Report by Ivan Volonikhin

Residents of the village of Mikhalkovo in the Ivanovo region took out millions in loans to help their collapsing collective farm “Our Life”. It was not possible to save the former collective farm millionaire, but the Mikhalkovites owe astronomical sums to the banks

The village is mired in business correspondence, letters from courts and bailiffs, bank accounts

Photo: Kommersant / Timofey Izotov

The village is mired in business correspondence, letters from courts and bailiffs, bank accounts

Photo: Kommersant / Timofey Izotov

The village is mired in business correspondence, letters from courts and bailiffs, bank accounts

Photo: Kommersant / Timofey Izotov

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Marina Zakharova, chairman - savior and destroyer of "Our Life"

Photo: Kommersant / Timofey Izotov

There is no money left for reconstruction and rearmament

Photo: Kommersant / Timofey Izotov

“It’s time to call the collective farm “Our Death,” local residents joke

Photo: Kommersant / Timofey Izotov

The village is mired in business correspondence, letters from courts and bailiffs, bank accounts

Photo: Kommersant / Timofey Izotov

The village is mired in business correspondence, letters from courts and bailiffs, bank accounts

Photo: Kommersant / Timofey Izotov

The village is mired in business correspondence, letters from courts and bailiffs, bank accounts

Photo: Kommersant / Timofey Izotov

Ivan Volonikhin, Mikhalkovo village, Ivanovo region

- Look, she smiles, shameless! How else he walks around the village, looking people in the eyes, rushes after Marina Zakharova when we walk through the village with her.

But literally across the house, another woman in a hastily thrown on padded jacket comes to the defense of the former chairman:

- Yes, if it weren’t for Marina Vladimirovna, where would you be now? Long ago I would have stretched out my legs from hunger along with my drunkard!

The front line of the civil war in Mikhalkovo winds between houses along Tsentralnaya Street, does not spare Mira Street and ends somewhere in the vegetable gardens of Vostochnaya Street. Neutrality is observed by those who have dodged the credit yoke. All the other Mikhalkovites live under the threat of an inventory of property for millions of loans, but at the same time they are on opposite sides of the barricades: some hate the former chairman, others idolize her.

- Tell me, don’t you regret what happened? After all, it’s because of you that dozens of people now live with huge debts,” I ask, realizing that this question may be the last in our conversation with Marina Zakharova.

“No,” she cuts me off sharply. “I don’t regret it and I don’t feel guilty.” Time is like this: either you or you. And by the way, I gave people hope for the future.

She said how she cut it off. Wearing a beret that desperately resembles a commissar’s cap, decisively walking through the village and driving the dissatisfied behind the fence with one glance, Marina Zakharova seems to have accidentally found herself here from the revolutionary 20s, only the Mauser on her belt is missing. She should be in command of an armored train, but here is some kind of cooperative.

- Trotsky in a skirt! I resisted until the last minute; I didn’t want to take out a loan. But Marina came and, as they say, chatted: I signed all the papers without even reading them,” machine operator Alexander Sharov is still amazed at himself. “And he was sober!”

The large Markov family took out a loan of 2 million rubles
Photo: Timofey Izotov, Kommersant

Millions in the bag

You can get around Mikhalkovo in half an hour: about a hundred wooden houses with vegetable gardens, at the end of the village there are several two-story panel buildings - apartments were once given to honored collective farmers there. At the entrance there is a rickety stele “SPK (Collective Farm) “Our Life””.

“This used to be life, but now it’s time to be called the collective farm “Our Death,” the Mikhalkovites gloomily ironize.

In the 70-80s of the last century, when people from neighboring villages fled to work in Shuya and Ivanovo, “Our Life” was considered an island of stability. Million-dollar incomes are rare for this non-black soil region with its low-profit agriculture, but the former chairman managed to keep costs to a minimum and update the fleet with new equipment, tractors, and build cowsheds. The collective farm managed to survive on old reserves in the late 80s and 90s.

Marina Zakharova was elected chairman in 1992. Before that, she worked on a collective farm as a foreman, then she became the head of the local administration, and Mikhalkov residents were known as a very energetic and businesslike woman. Everyone believed that she would not let the collective farm collapse. And as a human being, she was nice: she could order the slaughter of a cow and give the meat or a bag of potatoes to pensioners and large families. Zakharova was not without political ambitions; her active nature was known in many public organizations in Shuya, Ivanovo, and Moscow.

- She has such connections at the top, God bless everyone! - Mikhalkovites whispered among themselves. In the mid-90s, she headed the Agrarian Party of the Ivanovo Region, in the 2000s she collaborated with A Just Russia, and ran for State Duma deputy. At a difficult moment for the SPK, she went to the Federation Council, talked with the right people and brought 6 million needed to pay off debts for electricity and salaries for collective farmers. This made a great impression.

In 2008, a crisis broke out, from which the collective farm was no longer able to recover. Zakharova’s acquaintances in the capital could no longer help. And then she came up with an idea: since banks cannot give a loan to the collective farm itself due to its deplorable condition, then let these same banks give loans to collective farmers under the guarantee of the SEC. And he, having earned money later, will pay his employees.

Members of the board of the SEC, including Marina Zakharova herself, were the first to take out such loans. We bought a new milk pipeline and paid off our debts. However, over the next year they earned less than expected, and besides, they accrued interest on the loans taken. I had to go to the bank for a loan to other collective farmers. Now, as borrowers and loan guarantors, about 60 village residents have been drawn into this story, and the total amount of debt, together with accrued penalties and fines for late payments, is already more than 100 million rubles! That is, for each borrower or guarantor there is an average of 1.5 million rubles plus regularly accrued new penalties and fines.

Lunch for "millionaires" is the simplest
Photo: Timofey Izotov, Kommersant

"Millionaires" from the slums

The home of the large Markov family is a century-old wooden house with two old stoves. Tatyana has 5 children, the youngest is 3 years old, and the eldest Katya has already acquired a daughter herself. This whole family of 9 people is huddled in two rooms, where old sofas, wardrobes and beds are placed back to back. Here, from every corner, it is not poverty that looks at you, but real poverty. This family was given loans in the amount of 2 million rubles from different banks. Tatyana worked as a milkmaid on the collective farm “Our Life” for 14 years, and her husband Valery worked there as a cattleman and laborer. When it was their turn to take out a loan for the needs of the collective farm, Marina Zakharova left them no choice.

“She said: either you take out a loan and stay to work, or you refuse and then went out into the street,” says Tatyana Markova. “When she gave us certificates for banks, the salary there was exactly 10 times more than what we received in our hands.” . It's a frank linden, but they took these pieces of paper from banks. Moreover, these cashiers sat at tables right in the boardroom of the collective farm, and people lined up for them to sign contracts. None of us held the money in our hands; Zakharova received everything. And she reassured us: don’t worry, everything will be fine. But what’s good, when now all we have is income: child benefits and my husband receives 5-6 thousand (he got a job at another collective farm) and of which another part is withheld from him every month. These collectors call and demand money, threatening to seize the property. And the only property we have is a cat and a washstand, let them describe it!

According to Tatyana Markova, the situation with the loan brought her to a desperate state: “I’ll go to Red Square with my children to hold a rally. And if I don’t find the truth there, all I can do is lock myself in my home and burn myself and my children.”

Galina Mikhailovna Klimova’s daughter and son, who worked at Our Life, took out loans. She herself worked as a farm manager for 37 years, retired and flatly refused to take out a loan, but she was unable to convince her children.

“When they bought a TV and a washing machine on credit several years ago, everyone came running to me for advice: “Mom, can we afford it?” And then, as Marina said “it’s necessary,” they went off like cute little ones. She promised to help her daughter privatize the collective farm apartment and increase her son’s salary. As soon as I found out, I stood at the door and said: I won’t let you in, only over my corpse, this is an adventure! And my son pushed me aside with his shoulder and said: “Don’t disgrace us in front of people, we have to go, since the chairman said so.” Well, in the end they took it upon themselves: one had 1.5 million, and the other 500 thousand. This is despite their meager salaries. So they finished the game and the bailiffs came and described the household property. Zakharova, however, gave money for the TV that the bailiffs described. And Sveta’s daughter was very worried about this, and to be honest, she started drinking. But her heart was weak, and she soon died.

Galina Mikhailovna wipes the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief. In her shaking hands she has a pile of letters from different banks demanding repayment of the loan. And now they are afraid to privatize the collective farm apartment, so that the bailiffs will not take away the housing for debts.

The Markov goat can be described by bailiffs
Photo: Timofey Izotov, Kommersant

Ballad of the Stolen Banner

The loan money was only enough to pay taxes, salaries, buy several tractors, a milk pipeline and a refrigerator. When the money ran out, Marina Zakharova came up with another combination: leave all the debts of the collective farm to the SPK Our Life, and make all valuable property a 99.99 percent share in a new LLC with the same name - SPK Our Life. Zakharova registered the remaining share of 0.01 percent in her name, paying several thousand rubles in cash. But the maneuver did not help. The bankruptcy procedure of the former SPC began, clarifying relations with creditors and bankruptcy trustees in arbitration courts of various instances. The fuss around the two enterprises and their managing directors began to resemble a Brownian movement, behind which the fate of the loan funds received by the collective farmers remained unknown. The sacrifice of the Mikhalkovites was in vain. The money has melted.

Now almost every house in Mikhalkov has its own folder with many court extracts and decisions. Meanwhile, nothing remained of the collective farm itself: the last potato harvest was left unharvested under the snow, the farm buildings were dismantled for building materials, and the same fate befell the unfinished two-story apartment building. A kindergarten, the former pride of the collective farm, was completely looted. Everything was removed here - from the door handles to the radiators, the linoleum was torn off, and the frames were exposed. Everything was taken out of the village club, even the pioneer bugles and drums. The last bastion remained the collective farm office, but from there they pulled out both the plaster bust of Lenin and the challenge red banner of socialist competition.

When I ask who did all this, the Mikhalkovites avert their eyes and unconvincingly blame each other. But they agree on one thing - if there is no owner, few people can resist the temptation to pocket public property.

Zakharova “hid” the last 250 cows and calves in a neighboring collective farm. Officially, it looked like a purchase, but Marina Vladimirovna herself assures that this is a forced evacuation of livestock: “So that strangers don’t get it!” Several times they tried to open a criminal case against her under the article “Fraud” based on statements from creditors, but every time they received letters from the police and the prosecutor’s office that there was no evidence of a crime.

This is what the farms of the former millionaire collective farm look like now
Photo: Timofey Izotov, Kommersant

“They thundered throughout the entire Shuisky district, and even throughout the entire region,” they joke in the village. “We now have our own MMM: Mikhalkovo - Marina - fraud.”

Marina Zakharova herself considers the comparison with MMM offensive.

- Come see my house. I don’t have bags of money in any corners; everything went to the collective farm. And I myself am not chilling somewhere in the Bahamas, but still here, in Mikhalkovo. I’m sitting here eating sauerkraut. Help yourself, by the way. Would you like some dumplings?

The lightning-fast transition from the role of a tough leader to the role of a hospitable housewife is quite in the spirit of this artistic nature. But even Zakharova’s most ardent opponents are forced to admit an indisputable fact: after the scandal broke, she did not go on the run and did not acquire any external attributes of wealth, such as an expensive car, household appliances or furniture. In a word, it’s still the same Marina, not a millionaire at all.

“Here it’s all the money, it’s all in these papers,” Zakharova takes out a pile of receipts, contracts and court decisions. “I haven’t deceived a single person.” Each one has a receipt that I took money from them. And when the time came to pay off the loans, I gave them money while I could. Here is a receipt from the Markovs with many children, with whom you visited, that I gave them money to repay the loan. Did they tell you about this? No. Every other day they threaten to self-immolate, they’re already fed up.

- But do you understand that you could never fully pay off either the banks or the collective farmers?

- I would pay! I'm not some kind of adventurer. We borrowed 30 million for the needs of the collective farm, of which we paid 20 million. And they would continue to pay if we weren’t bothered by these bankruptcy trustees, who are only thinking about how to quickly sell off all the collective farm property, including equipment, roll out the buildings brick by brick, drive up the land at a higher price, and get away from here. And we have to live here. And those who are now throwing barrels at me will come in a couple of years and begin to lament: Marina, how can we continue to live?

Somehow things don’t go well in the family with a cloudless childhood
Photo: Timofey Izotov, Kommersant

Lose your chains and die

But where did the money go? Ruslan Larin, by court decision, served as such a bankruptcy trustee for more than a year, and he formed his own opinion about where the millions disappeared.

“I won’t tell you for sure, otherwise they’ll accuse you of slander later, but think about it,” Larin takes out documents and a calculator from his briefcase. “Accounts payable at that time were already more than 50 million, of which 39 million were loans to individuals with meager salaries.” . Think for yourself: why did banks start giving a loan of 7 million, for example, to a family with an income of 10-15 thousand rubles for three? Try to get a loan with that income. What will a reputable bank tell you? They will refuse you and me. And they gave it to these unfortunate collective farmers. This means that initially there was a scheme with non-repayable loans.

— Do you rule out that Marina Zakharova really wanted to save the collective farm?

“If you’re not caught, you’re not a thief, as they say.” My personal opinion is that the collective farm did not need such funds. The collective farm itself was naturally going downhill, and sooner or later it would have failed. High production costs, many unnecessary unnecessary jobs that Zakharova did not dare to cut, there are no new technologies, and there are no qualified personnel. Maybe someone considers Marina Zakharova’s actions an attempt to save her native collective farm. And here I see manipulations with money. But who warmed his hands here, Zakharova or someone else, is the question.

Today there is a temporary lull in Mikhalkovo. By court decisions, all claims were redirected to the SPK, a bankrupt company from which there is nothing to take. The sale of the remaining buildings is barely enough to cover a tenth of the demands of banks and debt collectors. Thus, the building of a kindergarten was sold at auction for only 396 thousand rubles - this is four times less than what local entrepreneurs offered for it several years ago. Next spring, for the first time in the post-war years, the fields around Mikhalkovo will not be plowed, and cows on collective farms will not rattle with iron chains. And because there have been no cows since the fall, and someone has already cut down these chains and taken them away.

And in the village they say: they took it for debts.

Chickens don't eat debts