Showing posts with label dacha owners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dacha owners. Show all posts

Thursday 4 February 2016

Finding dachas to live in peace


Change in traditional settlement forms in Russia continued
When we read the old Russian literature we can see that the folks in Russia went from one place to the other. Many Russians still are nomads at heart,
something that “radically distinguishes them from [their] European neighbors who tend to live in one place only. Russians on the other hand may live in Arkhangelsk but work elsewhere in central Russia or the Far East much of the year.
From those many Russian stories we do have lots of ideas of those dachas. "Dacha" is one of those Russian words ("dacha" derives from the Russian verb "to give," dat') which entered many languages, giving people many dreams about that what seems to be more than just a place.
it is a phenomenon that defies translation. {Putting the Dacha in Its Place}
The dacha made itself integral to Russian life and culture. It is not any-more that what began as a token of elite status. Today society has totally changed
 
The dramatic increase in the number of dacha owners – now some 60 million people – and the concomitant growth of the 40 to 50 million people who support them represent another aspect of life outside traditional Russian cities and villages. Such people are often far more numerous on any given territory than are the original residents. {Rural Russia is alive and well}

In the cities people are seen and noticed also by federal institutions. There the state has still a lot in control. Outside the cities the state control seems to be less. That makes that those who do prefer an other way of living, than the previous state structures imposed on their citizens, escape to the country.

In the rural areas we may find more people who do not adhere to the traditional thought. We may find more people who have stepped away from communism, atheism but also from Russian Orthodox Church. As such in the rural areas you may find several Christadelphians doing everything to survive according to the Will of the Most High. Also the Jehovah Witnesses may find it easier to live in such areas. Furthermore we can find many sectarians who also found their way to the countryside.

There are some 10 million sectarians and almost as many more agriculturalists who often take over villages that have become vacant. In many cases, both groups remain “’outside the state’s field of vision.’” But they are very much there in fact.
Many of these new or new-old settlements have no official status. That often means that any structures that are erected have no official status and that those who live “outside the state” are at least formally without the social services other Russians receive. {Rural Russia is alive and well}
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> Please do read more about what, for the last decade, Simon Kordonsky with his group of scholars at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics found by investigating what rural Russia is like, why it is now so different from what it was in the past, and why because of these changes Moscow often fails to take it into account in its approach to the country.
 > Rural Russia is alive and well
>>Кочевой образ жизни помогает выжить российской глубинке

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Change in traditional settlement forms in Russia

Open Russia World brings the message that provincial Russia is not what it was 20 years ago, but is alive and well.

When we look at documentaries about the ex-soviet states we can see that many villages become deserted because of the young people going to find their luck and prosperity in the cities.
For the last decade, Simon Kordonsky has led a group of scholars at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics in investigating what rural Russia is like, why it is now so different from what it was in the past, and why because of these changes Moscow often fails to take it into account in its approach to the country.
Among “the new people” of rural Russia, his team has found, are “those who want to isolate themselves from social contacts and government supervision, dacha owners, people who want to live in harmony with nature, and sectarians.” In many cases, these people are moving into places that have been deserted by their former residents.
The people who left the countryside to make their life in the cities, created spaces where citizens from the busy towns could find some quietness and could find a possibility to come back in unison with nature.

Today it is not any more the state which determines where people have to live, nor what they have to do. People seem to be free to go wherever they want. The state leaves it to them to make individual choices on their own for economic or other reasons.
On the one hand, that has led to an emptying out of the original population in many rural areas. But on the other, it has sparked a move in the other direction with “residents of major cities beginning to move into the provinces,” a situation that is possible because many Russians now have two or three homes, often at opposite ends of the country.
Related to and reinforcing this is the disappearance of traditional settlement forms and the appearance of new communities, which have “intentionally isolated themselves from state supervision.” On the basis of his team’s research, Kordonsky says, “we have come to understand that hidden life is everywhere.”

> Continue reading: Rural Russia is alive and well

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