The other side of the village idyll. Ending

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

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Reviews are received for a small cycle about village life. And among them there are good ones and to the point. For example, "in the village there are no molesters and pedophiles, in the village everything is in plain sight." The French Academy of Sciences reasoned about the same when it decided that all the stories about meteorites are lies: "Nothing can fall from the sky, because there is space above, and not the firmament." The initial message is correct, but the person does not draw the correct conclusions from them.

Part 7 - "crime and drunkenness"

Since the village is a part of society, there will be homosexuals and molesters in the village in the same way. Perhaps, if there are two courtyards in the village and five people live, then they would be all in sight. If there are several thousand people, then it is already possible to know everything about everyone only hypothetically. In order not to be abstract - I know a case, they caught a molester in the village. The real molester was the verdict of the court and the man was imprisoned. As far as I remember, there was a music teacher who had the opportunity to mess around with children. Well, on his forehead that he was a molester, it was not written - he had a wife, he had his own child. He lived in the village for several years until everything was revealed. I chose children from those who are more haunted. So - it can happen in the city, and in the village, too.

But this is still an infrequent crime. And there are also frequent ones. This is theft, this is violent crime. And here we need to make one more remark.

Another thoughtful conclusion was met in the comments - “the villagers cannot drink a lot, they don’t have money”. Well what can I say - they are being driven. The selling price of disgusting moonshine is significantly lower than that of an excisable product. Moonshine is now decriminalized, and it was not particularly persecuted before. If there is at least one pensioner in the family, they drink to retire. Fortunately, while living in your house, you don't have to pay for a communal apartment, you have to heat it with what you have to and what you have to do. Drunkenness is one of the causes of crime, the second is impunity and the third is poverty.

Drunkenness is greatly exacerbated by lack of work and impunity. At some stage, having a job keeps a person from drinking and does not allow him to drink. After some stage, work does not hold up either. As for impunity … Why, for example, are there very few drunks on the streets in Moscow? Because those who drank heavily were knocked out by black realtors in the 90s. Because to appear drunk in a back alley meant a high chance of being robbed. Or just beaten up, become a punching bag for street fighters. As a result, even if a person gets drunk, they often call a taxi for him, they take him home, someone accompanies him and restrains his impulses. There are drunk people - but very few. Compared to the 90s, it is simply vanishingly small. Again, people are holding on to work. Many people have mortgages - they got drunk, flew out of work, and lost their apartment. It seems that the mortgage is slavery - but it keeps people, does not allow them to break down. The city is tough - but this toughness has its advantages as well. Again - a lot of police officers and security. There is a great chance for drunk people to get rid of them.

And how is it in the village? You can go drunk and shout a song and piss right on the main street. People will laugh and that's all. The main danger is that you can freeze (and freeze) in winter. Well, or get poisoned (and poison themselves). Or catch a squirrel.

Once I read an interview with a narcologist in my city. He was asked - are there many cases of alcohol poisoning? He said that for the past several years he did not remember such. And he clearly connected this with the fact that there is work in the city. That people get settled and work. In the village, everything is exactly the opposite. At first, a person gets drunk from lack of work. And then he can’t resist at work.

Well, hence the theft. When they drag everything that is bad. To the extent that a house is worth nobody's for a week, and the house will be dismantled for firewood. More often than not, they steal a little - and then not a lot. Hence the cute village habit of keeping dogs - it did not appear from scratch. Hence the custom to put the fence higher. There are cameras everywhere in the city, the police are working in the city - and who will you go to in the village if your firewood has been stolen? They are valuable to you - but the actual damage is small, and you will not start a case

Well, another type of crime is violent. They kill for a drunken business, beat, maim. They are imprisoned for murder, rarely for beatings. And the same specificity of the village - if in the city they can call the police, if they just started shouting songs behind the wall, then in the village in their hut they will first play, then there will be a scuffle, and then they will kill someone, and maybe the next day the district police officer will call … Or maybe the person just won't be counted. One of my classmates just disappeared. Either he drowned for a squirrel somewhere, or he was killed. And more from personally seen examples. One classmate sat down for murder, was killed by drunkenness. The neighbor sat down for the murder. Another classmate sat down for theft, they broke down the place where there was a lot of food - a kindergarten. One neighbor burned to death - she was smoking in bed drunk. Another with a cigarette fell asleep in a scarf or a polyester shawl or something. The plastic melted into the face, but remained alive. Ce la vie in the village.

So you shouldn't sing the praises of the village as a kind of repository of moral principles and precepts of ancestors. There are crimes in the city - but they also exist in the countryside. And there are at least no less of them.

Well, then I will try to summarize and tell you about the real practice of birth nests.

Part 8 - "move to the countryside"

People are moving en masse from village to city. And extremely rarely - from city to village. It is extremely rare - if you do not take the option when people take a town house in a newly built cottage village or microdistrict, within a spit distance from the city. And in the morning they go to the city to work, and in the evening - back, spending many hours on the road. Hypothetically, it seems to be winning in money, but paying off with hours of life, which add up to years. But this can hardly be called a real move. Let's talk about a real move - when people travel far, when they build their income on what they earn in the village.

First of all, are there many people verbally expressing a desire to move to the village? A lot, a lot. There used to be fewer people than wanting to leave the country - now, apparently, there are more. The motives are about the same - fatigue from what is happening, in life something does not add up and does not work out. And I want to look for reasons not in myself, but in the country - or in the city. "Yes, this damned country, in the West I would have earned 10 times more." "But the ecology is all poisoned, fatigue is all the time, but in nature, what kind of air, you immediately feel a surge of strength." Scientifically, this is called escapism. In the case of emigration, not so many of those who were broadcasting that “it's time to blame” actually left. For most of them, a trip for a couple of weeks once a year was enough. In the case of the village, it is exactly the same - we went to our relatives or to the dacha for the summer, admired - and that's enough.

Nevertheless, there are those who make up their minds. Of the most famous and media outlets - the Ukrainian downshifter Koshasty and the Russian man of dubious reputation (swindler?) Sterligov. In either case, it is extremely difficult to single out the real component and the component of the media. Therefore, I'd better tell you about a couple of less well-known cases that my friends told about. They seem to illustrate two different approaches - romantic and pragmatic.

First story. There were several religious people. Too religious. In an extreme form, these are also called pgm. In general, they were led to some of the network propaganda, from those that call on family estates to build, and decided to leave the city and sin and to live in the countryside. We gathered families, found an abandoned village far enough away and left. We left in the summer. After a fairly short time, it turned out that in the village - you need to have hands. It takes a lot and hard work to make the abandoned huts live again. At first, the wives could not stand it, they sent everything and returned to the bosom of civilization with their children. And then one of the settlers started drinking, began to run about with an ax in a binge and destroy everything. And it was going towards autumn, it was uncomfortable to sleep with broken windows, and even more so with a drunken man running around with an ax. In a word, people returned to the sinful city.

The second story. The story was told by a good acquaintance, a businessman who rose to his work in the 90s. He lived in trade, turned around. He did not specify why he decided to go to the village, and I did not ask. I think the reasons were pragmatic, since man was far from lofty matters. As a pragmatic person, he thought about the source of income. Reasonably assuming that you can't live from the garden, I decided to put a small processing plant in the village (I can't decipher it, all the people were just sharing with me). Not considering himself smarter than others, he and his brother traveled around all similar enterprises in the neighborhood, personally consulted with the owners, learned the nuances of the case and pitfalls. He built a factory, as he proudly says - he built it wisely, taking into account the mistakes of similar factories. Alas, he took into account technological mistakes and made human ones. “I was warned,” he told me: “Don't pay workers more than the minimum amount. Nobody pays here anymore. I didn't listen. I figured - there should have been profit, enough and pay more. I thought - what do I feel sorry for? In vain. I paid my first salary. The next day no one was at work - everyone was drinking. It turns out that they were paid a little - so that there was less money for vodka. Well, it only got worse after that. It was. Believe it or not - once for half an hour I went to the notary for something. I come - everyone is drunk, nothing works. After some time, I hit the worker for the first time, then the second.” My friend is a merchant, a merchant, he is not one of those who like to humiliate people. He tells about this with sadness: “After a while I could not beat people with his fists. Because my fists were already aching. He began to walk with a stick and beat him with a stick. But it didn’t help, I couldn’t stand over people with a stick all the time. While there - something seems to be moving, as there is no me - all to dust. And money could be made, the topic was quite popular. In short, we sold the factory and returned to the city”.

These are such different stories that ended the same way. Which lead us to the idea that moving to a village is by no means easy. Well, then I will try to summarize and tell the advantages of the village in comparison with the city.

Part 9 - “the idea of returning to the village”

It is worth saying a few words about the very idea of returning to the roots, to the origins - to the village. It would seem - well, what's wrong that people strive for the land, to live by their labor in ecologically clean places, in ancestral estates, like their great-grandfathers and ancestors?

What's wrong with the fact that this move to the village is actively promoted by the builders of cottage settlements and townhouses? What's wrong with the fact that they urge to buy their houses at a high price in the most remote places? The bad news is that in most cases (perhaps the overwhelming majority), all of their advertising is based on lies.

People are taught that it will be more comfortable to live in the village. In reality, a city dweller who has moved to a village and continues to work in the city only gets many hours of traffic jams (or at least many hours of acquaintance with the electric trains). And a person who has left a job in the city, in most cases, it is difficult to find himself in the village.

People are promised fabulous comfort against the backdrop of a rustic idyll. But in reality, it takes a long and difficult time to solve the simplest everyday issues (like cleaning the snow at the kaliki yourself instead of an Asian janitor in the city, yes). Someone likes this, the majority of modern city dwellers are simply not ready for this.

People are promised good health from good ecology - but in reality, the life expectancy of a rural dweller is shorter than that of a city dweller. And if at the age of 30 it seems that clearing the path of snow from the porch to the fence is very good for your health, then at 60 it is a damn good way to get a heart attack.

I had a chance to communicate with the inhabitants of the Russian North. In Soviet times, people went to the North to earn money. Well, there was such a fetish - to retire to the south. To the Krasnodar Territory, or at least to the Belgorod Region. And so the northern old-timers noted that those who lived in the North and retired - they lived for quite a long time. And those who, having retired, moved to the village to pursue a vegetable garden in the blessed south - they died very quickly. Very often literally in the same year when they moved. People associated this with climate change, with the transition to retirement, but I think that the very fact of the fulfillment of the dream of moving as the cause of death figured quite well for itself.

And of course, one cannot but mention the case when the idea of village life begins to be promoted at the state level. Fortunately, an example is close at hand - in one neighboring country, where the national idea has become "a garden cherry khata". And the creation of an agrarian superpower. And in general, this has led to quite noticeable results in just three years. Separately, you need to lay out statistics (and lay out), but if it is so short, people have become poorer, and the birth rate has fallen. Simply put - dreams of the village as an ideal, in other words - selyukism, lead to the impoverishment of people and the extinction of the country. Remember this fact when another storyteller, paid by realtors, will broadcast to you about the delights of breeding pigs in an ecologically clean family backyard.

By the way, it always makes sense to start by asking this thing - does he live in the village himself? And if so, what kind of village is it (a cottage village a kilometer from the Moscow Ring Road, it may look picturesque on the avenues, but for some reason I don’t want to consider it a truly family nest)? And if this is a real village - how does he earn in the village? They are very fond of citing freelancers as an example. That a man lives somewhere near the devil on the horns, and earns by working remotely. And by the way, yes - again Ukraine, offshore programming and other low-end work. About three years ago it was fashionable to talk about IT clusters there. Now conversations about this have subsided somehow, perhaps due to the absurdity of the idea itself. So - remote freelancing. Freelancing is not suitable for everyone due to character. Freelancing is not suitable for everyone due to the specifics of the work. Well, it is quite possible that freelancing will disappear when the structure of the economy changes. Here, as they write, the Russian communities of Thailand and Goa, consisting of freelancers and people who rented apartments in Moscow, practically disappeared during the crisis. Consider this funny fact.

Well, then I will try to summarize and tell the advantages (real and illusory) of the village in comparison with the city.

Part 10 - "Russian and non-Russian village"

Readers asked why there is so much criticism of the Russian countryside? Is the author a Russophobe? Didn't the State Department order him a libel in order to denigrate and undermine? Why doesn't he write about the Caucasian villages, where they don't drink and there is no crime, and the population is not dying out, and therefore village life is not bad?

When asked this, there is a feeling that we live with the questioners in different galaxies. Because those living in our galaxy should know that the Caucasus is not like crime - there have been several wars in different parts over the past 15-20 years. Cruel and bloody wars. We can talk for a long time about the cultural prerequisites for wars, but in general it is customary to call it agrarian overpopulation. At the same time, the actual population may not be so much - but even this number of people lacks work. And if young people have not left for megacities, as is the case in Russia, then their energy is destructive. This happened in the Caucasus, when the Soviet system collapsed, funds became scarce and a struggle began for the rest. Much the same is happening in other parts of the world. The author personally had a chance to visit a country like El Salvador. There is a 1980 film "El Salvador", in which formally socialists, but in fact - peasants are fighting (for the land) for freedom. Tellingly, almost 40 years have passed since then - and in fact, a sluggish war is still going on. Now only the rebels are called drug guerrillas. Agrarian overpopulation as it is. Really - fear hangs in the air, barbed wire is everywhere and people with weapons. One of the most unpleasant countries I've ever seen. However, neighboring countries are experiencing the same problems there.

If we talk about villages that are less exotic, but not Russian, then I happened to be in the conventionally national villages of the North, and, well, to hear about the villages of Russian Buryatia and the auls of Azerbaijan. In the Russian North, from what I have seen, non-Russian northern residents are terribly intoxicated. This is due to the lack of work, and the fact that they take alcohol worse. Where life is richer - there even non-Russian residents tend to the cities. From this happened to be in the uluses of Sakha-Yakutia. The republic has risen well on diamonds there, but the trend is the same - you don't need a lot of people to graze deer, so young people leave for the city. You can get better in the city and life is easier.

As they talked about the Buryat villages - they live by sawing the forest. Where it is possible, life is rich. But since there is nothing special to do (again, the problem of the limited cultural choice in the village) - they buy cars for the forest, drunk people drive cars (drunken rides, as we see, are by no means characteristic of Russian villages). An ethnic Buryat told me about the village, and made a simple conclusion - “there is nothing to do there, it seems that you can even earn money, but you want to leave there”. Exactly in the same terms, the city Azerbaijanis familiar to me spoke of their native Azerbaijani villages: “Oh, they have arranged marriages there, but there are not many people, so they marry relatives” - and those who tell with their whole appearance showed that “horror is horror”, they just didn't say "fu" (in other words - again the same poverty of choice, in this case the choice of a life partner, and again - there is nothing to do there). By the way, as noted in the comments, the Russian village has the same problem, albeit in a slightly different specifics. There are a dozen guys suitable for a girl, five of them will leave, three are drinking terribly, and one will sit down. And the choice is narrowed down to one or two people, that is, there is no choice.

Well, in this small, and not entirely representative review, I wanted to try to convey a simple idea - the problems of the village are quite universal, and the specific Russian character does not at all make these problems more difficult than in other parts of the world. Rather, on the contrary, in Russia these problems are leveled by the fact that urbanization is taking place. And this is a great blessing. Where urbanization does not take place, we see war in its most monstrous manifestations.

I see no reason to consider the situation with European villages. Agriculture dates back a lot in Europe, plus a significant amount of money is invested in tourism advertising for all these "Alpine cows". Roughly speaking, people live off subsidies and tourism, not from the land. Not the agricultural sector, but post-industrial. In this segment of history, it still exists, but economic and human degradation, even in the last 10 years, is quite obvious.

Well, then I will try to summarize and tell the advantages (real and illusory) of the village in comparison with the city.

Part 11 - "pluses of country life - real and illusory"

I would like to tell a little about the advantages of the village - about the real and the imaginary.

So, there is an opinion that the village is good already because it is easier to control children in the village - they are in full view all the time. We have already discussed earlier that education in the countryside is not that worse - it's just that there is a much narrower choice. So - with the control of children in the village, too, everything is by no means great. In theory, yes, it's easier to control. In practice, remembering from my own childhood in the village, this alleged control of children will not save absolutely nothing from anything. Likewise, kids will start smoking early and drinking early if you don't raise them right. Rather, on the contrary, in large cities there is already a fashion for a healthy lifestyle. It is not a fact that this fashion has reached every village. It is not a fact that it will be easy for your child to refrain from not smoking, for example, when all classmates will already smoke with might and main (and very early).

It is believed that potatoes in the city are rubbish, but their own ones from the garden are useful and they have more vitamins. What can I say - a person who prefers to eat his own potatoes will have to be ready to sort them out several times during the winter, throwing out the rotten ones and taking away the sprouted ones. He will have to think over measures to combat rats, who also love potatoes very much. The pleasure of bulkheading dirty and rotten vegetables is not only below average, but it is also not very useful for health to breathe dirt and rot. As for the rest of the vegetables - more recently in the USSR there were lovely customs - to salt cabbage for the winter and roll cucumbers. And even the townspeople did it - for the simple reason that there were few fruits and vegetables on sale in winter. Now almost no one bothers with such garbage, except for very stubborn gardeners and people with very low incomes. But if you are a pensioner, if the children do not help you and you cannot afford potatoes from the store, perhaps this is your way out. Everyone else chooses the store.

As readers rightly note, there is depopulation in big cities, the example of Detroit and Kadykchan should teach us. Well, what can I say - unlike the author of this comment, I saw Kadykchan. And so I know that this is not a large city, but a small village. Which was closed - as they closed or naturally closed thousands of other settlements and villages. So you shouldn't cite the depopulation of cities as an example - in this competition the villages will lose by a thousand to one, alas.

As they write, the village is independence from everything and everyone. The ability to produce everything yourself. It just so happened, I know the example of one village, which for about a month or two a year was completely independent from the outside world. A river separated the village from the city, there was no bridge when the ice had not yet formed or was already beginning to melt - there was no communication with the city. It was then that one could enjoy independence “as it is”. That is, if a person were seriously ill, they would probably send a helicopter. But if, for example, teeth hurt, then no one would send a helicopter. And it was necessary to wait stupidly for a month, tormented by pain. And even there, I don’t even want to talk about such banal things as fuel, cartridges or information. Independence from the city is more of a spherical horse in a vacuum, leave dreams of it for sociopathic schoolchildren.

They also write that digging potatoes gives a feeling of satisfaction, independence and self-sufficiency. Generally speaking, such a message is more likely to indicate that the other does not give this feeling. That work does not give satisfaction, that family life does not. In this case, someone is looking for recreation in games, someone goes hunting or fishing (no matter where - it is important to get away from home), someone even joins sects. Here is a simple advice - to change something in life, if such a situation exists.

Well, then I will try to summarize and tell the minuses of the city in comparison with the village.

Part 12 - "the mighty Dedugan"

They talk a lot and often about the village as a special microcosm, its own little world. It is usually customary to talk about this with a kind of tenderness, like this is how good it is, people live for centuries in one place, everyone knows each other (and they don’t need anything from life). I would like to say a few words about the other side of this phenomenon, which is not so cute.

The reverse side of such a microcosm is that due to the limited experience, a person often cannot make the right decision, which goes beyond the experience. Actually, at the household level, due to this, sometimes people from the countryside look very rustic and lost in the city.

For example, a man told how he observed the preparation in a village school for performing in some city competition. Further, literally - “and it’s okay, that not everything works out with people. Okay, the level is not high. People simply did not understand that they had to perform differently in principle. Because there will be a big stage in the city, you need to move on it in a different way, speaks into the microphone - the hall will be bigger, and people have never performed except in a large room, where it is enough to speak so that a hundred people around can hear. I try to tell them - but they simply don't understand. There is simply no such experience."

This example is harmless, as soon as people see another scene - and they will understand everything. Fortunately, the schoolchildren are young people, the psyche is mobile. It is much worse when the same thing manifests itself in adults and in more fundamental things.

For example, they told a man from TV for 40 years and three years that living in a village is useful, that the ecology is better there. And when you say - in fact, no, in fact, there is statistics on Russia that urban residents live longer than rural residents, that there is even statistics that the inhabitants of agrarian Georgia, where the mountains are clean, and which under the USSR were always cited as an example of longevity - So, the inhabitants of this oasis live 5 years less than in gas-polluted Moscow with a million factories - people do not understand. Because it goes beyond their experience. And you hear arguments from adult sexually mature people at the 2nd grade level of the parish school. “Ha-ha-ha, how is it that people live less in the village? That’s urban (Muscovite, Masonic - the right word to substitute) propaganda. Yes, I have a friend Dedugan, he is 60 years old (and looks at all 80), but he will squeeze your hand when shaking hands, you will forget how to scold the village”.

And it's somehow even embarrassing to explain to an adult that the presence of one acquaintance of a mighty grandfather in a person does not refute statistics in any way. There are statistics. According to these statistics, rural residents live less. Simply, statistics need to be understood correctly. Especially for the mighty Dedugan acquaintances, it does not follow from statistics that every villager will die before the city's peer. Statistics only say that for one mighty rural grandfather, there are a dozen elderly men who will die much earlier than their urban peers. Or one middle-aged villager who will die in the middle years.

By the way - the author has some rural classmates, from those who started drinking before high school, by the age of 25 they looked 40, and after 30 they died. Although ecology and all that. Well, yes - living in a city, you may find that there are very healthy, strong elderly people in the city. So, the author has one familiar elderly man every day in frost, rain or wild heat runs through the stadium 50 laps. Although the urban and according to the village logic should have already died from monstrous urban diseases and bad ecology. I have seen old people from the city who even went to the base camp of Everest (it is very difficult).

It's just that I don't draw far-reaching conclusions from the presence of such acquaintances, but prefer to look at the statistics. One swallow does not make spring, one mighty Dedugan does not in any way refute the sad statistics for the village. But the presence of people foaming at the mouth arguing “yes, I saw the dedugan myself, down with the propaganda” - perfectly illustrates all the flawedness of limited perception while living in the village. This is not fatal, you just need to understand it and be open to new (for yourself) arguments.

What rural thinking leads to in extreme forms is well illustrated by the example of one neighboring country. In which the most senior politicians wrote in all seriousness three years ago: “We need to sign the Euro-association. And Russia - Russia is not going anywhere. we only need cheap gas and a market for our goods from it, and nothing else”. The consequences of such a rural trick are the loss of both the market and cheap gas. So - get out of the microcosm, read statistics, do not draw conclusions from unrepresentative data.

Well, then I will try to summarize the disadvantages of the city in comparison with the village to tell. To be continued.