Everything is like everywhere

In traveling 1, you eagerly look for the specifics of places - and often find it. Not always and not in everything. One of my strongest impressions of traveling in modern Russia -RF is the impression of enormous similarities and different places, and the changes undergoing them. In many places - different in the natural landscape, geographical position, landscape history - everything is the same. This is about this - my story with references to specific places and travel.

The space is intended and lives exclusively for its own. It is xenophobo . A stranger is not necessarily a traveler - it is necessary to make significant efforts, just in order to be in it, all the more - move. All transport is designed exclusively for local residents, starting with schedules and inscriptions of routes on the vehicles themselves - they are full of reductions and alphanumeric abbreviations like "Tsfu -1 - district 4" . The very explanation of the road to an outsider - with much more goodwill and much smaller than in Moscow - causes great tension. The space (for) of local residents is completely individualized, and there are no common categories in the everyday thesaurus, so that it is possible to easily explain the whereabouts: these “lower school” or “Vietnamese market” does not say anything to the outsider for orientation, although their mention already contains valuable information - there are several schools and markets, there are several non -monetary ones. Of course, there are categories of orientation, streamlining space - but they lie much deeper and are not updated in connection with the situation of explaining the path to an outsider. This is checked many times ... In this situation, the native of time and effort are required to get used to the fact that an outsider is nearby.

Own, local orders of life are highly informed, although among them there are islands of strict irrational formality. So, in so many places, they do not sell tickets to the buses in advance, although there are always places ( Beloretsk ) - it is simply customary to stand in line and expect the arrival of the bus; Then, by the way, this bus was late for the departure for more than four hours.

A very subtle, in its own way, the sophisticated art of life in each area consists in understanding when they act, and when and why they do not act (or for some time cancel) the written rules are being canceled. So, in the MOM Glubin Burzian district of Bashkiria 2 , under the pretext of the accident (it was by no means), all local (intra -district) buses of buses were canceled, which was a blow to travel - also because local private traders travel exclusively at long distances to higher centers and without explanation refuse to even discuss the trip to a neighboring village. I did not immediately realize that the case is in the haying , because of which all other institutions - except for the only real private store and the negotiation point - worked completely unpredictably ...

What can we say about the complete inability to find out the schedule at the neighboring bus station. While in Miass , in the Internet cafe I could take part in the auction of the New York Stock Exchange or find out the schedule of city transport of Munich (with the accuracy of half a minute)-but I could not find out the schedule of buses from neighboring students located only 100 km; Even with difficulty getting through the intercity phone, I was able to ask a single question due to the girl’s employment at the certificate ...

With only transport plots, dozens of essays could be filled. But neighboring places are really very little connected with each other. Individual parts of the country are also of little interesting to each other; The country is fragmented not only from above (center), but also from below (places and regions). The Urals are a rare exception, it exists in the ordinary consciousness of the inhabitants outside and in addition to the regions, and therefore its dismemberment of the federal districts was so painfully perceived. At the borders of administrative areas, local bus routes are still breaking off. Vertical transport connections leading in status higher settlements are still dominated by. However, motorists behave completely differently, which I do not have proper information.

Still and everywhere the boundaries of the regions are extremely significant - not only by the fact that they are obsessively shouting: “You entered ...” , “You leave ..., a happy path,” and not even the fact that the space is rhetorically organizing and presenting itself differently in adjacent regions; Different regions are different worlds, different types of everyday life, even different social stratification . This is clear and simply visible, even if you do not communicate with local residents, and if you communicate ... still and how everywhere they are extremely strong and expressed in the landscape simple signs of the status and size of the settlement, distance from the center, belonging to one or another region. The structures of Soviet space 3 are still dominated by 3, although the increasing differences between the regions are undoubtedly new.

Space-no-for-fucked is also because there is practically no information about places, even the brightest, tourist and attractions. At the stations of railways and - less often - there are a route scheme (although it often does not correspond to the real movement) - but there is no map or Samog scheme about the settlement, there is no advertisement of attractions located in it. If you don’t know that in Beloretsk there is a local history museum with unique exhibits, upon arrival you will not tell you - neither at the bus station, nor in the hotel, nor in the city. If you don’t know in advance that on the edge of the city of Miass there is an object of world cultural significance (the world's first mineralogy reserve with the richest museum and a good store of the Ural Stones), you can pass by. There is no local history literature in this interesting region on sale, it is very few. However - I found out for sure - there is someone to write and there is such a desire: good local history museums grow like mushrooms that arise in every large enterprise and in each large village. And here, in the outback, in the wilderness, there is a museum boom common to the country. The absence of local history literature is a serious and meaningful symptom. What could be more paradoxical than a combination of a good local history museum with rich funds, good exposition and knowledgeable employees - and the lack of published brochures, the texts of which have long been in the tables? This paradox - with its inexplicability - is also common to our landscape. Space-no-for-fucked turns out to be a space of non-for-holes; Space without self -descriptions - space without full places. What to talk about cities or sets of postcards with views of landmark places; All cities I have seen (they are quite monotonous) - unimportant or simply bad ... This suggests a still non -economic existence - after all, any limited good is (an economic) resource; After all, when the traveling or carriageways get to local history museums, they sweep cards, booklets, local souvenirs and crafts; This stream replenishes the coaling financial river of museums.

And now about even more sad.

The country is drowning in mud and garbage - and here I did not see exceptions; “Cleanliness and order” are supported only in special zones - in the front rooms of the village huts, in the expositions of museums, behind the office of hotel administrators, inside some administrative buildings and banks. But here is nearby - dirt and garbage. In traveling, I just miss the urns as a material sign of possible purity. Alas, URN, public toilets and urban taxophones will not be found (almost). The Internet in Russia is much more accessible than a public toilet. A special case of maintaining a purely external -visual order is the orderliness and purity of what the leaders of Bashkiria can be seen when swiftly driving along the roads: a new (at the state account) blue picket fence, neat signs with the names of populated places, slogans, emblems and flags 4 . But if you walk along the sidelines of the same road - the impression is completely different: the garbage is lying around anywhere, that is, it is thrown out of the windows of cars, it can also wallow under the very pleasing (?) Glack with signs. The space is littered. In one of the editions of the newspapers where I had to be, the cleanliness was so frightening that I was fastened not too clean after hundreds of kilometers of my backpack - but behind the threshold, where the employees of the same clean edition went out and throw garbage, there were simply mountains of garbage.

Order and disorder, dirt and purity, formal and informal are so mixed that it is impossible to understand - is this form of orderliness or just chaos with islands of order?

Islands, if not order, then screaming and contrasting with the background of wealth, as usual - state buildings (administrations) and having an even more blooming look (or even with beautiful flower beds) of the building of local departments of Sberbank; In richer areas, these are other banks or departments of the Central Bank; New temples and monasteries also look rich (the landscape clericalization will be devoted to a special essay). As is now adopted, somewhere on the sidelines, in (earlier) a clean and picturesque place, - cottage villages; The art of local architects is great: with outstanding accuracy, these cottages (as well as administrative buildings) are always skillfully placed so that a minimum of effort to change (spoil, of course) a landscape. However, often a broken road with unsightly dirty roadsides leads to them, and the mountains of garbage can begin immediately behind the brick (stone) walls of the sites.

However, the usual abundant summer cottages everywhere, sometimes summer cottages and summer cottages contribute to the transformation of the cultural landscape 5 . In some places they have already managed to turn into ruins and overgrown with a young fishing line (where there is no more public transport to them). I did not see a single urban settlement or settlement with three -story houses without cottages nearby.

I do not build a balance of positive and negativity. Having written for the first time in such an essay back in 1997 that there are already no places in Russia, wherever the “Bush leg” steps, where there are no bananas, sneakers and can beer, I can only confirm this. Everywhere there are signs of trade and consumer, if not boiled, then revival. In almost every large village - new shops, shops, or at least stalls; Each city and village -Rycenter have computers, periphery and other equipment. And the fact that there were clearly both rich and impoverished settlements or part of cities are also like everywhere. As well as the fact that in each village with a sufficient number of potential flocks is, or repaired, or is built again (sometimes all together) the mosque and/or the Orthodox temple - this is also like everywhere. However, as elsewhere, the presence or construction of mosques is not accompanied by a visible reduction in trading in a variety of alcohol.

Perhaps the most striking change compared with the early perepretting state of the cultural landscape is a reduction in many, many times from the resident to the nearest place of trade in alcohol; There are more places, and moonshine is brewing the whole country. Indeed, in rural areas there was a network of alcoholic paths , the paths that went for vodka (sometimes for more than 10-15 kilometers); Now this element of the landscape transport infrastructure is dying quickly. Trails - really part and the most massive (along the total length) element of the transport network; After all, fields and forests are actually impassable - and they are always crossed by a complex and very logical network of paths. Like many mass phenomena lying on the surface, this network of paths , as well as known , has never been studied - although where is the scope for local research, a field for school local history and accustoming to serious geographical analysis of seemingly simple phenomena .

Alas, nowhere is the specificity of the place in everyday life . In the country of beautiful mountain rivers there is nowhere to eat fish; In the horse -drawn zone of Konina (my beloved) there was no at all, there was not even a beautiful horse sausage and stew. It would seem where, if not in the outback, ordinary national dishes should still prepare - but this is by no means so, national cuisine can enjoy in Ufa or Astana , but not in rural Ashkhan (dining room). In general, I was not lucky with gastronomy, except for the beautiful home dairy products in the outback: cattle graze in real, sometimes mountain meadows and eats real hay - which is why milk, cottage cheese and sour cream, the taste already forgotten. What we eat in a convenient beautiful packaging are completely different products that have appropriated other people's names. In tourist lands, you rarely find images of tempting landscapes, even when these territories have the only chance - tourism; But so everywhere in Russia and even the CIS.

1 Kagansky V.L. Traveler // "Russian Journal", 08/13/2004.

2 Kagansky V.L. Inner Urals // "Domestic Notes", 2003, # 3 (12).

3 Kagansky V.L. Cultural landscape and Soviet inhabited space. M.: UFO, 2001;Soviet space - our inheritance // "Russian Journal", 08/20/2004.

4 Kagansky V.L. Inner Urals // "Domestic Notes", 2003, # 3 (12); Bashkortostan space // "Russian Journal", 12/20/2004.

5 Kagansky V.L. Country boom // "Russian Journal", 07/06/2004.