Potato

Our family had always been a cottage or garden-and in the late 1980s, when there was nothing in the stores, in the stores, and in the 1990s, when the shelves were full, but there was nothing to buy all this. Every summer, the parents dug up and sometimes developed just conquered at the Far Eastern taiga and the land given under the cottages. We pulled out the roots of trees and weeds out of it, poured manure there and then fought with a violent, tall from half a year -old grass all summer.

In the year, when the salary was given “Bush’s legs” and the Korean “golden mayonnaise”, and then in the year, when the dad taken in dollars had to be paid for three times the rate, we had salty tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, jam - and, of course, potatoes. Parents were not always lucky with potatoes: either a rainy summer turned her into a rot, then some other parasites were devoured, then potatoes the size of a pea grew, and in winter she still had to buy in a store.

The largest protest group in Russia - entire generations of those who every spring, not believing the "May decrees" and the promises of the next authorities, is going to plant their potatoes

We children grunted in displeasure: why so much time suffered in the garden in the summer? But parents with the advent of spring again eager for the country. Grandpa and grandfather in the Amur Region planted all ten acres of their garden with potatoes. Every summer they went on an old Japanese truck to be a weed and hill-in a 30-degree heat, under the brutal sun, fighting off mosquitoes. At the attempts that I have already grown up and the “scientist” in overseas universities, I undertook to convince them how unprofitable to spend the strength and money on landing what is sold on every corner, my grandmother (the daughter of the parents repressed by the Soviet government) only told me that her potatoes should always be: you never know what would happen tomorrow. And last year, she sadly said that he and his grandfather were no longer enough for the strength to plant all ten acres.

Parents recently bought land near Khabarovsk, built a house - and immediately defeated the beds nearby. Most, of course, are allotted for potatoes, "because their own potatoes should always be." And I, digging on the weekend, was no longer indignant and did not try to convince someone. It seems that I realized: the largest protest group in Russia, which does not trust the authorities, is not the same who marching and chanting the slogans in the squares and writes angry posts on Facebook. These are whole generations of those who every spring, not believing the "May decrees" and the promises of the next authorities, is going to plant their potatoes.

Evgenia Kulgina is a freelance correspondent for RS in the Khabarovsk Territory, laureate of the competition of young journalists "Call of the XXI century"