From the prosperous West to the Russian hinterland

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

The story of an American family with two children, 9 years old, who settled in a Russian village.

“We have settled in a wonderful area. This is a fairytale. True, the village itself resembled a settlement from a disaster movie. My husband said that this is how it is almost everywhere and that it is not worth paying attention to - the people here are good.

I didn't really believe it. And our twins were, it seemed to me, a little frightened by what was happening.

Finally, I was horrified that on the very first school day, when I was just about to drive up to pick up the twins in our car (it was about a mile to school), they were already brought directly to the house by some not quite sober man in a creepy semi-rusty jeep similar to the old Fords.

In front of me, he apologized for a long time and wordy for something, referred to some holidays, scattered in praise for my children, conveyed greetings from someone and left.

I fell upon my innocent angels, who were violently and cheerfully discussing the first day of school, with stern questions: did I really tell them little so that they NEVER DARE EVEN TO APPEAR CLOSE TO ANOTHER PEOPLE ?! How could they get into the car with this man ?!

In response, I heard that this is not a stranger, but the head of the school, who has golden hands and whom everyone loves very much, and whose wife works as a cook in the school cafeteria. I was numb with horror. I sent my children to the den !!! And everything seemed so cute at first sight … Numerous stories from the press about the wild morals reigning in the Russian outback were spinning in my head …

… I will not intrigue you further.

Life here turned out to be really wonderful, and especially wonderful for our children. Although I'm afraid I got a lot of gray hair because of their behavior. It was incredibly difficult for me to get used to the very idea that nine-year-olds (and ten-, and so on later) my children, according to local customs, are, first of all, considered more than independent.

They go for a walk with the local kids for five, eight, ten hours - two, three, five miles, into the forest or into a terrible completely wild pond. That everyone goes to and from school here on foot, and they soon began to do the same - I just don't mention it.

And secondly, here children are largely considered common. They can, for example, come with the whole company to visit someone and immediately have lunch - not drink something and eat a couple of cookies, namely, have a hearty lunch, purely in Russian. In addition, in fact, every woman, in whose field of vision they come, immediately takes responsibility for other people's children, somehow completely automatically; I, for example, learned to do this only in the third year of our stay here.

NOTHING HAPPENS TO CHILDREN HERE.

I mean, they are not in any danger from humans. None of them. In big cities, as far as I know, the situation is more similar to the American one, but here it is so and so. Of course, children themselves can do a lot of harm to themselves, and at first I tried to somehow control this, but it turned out to be simply impossible.

At first I was amazed at how soulless our neighbors are, who, when asked where their child is, answered quite calmly "running somewhere, will gallop to dinner!"

Lord, in America this is a matter of jurisdiction, such an attitude! It took a long time before I realized that these women are much wiser than me, and their children are much more adapted to life than mine - at least as they were in the beginning.

We Americans pride ourselves on our skill, skill, and practicality. But, having lived here, I realized with sadness that this is sweet self-deception. Maybe - it was like that once.

Now we - and especially our children - are slaves of a comfortable cage, in the bars of which a current is passed, which completely prevents the normal, free development of a person in our society.

If the Russians are somehow weaned from drinking, they will easily conquer the entire modern world without firing a single shot. I declare this responsibly”.

RUSSIAN GERMANS RETURN FROM GERMANY TO RUSSIA

Back to freedom!

And with whole families. And not to rich Moscow or St. Petersburg, but to … remote villages. What did not suit them in their new homeland and why do they like life without gas, Internet and roads more than civilized Europe?

- … Germans? - Scratching his stomach, a peasant asks us who volunteered to show where the settlers live in the Voronezh Atamanovka farm. - Why look for them: there is a house, there is still more … They are normal, but … some strange: they do not drink, do not smoke, do not eat meat …

"CHANGED CIVILIZATION FOR FREEDOM"

We find 39-year-old Alexander Vink at work: he fills a concrete mixer with gravel at his house. By all building signs, an increase in the area of an old house is coming.

“We bought it as soon as we moved here,” he puts down his shovel and shakes off his denim overalls. - Look: the land, the garden, the goats are jumping, vegetables from their garden, three hundred meters to the pond, the kids and wife are happy.

He looks around his new home with pride and adds:

- Why did we move to Russia? It's simple: here I am truly free!

… Vinck's statement is a little overwhelming. Especially against the backdrop of the lamentations of Moscow liberals, which have now become fashionable, that the delights of true freedom are only in Europe. Well, a little in the USA. And "inhuman Raska" is the exact opposite of Western democracies. Indeed, some strange Vink …

- About us and the locals as about abnormal think, - as if guessing thoughts, continues Vink. “It’s just that one day we discovered for ourselves that the material values that were in Germany, of course, did not bring happiness. We have long wanted to live on the ground, to dig a pond, to plant trees … But there it is unrealistic - a hundred square meters of land for 100 thousand euros overflows! And then, even having bought all this, you cannot be the owner there!

- Like this?

- But like this! In Europe, you cannot do something without the permission of the authorities. The grass is not trimmed so - a fine, the tree has grown more than the norms stipulated, - a fine … You see, here I can remake my house as I want, and there for this - a fine! And the neighbors. They say that this is not Russia, our children do not shout in the streets after eight in the evening. There are courts with neighbors because of such nonsense, everyone is at law with everyone … Do you want such a life?

- And here? I ask, squinting. And the Vink family sighs heavily … Not everything is as rosy as it seemed to them at first.

"WHY IS NOT THE SAME IN RUSSIA AS IN GERMANY?"

On Vinks' table is the Constitution of Russia, the text of which Alexander has already learned by heart. Starting to talk about his rights, he lifts the book over his head like an icon. Having settled a little, the migrants on the move began to show unprecedented civic activity in these places, constantly referring to the Basic Law and giving the local authorities a lot of headaches: let's demand a road, then gas, then the Internet … Once they even decided to remove the head of the village council - “for failure to fulfill obligations.

Alexander takes out a suitcase with documents, showing a bunch of papers.

- I wanted to register individual entrepreneurship, - he makes a helpless gesture. - I brought the machines from Germany, I bought the sawmill, I’m a joiner … It took the third phase to bring it up, and it started: they asked for 20 thousand rubles! And the line is there, what is there to pull? I thought to use the program to help entrepreneurs, they give 300 thousand. The bosses tell me: you’ll get the money and pay for the third phase. That is, here I will pay, there I will pay, so all 300 thousand will leave, but to work with what? Why is it different in Russia than in Germany? There you go to an official and you know for sure: 5 minutes - and the problem will be solved.

- Who did you vote for in the elections? - feeling the oppositional notes in the Vinks' voices, I ask Irina, who has received a Russian passport. And the woman surprises again.

- For Putin, of course! - she replies in a tone that implies the absurdity of the question. - It can be seen that the government is turning to face the people, trying to do something for the people, but at the local level all this is destroyed … If this continues, we will probably go back …

"Daughter LIKES SCHOOL"

In total, five families from Germany came to Atamanovka for permanent residence. The locals immediately benefited from such resettlement activity: the prices for half-abandoned houses instantly rose 10 times, and Irene Shmunk, who appeared here this summer, has already cost 95 thousand rubles for a hut. Irene is also from our Soviet Germans: in 1994, she and her Russian husband left Kazakhstan for Lower Saxony.

Like other Germans tired of Germany, Irene lists disgusting German rules: warnings from the authorities follow one after another - the grass on the lawn is higher than necessary (violates accepted norms of aesthetics), the mailbox is 10 centimeters below the approved norms (the postman can overwork), for vegetables more than a quarter of the site was allocated (it is impossible, and that's it!) … If you can't fix it - a fine.

“All this prompted the move,” she explains. - At first we thought it was just us, who grew up in the USSR. And then stories about Germans who were born in Germany, but did not want to live in this "order", went one after another on local channels. They emigrate to the USA, Argentina, Portugal, Australia …

Sitting in her yard, Irene makes plans for the future, admits that of the previous blessings in Atamanovka, she only lacks a normal bathroom (convenience here, as expected, in the yard), and is waiting for the arrival of her husband, a trucker, who is still there. completes in Germany. He will demolish this shack and build a real house in its place, in which everyone will be happy. Her 13-year-old daughter Erica goes to school several kilometers away and assures that she likes everything … In the middle of the village silence, organically interrupted sometimes by the crowing of a rooster, the woman seems pleased.

"THE CAR PROPOSED TO DROP IN UKRAINE"

Another new chieftain, the Sartison spouses, once met in Lipetsk, where the Kazakh German Yakov was doing military service. Once he needed a serious spinal operation, and in 1996 the Sartison left for Oberhausen, Germany.

“Patience ended when the husband of his beloved garage lost,” recalls Valentina Nikolaevna with a smile. - He rented it and decided to fix the car himself. So the neighbors immediately laid it down: knocking, they say, in broad daylight. He exploded: "I can't take it anymore!"

According to the already established tradition, each local German tells his story of uneasy relationship with the new-old state. The Sartison family is no exception. As soon as Valentina drove her car from Germany and received a stamp about permanent residence in Russia, she was billed for customs clearance of the car for as much as … 400 thousand rubles! It's funny, but the car collapsed as soon as it reached Atamanovka, and therefore the officials were asked to pick it up free of charge. But all is in vain: pay, and that's it!

“They themselves understand the absurdity of the situation, but they blame the letter of the law,” the woman laughs. - They even offered to secretly take her out to the territory of Ukraine - it is 40 kilometers from here - and abandon her. Or drive off into the forest and burn. I refused to be a criminal. So we have been suing for the second year already …

Their 26-year-old son Alexander also made his Russian choice. He had to fight with the military registration and enlistment office, which first of all tried to shave him into a soldier.

- Barely fought back, - recalls Valentina. - He swore that he would not take the oath for the second time: he has already served in the Bundeswehr.

- And if tomorrow is a war, which side will it take? - I'm worried.

She does not hesitate with the answer:

- For Russia, of course! I would have felt like a German - I would have stayed there …

"WHAT ARE WE A SECT?"

- This is a shame according to local beliefs: autumn, and I still have greens in the garden, - picking tomatoes for the salad, says Olga Alexandrova. Once she with five children moved here from the Moscow region and quickly found a common language with the Germans. - The locals did the same: they reaped the harvest and dug everything up right there. And we eat from this land until frost.

Olga also has her own weighty argument in favor of the wilderness.

“I’ve recently arrived there (in the Moscow region there is a house that we are renting out), I’m walking with a child in my arms in broad daylight, and towards them, three Uzbeks are undressing me with their eyes,” she explains her hermitage. - This is what will be in the evening, I think? And with children?

Olga, without being distracted from housekeeping, chops vegetables and at the same time shows how cleverly it is possible to deceive civilization by using a washing machine in the absence of running water (“a bucket of water is placed on top, from there the tube goes down into the powder compartment, is sucked in a little, and you can start typewriter ).

And then, having fed the children, he sings songs of his own composition: about the Cossacks, Atamanovka, rain …

The Germans like her songs, they have long gathered around Olga in the choir, which is touring the neighborhood. They accept with a bang. Then they sit down and all together dream: about a hectare of land that everyone should take, about how to plant cedars on it, create a family estate …

“I've already heard this somewhere,” I stress, remembering that the idea of “taking a hectare” and planting a “family estate” on it, planting it with cedars, belongs to a certain Megra, who writes books about the Siberian girl Anastasia, and fans of this work, Anastasievites, are considered by many to be an ecological sect.

- But what kind of sect are we? - the settlers laugh. - In sects, everyone is waiting for the end of the world and a rigid hierarchy of subordination, we do not have this, and there are no prayers with idols. Yes, we read books, but we really like the idea of a family estate. Is there Anastasia or is this a literary invention of Megre - what's the difference! Tolkien also wrote a book, and everyone rushed to join the elves, too, or what, sectarians? So consider that this is our life-game: to raise children in clean air, to eat from our garden, to build a bathhouse again, so that from it naked and into your own pond … Beauty, isn't it?..

As a typical city dweller, who has recently become increasingly drawn to his native village, I agree. And they smile again when I wonder if a native of the Federal Republic of Germany would have dared to live the same life in the depths of Voronezh?

- No, a real German would definitely not stand that. He would not understand anything here.

No, they are strange after all …