabs that paved the central square of the village, in a fountain, in two playgrounds with slides and merry-go-rounds, in the Family park, where a tree is planted in honor of the birth of a new resident of Preobrazhenovka, in numerous sculptures and monuments and, of course, in flower beds that welcome guests at the entrance and are scattered throughout the village.

- They say to me: you have a lot of summer residents from the regional administration, so they give you money for development, - Popov expresses his insult.- Law 131 (131-FZ "On the general principles of organizing local self-government in the Russian Federation." - RP) puts us all in the same conditions. And I have no money boxes under the floor with gold ducats. When we ask for money for a project, we immediately come with design and estimate documentation, we do an examination, we put 10% on the co-financing of the project - we provide a reference from the budget, and not just demand: "Give it to us." And this is a different alignment. We have become winners of the "Most Comfortable Settlement in Russia" competition four times. We received grants and used them to improve the village.

Thanks to grants and participation in co-financing programs, Popov attracted more than 30 million rubles to the village. For one of the grants, the Preobrazhenovka administration prepared a project for cleaning the Smorodinka River. This year, the second stage will be completed - the channel will be deepened. In 2016, Preobrazhenovka will have its own embankment. As Popov boasts, the tiles have already been purchased. For another grant, they made design estimates for the construction of a sports complex.

“We plan to open five hotel rooms in the sports complex,” says Anatoly Popov. - Let's see if they will be in demand or not. We are planning to build a hotel in the village in the future. The Dobrovsky district has entered the tourist cluster, but so far there is nothing in the district. And we will do it because we need to survive. We rent a field with artificial turf for mini-football, in winter we will fill a hockey rink. We will open a mini-sanatorium on the basis of the pool in November - we have already purchased physiotherapy equipment. It will be used not only by our residents, but also by tourists: they came to us for the weekend, settled in a hotel, were like procedures.

Popov's words seem like pipe dreams. However, residents say that their pool is very popular with neighbors from the Tambov region. The village has its own hockey team, which travels to Lipetsk for training. And during the mushroom festival, which takes place on the day of the village on September 5, the population doubles.

Now the work is in full swing in the village. A team from Lipetsk is finishing a fountain in the park near the new sports complex. A team from Ukraine is building a wooden church to replace the stone one that was demolished in 1940.

- So we are local, from near Kursk, not far from the border of our village, - the builders say with a Little Russian accent. - Only 450 versts to you. It's a good little church. Stucco.

“Over the past five years, none of the young people have left the village”

The title "The Most Comfortable Village in Russia" also has a downside, sighs Popov - this title needs to be confirmed every day.

- Here, - Popov nods at the landscape with two mowers. - We use our own money and gasoline. Last year, the maintenance of local roads was on the balance sheet of the village administration, and we were allocated money for this. I had 100 thousand for the okos. And now the law has changed - everything went to the regional fund. And it is not known whether we will receive this money. And I cannot allow the most comfortable village to be overgrown with weeds. This year the village itself did the snowplow, although the district was supposed to do it. But they did not sign the contract on time, they did not sell it. We did it only in March. An organization comes to me: "Anatoly Anatolyevich, sign." I say: "I will not sign, because we cleaned it ourselves." The insults have gone. But there is no need to say that everything is bad with us. You can work. The main thing is to set a goal for yourself and go to it to the end.

“Until the end,” according to Popov's plans, is to build a general practitioner office in the village at the level of the 21st century. Now in Preobrazhenovka there is only a paramedic station of the last century. Open a kindergarten - there are already 24 preschool children in the village. And the kindergarten, says Popov, is not only infrastructure, but also 12 jobs for school graduates.

“Over the past five years, none of the young people have left my village,” Popov is proud.

Jobs are his headache. The village is famous for its carpenters. The older generation finds work in the timber industry. In 2011, a fire brigade was opened at the village - 12 people got jobs. What other work can be done in a forest village, Popov hopes, come up with visiting romantics from the city. For young professionals willing to be creative in the countryside, Popov is ready to build ten houses.

- We need cadres - young, ideological, who want to live in the village, want to do something, but for some reason they cannot do it in the city or they cannot solve some issues with the authorities, - in the village there is no bureaucracy. We will help them - they will help us. We need a young backbone of the village, - the 42-year-old head is sure.

Trademark "Preobrazhenovka"

So far, Anatoly Popov is actively developing ecotourism and trade in organic products. They are going to open a brand store in Lipetsk, where they will sell meat of gobies and chickens raised in the fresh forest air and clean volunteer water. We are ready in Preobrazhenovka to offer all Russians Russian herbal teas that are returning their popularity.

“We have forests and swamps all around here. We have wild plants: raspberries, lingonberries, blueberries, linden, strawberries. Schoolchildren collect, grandmothers. We buy from them and make teas. You will open a tube of tea with us, and you can immediately see what is there, what herbs and berries you put. This is not what foreigners offer you, where everything is so finely chopped that it is not known what the tea is made of. So we will register our brand in the near future. It is already being developed. We ordered a package in Moscow. We received the first batch of 2,500 pieces. Tea will go on sale soon, - Popov advertises his product.

People from the Lipetsk region and neighboring regions come to learn from Popov's experience of active village management. Popov believes: All-Russian glory awaits the Preobrazhenovka. This year, he says, all undertakings will be brought to mind, and in 2016 Preobrazhenovka for the fifth time will claim the title of "The most comfortable settlement in Russia." And while the delegations are struggling with the mystery of the prosperity of Preobrazhenovka, a simple resident of the village Valentina Yegorovna deduced the formula for happiness.

- It is not enough to plant flowers. You have to go to water them, do not forget to weed them, then there will be beauty. And if you just plant it, it will be, as elsewhere, that is, nothing. So everything depends on you and me, - she sums up.