Mikhail Shlyapnikov - stone farmer

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

In 1988 I graduated from the Plekhanov Institute, at the age of 23 I worked in the flagship of Soviet trade - GUM. At that time, salt and cigarettes were given out on coupons, bananas and shoes were sold on Red Square, so I had an unexpectedly strong start. A naive and childish case. I came to GUM from the street and said: "I want to work as an auditor." They answered me: "Come another time." And I actually believed that I had to go another time. I returned and asked: "Where is the chief accountant?" - "On holiday". I then said: “But she told me to come in, I am registering for the position of an auditor …” Well, the order of the chief accountant of GUM is the law. So I stayed. In the store, mostly women worked, and I, as a man, was engaged in some tough business - with the Eliseevsky store, with the OBKHSS.

My career developed rapidly: about a couple of years later I became the director of a large store in Moscow, and in March 1991 I was invited to work in the Central Committee of the CPSU under Gorbachev's decree "On the commercialization of party funds." This is the so-called "party gold". I was a specialist in foreign economic activity. The work was structured as follows: the party funds that were in foreign currency accounts were used to purchase consumer goods, they were brought in, sold here for rubles, these rubles were transferred back to foreign currency, the CPSU received its profit.

I have never been a convinced communist - I did not read revolutionary books, but about the stock exchange, the dollar exchange rate and trade. I only knew that I needed to serve, be honest, feed my family and somehow get up.

Everything continued until August 1991. Then the head of my department in the Central Committee was thrown by the legs from the window of his apartment. And yet, it seems, two people were killed in the same way: the manager of the affairs and some other official - I do not remember who exactly. They threw it out the window … It was just that people in gray came and killed those who knew all the financial statements in the Central Committee of the CPSU: the coup on August 19 was evil and dishonest.

In the early nineties I already had my own bank "Golden Age", with it a club of the same name and a commodity exchange. Everyone was doing this, it was foolish not to do it - every resourceful person at that time had his own bank. I knew the foreign trade system, I knew about the conversion, I was aware of the customs rules, so it was relatively easy for me. We made the first money from foreign trade contracts - there was gigantic inflation, the ruble was depreciating daily, while the dollar, on the contrary, was growing fantastically. And nothing had to be done - sit and get rich. We did not participate in pyramid schemes. We were engaged in the export-import of medical equipment. At that time there was a huge need for medical diagnostic equipment, and I was the first to import, for example, tomographs. It is difficult for me to assess my own activities, but a lot of people worked for me, and everyone was happy - the high salary and a good social package. Our structure did not depend on the state: a small beautiful kingdom. For myself, for employees, for the environment.

In 1995, near Vladimir, I had an accident: on an icy road I skidded into a hollow, lost control of the vehicle, and overturned. When I had an X-ray, it turned out that my spine was broken.

And a new life began for me.

In Moscow, they refused to do the operation. In Europe, they said that I would move in a wheelchair all my life. I was 31 years old, small children and a young wife. I lie, and I have wild pains. A bottle of vodka for breakfast, a bottle for lunch, a bottle for dinner. Two years later, I underwent surgery in the trauma department of the city hospital on Salyam Adil street. The doctors were golden, only they had no medicine, no painkillers, no suture material. Thanks to old connections, I had the opportunity to get implants-plates that fix the spine … But you know what the thing: there were two or three people a month for homeless people in the surgery department, and now they were stitched with a fishing line. And, of course, this annoyed me terribly: by that time, I personally had paid about a million dollars in taxes, but it turned out that the state did not even have enough money for suture material.

For two years I was in bed, my enterprises were working, but without Chapay and my whole business quickly collapsed.

I was left without money - a spinal disability, I can barely walk, no prospects. In 1998, I began to create funds for disabled people: at that time, in the late 1990s, in my opinion, quite promising laws on charity appeared. The ROC was allowed to trade in cigarettes and alcohol, Afghans shot each other in cemeteries, but the state, together with charitable foundations, financed some projects. We were engaged in sending disabled people to resorts. We provided three hundred disabled people.

In 2001, funding ended. Well, I still had some money, and I built myself a house in the village of Kolionovo, a hundred kilometers from Moscow. I wanted to go away and make myself a den. I had another spinal operation. And in 2004, I was diagnosed with cancer.

Damn, again, … your mother! A bunch of abdominal operations, metastases. After the tenth operation, I left for Kolionovo. The doctors said that I had three months left to live, and I decided that I would die in the village. Lived for three months, did not die. Another six months - alive. I took the land, started farming - and I did it. Today, those who are engaged in farming do not understand its economics at all: local guys helped me with land and equipment, and I helped them to organize the sale of products with a scheme, with economic modeling. The money went: we grow pears, apples, spruce seedlings, pines. Today in our nursery there are about 400 names, and they started with Christmas trees and pines. Now there are cereals, potatoes, animal feed. Variable products - that is, you can always change something. This year the lawn grass has burned down over the summer, there are losses, but the price of potatoes has risen, we will get something from the potatoes. Labor on earth is thankless, hard, the volumes are huge, the profits are difficult. But I like.

Mikhail Shlyapnikov

A few years after I arrived here, a hospital epic happened. I'll tell you. At one time, in the late nineties, I opened four private hospitals for the disabled - in Singapore, in Africa and in Germany. We took people there for rehabilitation. That is, I have some experience in this matter. When I arrived at Kolionovo and looked over the fence at the local hospital - and it is exactly behind my fence - I realized that the hospital, like an airplane, clearly falls in a dive. And if in 2004 patients who were treated by doctors still came here, then in 2006, when the leadership of the village council changed, they decided to make a nursing home from the hospital - they dispersed the doctors, leaving only nurses and nannies. I say: "Guys, give us a hospital, we will make a gorgeous place out of it, I have experience." But I didn’t squat in front of them, I didn’t give bribes, and the guys from the village council didn’t give me a hospital.

They decided to close the hospital this year. I know perfectly well what the word “close” means in Russia: the building will be dismantled, everything will be taken apart, and everything will be overgrown with weeds. I understood this, and the old people are local - I have the same need as they do. And I, too, saw how the orderlies threw bed patients into the snowdrifts. I connected my friends, some old connections, so that the hospital would not be closed, but they would let me rent it. But the administration is so stupid here! Yes, it is like this all over the country: they now associate themselves with the vertical, and on May 9 they let balls in together with the Kremlin, instead of helping the old people in the villages. There are still four old people in the hospital, and where are they now - on the street ?! War veterans, by the way.

I say: “I’ll solve the problem myself, I’ll build a new house for them, everything will be fine with them, we’ll turn on the light and water.” In general, this summer I was ready to take the hospital away, open a department with 20 free beds, and through the commercial use of the space, I would provide free patients. And the commercial use would be like this: the country has a huge need for places for bedridden patients after a stroke. Those who lie motionless in unsuitable apartments, and their relatives have to change their diapers. And one person, lying motionless, connects two able-bodied people. There are no recovery centers for them in Russia. We would take such patients and for little money - 20,000 a month - we would carry out rehabilitation. There is a huge need for this both in Moscow and Ryazan. There are such centers in Switzerland and Germany, but the course costs there not 20,000 rubles, but 20,000 euros. And I would have enough 20,000 rubles for staff salaries, electricity, electricity and free services for the elderly. And from the village hospital, which was opened 140 years ago, we would have made a candy, and a candy that is not controlled by the state. Why the state ?! Why the illiterate village council, which gave me the version that, they say, the people themselves demand that the hospital be closed, because there is an oversupply of beds in the country, and on the site of the hospital it is necessary to open a hostel for guest workers?

I made a fuss. You see, if they gave me the hospital, keeping the staff and all the equipment there, then it would take two million rubles, which I had, to restore it. And by the end of the summer I would have done everything. But in April the hospital was closed, and they began to send to me the tax authorities, the Rosselkhoznadzor, the police officers who were looking for cannabis in my garden. We have a meeting with the locals twice a week, as the caravan arrives. And there the old people and I decided to gather a village gathering and impeach the village council. More precisely, the head of the village council - Nina Aleksandrovna Morsh, who used to be an agronomist, and then the chairman of the collective farm, and successfully destroyed it.

There are seven people in the gathering, and this is legally possible, since, according to the third article of the constitution, the people exercise their power directly. We are the people, and I have read the constitution. We have the right to choose the government, and in exactly the same way we have the right to declare impeachment to this government. And in general, the village gathering should be held once a year, and there has never been one in Kolionovo.

At the first gathering, as soon as we sat down at the table in the courtyard, a hundred people came: the police with dogs, the prosecutor's office with video cameras, people from the village council. They swore around and shouted at the old women and the elderly: “You’ll all die here! You don't need a hospital! There, the local deputy was still running around in tears, saying: I can't do anything, I have my own bosses! I told her: yes, here are the old people, they chose you, they are your bosses. The old men, of course, were stunned: behind each of them there were more than ten people, and everyone was yelling. I wondered how they got through. There the youngest was seventy years old.

And at the beginning of June we declared impeachment to the village council: we created a precedent and threw off our power. But a criminal case was opened against me on charges of undermining the constitutional order. I found out about this quite by accident: I arrived in early July, a couple of weeks before the fires, a policeman. He brings the Talmud, accusations of overthrowing the constitutional order, of insulting the authorities and automatic weapons for illegal business. Plaintiff - N. A. Morsh. As evidence - tapes with a record of the descent, reprints from my LiveJournal and, most surprisingly, the testimony of witnesses who saw a pitchfork in my barn. On which I, apparently, was going to endure the administration. All thirteen employees of the village council are haunted by my pitchforks, all thirteen are busy with localizing and stopping the coup. In general, I sent the militiamen, now summons and instructions go jamb, but I do not care. I don't even know if there will be a court - I think the district prosecutor should break their Talmud for stupidity.

Fires started on 28 July. The smell of burning reached Moscow, swamps were burning, forests. The evacuation began. And my friends work here in the fire department, I called them. They said that a twenty-five-kilometer front of squally wind, combined with a top fire, was heading in our direction and would reach the village in a few hours. Ten firefighters are stuck in the swamp and are about to be burned. My friend Misha Kapustin, the driver in the fire, rushed to this swamp in a car, slipped two hundred meters of fire and took people out onto the road. And his superiors, under the threat of dismissal, forbade him to talk about this case - however, the guys whom he saved chipped in and bought him a gold watch.

We ran to open the hospital for fire victims and firefighters. We pushed into the closed one, and there the taps were torn out, the beds and beds were taken out. I said: “Let’s set up a center for fire victims at home, as much as I can, I’ll place it”. Around Kolionovo, we immediately made a fire-prevention plow, and on the 29th we went to the burnt-out villages - Mokhovoe and Kaganok. There people sit aloof, burnt cabbage in the beds, remnants of cars. They brought them food and water. A fundraising campaign was announced, Liza Glinka (founder of the Fair Aid Foundation - Esquire) helped a lot. We have known each other for a long time via the Internet, she heard about my story with the village council, and we met live in Beloomut on the third of August. She asked me to organize targeted assistance. We made a transshipment point in my yard: cars came from Moscow, brought water, clothes, groceries, and we re-equipped the cars and, in accordance with requests, brought them to addresses.

I set up three camps for volunteers: in Vereyka, in Ryazanovka, and near the town of Roshal. They brought everything they needed - pumps, knapsack fire extinguishers, clothes, ankle boots. We did everything quickly.

The village administration, though nothing for the volunteers and the victims of the fire, did not do anything, but it carefully monitored the situation: if anyone tried to take power into their own hands, it would immediately stop it. The village council in Polbino in mid-August very competently raised the youth, who came there to glorify in the fires: their pumps, saws, food were taken away from them. And to our camp in Ryazanovka, as soon as Shoigu announced that all the fires had been extinguished, the police came - they wanted to turn the camp down. But I have acquaintances in the fire, they saw how we work, and that we have everything: trunks, pumps, and sleeves. Our guys, together with them, made clearings in the forests for fire-fighting equipment, shed peat bogs, extinguished secondary centers, we saved two villages in the Ryazan region, and did not close the camp.

I've been living for a long time. I told the young guys, volunteers, not to count on being praised. I told them to sit quietly and not organize themselves. Because any such organization will be crushed from above. And indeed, as soon as the volunteers showed themselves as a real force, provocations began: they say, you only interfered, almost set the forests on fire. What's the point in getting into politics? We must act quietly and carefully.

But the local administration began to fear me - now I have the strength to trample them like a cigarette butt. Many people found out about me in connection with the fires, now you will not be silent. Although the summons, as before, are sent. I have no time for subpoenas now: peat fires continue to this day, and the victims of the fire still need help.

The volunteers, whom I tried to persuade not to get involved in politics, now I want to involve in a big business: to cut 60 hectares and to restore forests for two or three years. We will plant trees, pines, and also oak, linden, ash. The Meshchera consisted of mixed forests, it burned out, according to my estimates, 300,000 hectares, and it will recover itself in a hundred years. If we start planting, the regeneration process will accelerate up to ten years. It is useless for volunteers to clear the burnt forest - they need special equipment and government funding. But I hope that in six months they will clear the roads at least, and that is where we will plant our seedlings.

My possibilities are not endless, but even if we planted five percent of the gigantic Meshchera complex, that's already the case. Leskhozes have collapsed, they do not even have planting material, but I have it for a start.

We will allocate planting material for this business - up to a million seedlings and seedlings. To grow - on my leased territory, to which no police and administration will approach. Well, unless they plant hemp at night … You can grow in a greenhouse. What is the process? This is a costly and long-lasting work. You cannot dig a Christmas tree in a park in Moscow, plant it in a pot on the windowsill and bring it to Meschera in the spring. Caring for each tree from the moment of planting to the moment of disembarkation at a cost price is one hundred rubles. It is necessary to lay it for two years. A million trees - one hundred million rubles. Neither volunteers nor sponsors have such money. I am now applying for a loan for ten million rubles in order to ensure the people's breakthrough. Maybe someone else will throw some money. We will plant at the end of September, one hundred or two hundred thousand trees. They have already begun to plow the land, a camp for volunteers has been prepared, tents, parking, toilets. Planting will last until December; loan - for my farm.

In the fall - seedlings, in the winter we will germinate seeds in special greenhouses - we have artificial fog installations - so that everything is ready by spring. We found three hundred thousand trees at the forestry enterprises, but now, of course, they will raise prices: so a seedling ate two rubles, but now they announced me thirty rubles. Greenpeace promised to plant one and a half thousand seedlings; maybe we'll buy something in Canada.

On the website of our economy it is written that we are spared from the "stifling embrace of banks and the state." But I will have to fall into these arms - without credit for seedlings and seedlings, we will not be able to. Somehow before, I always managed it myself, at least three or four times I started everything from scratch. But then the trouble happened - you have to bow to the bank.

I love Kropotkin and my father Makhno. He collected everything that was - twenty books - about him: the memoirs of Frunze, and Denikin, and General Slashchev. And yet, you know, I no longer even like the theoretical works of Kropotkin, Bakunin and Proudhon, but the practical stories of the Hanseatic League. The anarchic state of the Hansa existed for six hundred years without presidents, without a constitution, and people were rich, happy and created works of art that are still valued today. Yes, those who inflated prices were thrown into the river there, but the church did not dominate, there were no kings, they did not fight or quarrel with anyone. There were eight hundred cities under this union. We, of course, will not be able to do this on a national scale. But I am building an anarchist model in my own village. Because I am here the youngest, the strongest, and I can help these seven old people. They won't jail me.

I am made of stone, I cannot be imprisoned.

The main milestones in the struggle of the leadership of the Russian Federation against forest fires

2000 The Federal Forestry Service and the State Committee for Environmental Protection were disbanded by presidential decree.

2005 The functions of ground forest protection were removed from the forestry authorities (70,000 full-time trackers) and transferred to the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources (400 full-time employees throughout the country).

2006 The State Duma adopts the new Forest Code of the Russian Federation: for - 358, against - 74, abstained - 1 person.

2007 The Forestry Code comes into force: the unified Avialesokhrana service is divided between the regions; the authority to protect forests has been transferred to local administrations and tenants; Leskhozes are divided into lesnichestvos with purely administrative functions and contractors carrying out forestry work on a contract basis. Mass layoffs of professional foresters - 170,000 people remain unemployed.

2009 Greenpeace submits 42,000 signatures to the presidential administration demanding the restoration of the state forest protection.

2010 According to the Global Fire Monitoring Center, as of August 13, the area of forest fires in Russia was 15 688 855 hectares, and according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations - only 832 215.6 hectares.