Dying villages

With the eyes of a blogger, the theme of the bridge across the Volga, in the Klimovka area took us to the other side. So what is there on that shore?

Administratively, the village of Klimovka, apparently, does not exist. The only broken road leads to the village. The freshly established pointer embarrassed the name Limovka. Nearby it became clear that a self -adhesive film began to get off him. The road ended with a concrete stop of public transport that once existed here. Then there were only directions. A well -groomed and covered with the last snow monument in the style of Soviet constructivism. On marble boards, the names of heroic countrymen are immortalized. Nearby is the only rural store -kiosk of an extinct trend. A sheet on the board of ads: an invitation to a rural club for Shrovetide is written by hand with a ballpoint pen. The village council, closed to the barn castle, looked at us with rare surviving windows. Around the silence of hopelessness. The first person told us how to go to the club and who is Popov. We made our way along a melted non-Asphalted path that is champing from yesterday's snow. City shoes scooped ice water at the moment. There is one thought in my head: the next step through water or dirt? So we went to the House of Culture. In this one -story building of white brick, everything is: a culture house, a library, working circles for children. Even a night club. The only pointer on the building made not in Klimovka is a tablet of an polling station with the emblem of the Samara region. We were late for the holiday. People slowly diverged in different directions, leaving the local focus of culture. In the room on the children's benches, women remove the remains of meager tea drinking. With a tight tail, some dog spin. The stove was already burned out, or this time they did not bother with firewood, but simply sat in jackets. On the wall painted with palm trees is a new electric meter and for some reason two signs for the exit. - For the farm, the holiday has passed here, we sweep the floors. And who is nominally the chapter here must be clarified. The phone only remained at home. The tongue did not turn to ask the head of the House of Culture something else. The boy saved us, which has become our guide to be our guide into this world cut off from civilization. On the way, Vova said that the mail was closed for a long time, he did not remember the buses, after the teacher left, the school was empty. We have to go to school in a neighboring village. The road to the village has never been cleaned for the whole winter. He said that he saw how Togliatti burned. And if you look, find pictures. The Vasin's relatives to whom he led us recognized the phone and name of the head of the settlement, which somehow administratively enters Klimovka. It was possible to get through to her, but the conversation did not work out. Vladimir, our 12-year-old guide continued with us a walk around the village. And we went to the Volga to look at Togliatti. The opened embankment on the shore and the ship froze into the ice did not have the alleged attitude to the project "bridge". This Gazprom changes pipes. And in Klimovka there was never gas. There is water, but there is no sewage. There is light, but there is nothing to pay for it. Birch trees often go to firewood. From a ten -meter cliff, the form is bewitching - Volga, mountains and pine. A little in the distance, on the ice, the fishermen get food. The coastline is washed annually. Traces of last year's collapse are visible. A meter per year is sprinkled, - explains Vovka. But here they find old coins, almost Peter's times. The shepherd is closed, sheep in the pen, the owner is resting. On the way to the farm, pigs were driven, peacefully grazing in the fields. Farm with 30 goals. Passing by the bulls, just in case, tensed. There is no one inside the building. Only freshly festivated towels. Milk, sour cream, oil is sold to neighboring villages. Meat - in shiogons or Syzran. Those, in fact, live. Remember the past. There used to be a pier, rockets and meteors went, in the summer the streets were full of people, two stores worked. Since then, they remember the bridge. For forty years they have been remembered. They do not believe that this time at least something will change. They are ready for the fact that they will be thrown at all. Every year it will be worse and worse, soon you will have to pay in full for water and electricity. And there will only be a shop in which you can only buy vodka. No one knows where they specifically plan to build a bridge. And they talk about the deadlines in the subjunctive inclination and a very distant perspective. They wanted to look at the life of a veteran in Klimovka - it did not work. Not up to us - it is sick: spring period of exacerbation of diseases of age and conditions. And he lives far from well -deserved conditions. The rickety dilapidated house, apparently, remained unnoticed by the federal program. On a closed mail hut - the remains of the election campaign. There was a logo and how nowhere else in the world is the actual slogan: “For a word is a matter !!!” ... And then - neither a person nor a name, only the last letters of the name of the candidate for deputies of the Provincial Duma from the United Russia party. Through the snowdrifts they reached the abandoned school. The wall laid in one brick has already begun to move away from the old log house and is about to completely collapse. Through a broken window, we got inside. The chaos of an abandoned but not yet plundered premises ... a monument of stolen childhood ... Half -century desks with a leap cover and slots for pens and inkwells, tennis racket, methodological materials, records, textbooks, cards with letters ... and reproductions of paintings with Lenin, which I could not pass by, justifying myself that you can make an exhibition out of them. And ready to return at the request of the current school of Klimovka at any time. We returned to the monument. At the open door of the store, a woman was waiting for us, the only one of all who asked all, and who, in fact, are really such and what we need. We presented the press certificates, said goodbye to Vova and left Klimovka. Ahead, on the federal highway, we were waiting for a ten -kilometer traffic jam from crowded trucks and car carriers and one hundred and fifty miles to Togliatti ... I corrected PS and 12 -year -old Vova goes to the city on foot - on ice. 11 kilometers. Its method can sometimes be faster to get to Togliatti. PS and 12 year old Vova, walks to the city on foot, on ice. 11 kilometers . And his method, getting to Togliatti can sometimes be faster ...