The other side of the village idyll

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

I came across an article about the joys of life in the countryside - How I left Moscow for the countryside. The article, in my opinion, is very indicative and illustrates the views of a city dweller.

There is an old anecdote that tourism and emigration should not be confused. This is approximately from the same opera - a person as a tourist has already noticed many advantages. But I have not yet fully become a local to understand the disadvantages of living in a village. And from this there are many funny myths in my head. Let's try to debunk some of these myths, since I had a chance to live in the village a little more than the author.

Well, first of all - a person lives 75 kilometers from Moscow. Which, as it were, in itself makes the apologetics of the village somewhat ridiculous. A village near Moscow is a village near gigantic financial flows. A typical village lacks this, and therefore, in an ordinary village, everything is somewhat sadder. Well, that's not even the point. We go point by point.

The person writes that there is no need to worry about traffic jams and parking. Yes. But you need to worry about off-roading. In many villages, roads can be stupid in winter and it is difficult to leave the village.

The man writes that he is not worried about rent and water charges, he lives in his house. Yes. But in reality, your home requires more costs. Financial including.

The man writes that he is not afraid of terrorists, because there is no public transport in the village, and he has not heard of rural child molesters either. There really are no terrorists. But the police very often do not. And if there is a district police officer, he is local, he is someone's relative. And in any conflict, he can support his own. As for the rural molesters, the key word here is “have not heard”. The village is part of society, so molesters and homosexuals are quite there even in it. It's just that the city mass media write about it not so often - it is not interesting for people.

A person writes that he has no opportunity to flood his neighbors and the neighbors to flood him. No. But there is an opportunity to burn down your house, or your neighbors can burn down half of the village. And with firefighters in villages, things are often not so great.

The man is happy that his shoes are not dirty with reagents. And there are no Asian janitors. It's great when you're young and you can swing a shovel and clean snow without reagents. When you are an elderly person, you begin to appreciate reagents and Asian janitors.

A person writes that he forgot how to get sick with the flu and other viral diseases. Yes, there are fewer people and fewer viruses. But medicine is also less accessible. Okay, you can go to a neighboring city and have a tooth treated. And if you need to lie in the hospital?

A person writes that he sells plots and houses and lives well from this. Here again we will remember that a person lives next to Moscow. In other areas, the job is getting worse. But the most important thing. After all, if a crisis occurs, work in the villages will disappear in the first place. Especially the construction and sale of plots. Actually, this is the main reason that people leave the villages. Bad with work in general, and very bad in a crisis.

And then the man throws a fly in the ointment into a barrel of honey. He writes that villagers go to Moscow to work as security guards, they say the security guard's salary is enough for booze. Although there is work in the village as milkmaids and shepherds with a good salary. Here a man makes a popular mistake. He confuses two seemingly close concepts - “there is work” and “there is work now”. There is a work? Here are the village fools who do not go as shepherds. And the fact that the villagers, perhaps, had previously worked on the collective farm 5 times with salary delays, experienced the collapse of collective farms and scammers many times, and empirically came to the conclusion that they will be more stable as a guard in the city - the townspeople do not see this. After all, right now there is work, it would seem.

Separately about drunkenness. The man further, as if mockingly, writes that his children are good in the village, they play paintball. That comrades are coming to them from the city to play. Strange, why aren't the village children playing with them? Maybe because there is no money in the village for not cheap paintball equipment? After all, paintball is purely urban fun. And that's the strength of the city - more work - but also more leisure opportunities. Cinema, cafes, clubs and circles, sections and swimming pools - all this the villager is almost devoid of. And drunkenness is largely due to this. From the poverty of cultural choice. But a city dweller 70 km from Moscow does not see this.

Further passages about clean ecology - as always in such passages without any measurements. That is, fantasies, in other words.

And in the end, that the person has become healthier, sleeps better and is gaining weight. Which, again, is pure subjectivity. I could cite as an example hundreds of cases when the villagers, moving to the city, became healthier - but people won’t understand.

Part 2 - dogs and income

The article about the village idyll left readers with a number of questions (sometimes completely unexpected). I will try to explain to the best of my ability.

Animal lovers wrote a lot that the village is very good, since there are no doghunters in the village. For all the villages I will not say - but in my small homeland, everything was harsh before. When many dogs bred, the head of the council issued an order to shoot (apparently, some small money was paid for this). And the hunters rode through the village and shot stray dogs. Of course, someone's dogs that ran without a collar, or the collar was unobtrusive, could and did get under the distribution.

But all this was in Soviet times. In a happy democracy, everything magically changed. The collective farm collapsed, there was very little work. The LTP was closed, and it became difficult to force drinkers to be sent. Some of the people have become completely devastated and fell into terrible poverty. In these conditions, it suddenly became clear that the dog is not only a friend of man, but also a source of meat. First, stray dogs were caught. Then they began to breed dogs of large breeds for meat. Why dogs and not rabbits and pigs - I don't know. I know that they bred and bred. Perhaps due to the fact that our climate is harsh and the grazing period for the same goats could be two or three months a year. And the dog is still more unpretentious.

The apologists of the village also wrote a lot about the fact that it is possible to live in the village. And you can even live well. And that they have an example before their eyes, Vasya Pupkin lives well in the village, and there is a jeep, and a big house, and in general he would not have settled in the city like that.

Let's digress from the Russian countryside for a moment and imagine such a hypothetical situation. You are talking, for example, with a resident of Somalia - let's call him Karim Abdul (Jabar). And you say to this African: “Listen, your people are dying of hunger, you have been at war for several decades, you can't live.” And Karim Abdul answers you quite honestly: “But I run a business (repairing machine guns, for example), I earn good money, I have my own workshop, I bought a jeep, three wives, two houses near the sea. And the war in our area is rare, the last time was 2 years ago. And if I went to Europe as a refugee, I would drive a taxi at best”. Where is Karim Abdul wrong? He is right about everything. You are just talking about different things - you are talking about how difficult or very difficult life is for the majority. And he talks about a minority - about himself.

Here is exactly the same situation with Vasya Pupkin. Is it possible to live in a village? Can. Can you live well and prosper? If you find your own business niche - quite. How does this contradict the fact that it is easier to live in the city, and the overwhelming majority of people in the city live better than the vast majority of the villagers? Doesn't contradict in any way. Moreover, the fact of a better life in the city is easily confirmed by the migration flow. People leave the village for the city. There are those who travel to the countryside from the city. But if this is not a closed cottage community near a metropolis, then there will be ten such return migrants, and possibly a hundred times less. If you want to challenge this, find any acquaintance from the village and try to persuade him to return home. You will learn a lot of new things.

But you can also combine the advantages of life in the countryside and in the city, the inquisitive reader will notice. You can live in a village, 70 kilometers from the city, and go to work in the metropolis. And the ecology is good, and the salary is urban! Again, it's hard to say at all. Personally, I observed the options for such a life in Moscow (Moscow region), in Yaroslavl (Kostroma region), well, my friends told me how it happens in Houston. In Moscow, even if you live 10 km from the Moscow Ring Road, you need to get there in an hour at best. And this will be the hour at which you will curse everything in the world. If you live a little further, you will spend two hours and three hours on the road, you will look like a driven horse.

Exactly the same thing I saw in the Kostroma region, when people went by train to Yaroslavl. Get up at 5 o'clock, run to the train, and in the evening it’s good if you’re at home after 9. When to live? Never.

Well, Houston. Do not believe, as they say, also traffic jams. Also go from one suburb to another. Also from an hour to unpredictability. There is work in the city center as well. In theory, there is. In practice, it is difficult to get a job in a place with good accessibility, there is work in the ridges. And it's the same with houses. The more conveniently located the area, the more expensive it is. So - most often it is a utopia.

And, perhaps, it is worth saying a few words about village crime. Because, apparently, the residents of the city have no idea what it is. And this is one of the fundamental differences between village life. Well, and about why swinging a shovel, clearing snow, does not seem to me a worthy occupation. And about ecology. To be continued.

Part 3 - children in the village

Yes, there are disadvantages in village life, some readers agree (from those who, according to the classics, recognized Soviet power a little earlier than England, but somewhat later than Greece). But these disadvantages are negligible and incomparable with the advantages. And the biggest plus is that it is better for children to live in the village. Well, let's talk a little about the children in the village.

Actually, what are the advantages for children? The plus is that you can live in a big house (because houses in the village are cheap, and cheap because no one needs nafig, but for some reason this simple conclusion does not come to mind). And that plus, that the ecology, that fresh air, space and fresh milk and all that. We will talk about ecology in detail, and first about more boring things.

First, that a large apartment is quite possible to buy in the city. But this requires some effort. A house in a village is initially cheap - precisely because efforts will have to be made in the future. But this is such prose, but space and fresh milk.

The spaciousness of the rustic has its drawbacks. If something happens, no one will help the child, and it will simply be difficult to find. So, the author of these lines once miraculously did not freeze in a frosty winter. Not frozen just because they managed to find it. A couple of kids from my school froze. A child ran, fell into a crack in the ice on the river (or simply climbed in and could not get out). Someone in the city would help. And in the village they found it on the third day. Space comes at a price.

But even this space is conditional. Now your child is being born. He does not run across open spaces. First, they take him out for a walk in a wheelchair. In the city they take him out for a walk in a park cleared of snow. With lanterns in the evening and reagents underfoot. In the village, however, you can often walk with a sled along the main and only cleared street. In the city, a child can be shown to orthopedists and pediatricians at least every day. Choose from a dozen of paid clinics. And if the child has a temperature - call an ambulance. In many villages, ambulances only take a few hours to travel. And people keep a supply of medicines at home for all occasions - because if something happens, there will simply be no one to help. Did your baby fall off the couch? You go to the emergency room, fortunately 10 minutes on foot and 5 by car. Is your baby eating poorly? You are thinking whether to go to the clinic, or you can call a private doctor at home. In a village, the choice of your actions will be greatly narrowed, and not all villages have a first-aid post at all, let alone private specialists.

In the city, since a year, children have been going to developmental games. Of which the author has within walking distance - a dozen and a half. There won't be one in the village. In the city, you can choose between a kindergarten with a swimming pool and a kindergarten with English. In the village, at best, there will be one or two kindergartens, where both your children and the children of local lumpen will go. For example, the author knows a case when a whole group of one village kindergarten contracted tuberculosis. Most likely this happened because someone's dad led an asocial lifestyle (he left the zone, for example). And in the same way in everyday life - your child's companions will very often be the children of local lumpen - because there may not be other children nearby. I remember when I was a child, classmates started an interesting discussion. The more painful the parents beat. Someone was beaten with a slipper, someone with a boiler. I was silent - my parents did not beat me.

But another thing is more important - education. Children go to school. Let's even assume that there are no lumpen children in this school (who will start smoking at age 10 and drinking at age 12). Suppose ordinary children of average ability. And let's say your child is growing up with slightly above average abilities. How can he develop them? There will be no special classes with in-depth study. Special schools "with a bias" - too. And most importantly, the child will have no one to compare himself with. He will see that he understands a little better than his peers. And it will be logical to consider your level to be the highest and unattainable. Because everyone around is clearly dumber. Getting into the city in the future, your child will be amazed - his level is not only unattainable, this level is very average, and there are hundreds of children nearby who think faster. Simply because they grew up in competition not with the middle peasants, but by chance. Simply because they initially saw what they can strive for. And yours grew up according to the principle - “the first guy in the village, and the village is me alone”. As a result, someone spends years “catching up” with an unobvious result, while life breaks off someone very severely. Yet you have heard the evil proverb - “You can leave a girl from the village, but you can’t leave the village from a girl”? This is precisely about the village “stars” who are used to being the first for no particular reason - simply because there is no competition.

So, one more time. The advantage of the city for children is that the range of possibilities is wider, there are more options. And yes - we are not talking about agricultural work. Approximately 100% of my friends hated agricultural work. Because their children were forced to dig potatoes. But this is so, by the way.

Well, a little about ecology, crime and snow removal and the practice of ancestral nests. To be continued.