The powerlessness of Siberia

Taiga villages freeze: firewood goes to China, and the gas pipeline is not oriented to the Russians. Reporting "Novo-Europe" from the Tomsk region

“And the winter will be big ...” A frightening video for the song of the Soviet Bard Yuri Vizbor was published on the official website of Gazprom in the fall of this year. The clip, which seems to be scared by a European consumer who does not want to refuse to support warring Ukraine, this very consumer is unlikely to understand. And for the internal viewer, the message of the video looks just mocking.

“Big Winter” has not only affected Europe and Ukraine. It came in Russia. And Russian citizens, as before, before the war, continue to freeze. So, for example, residents of a number of villages of the Tomsk region are freezing, about which the governor of the region Vladimir Mazur reported in his telegram of the channel. “Residents of the Asinovsky district have not been able to get foresters since May,” he wrote. - In the seven -lizards, forest weapons were discharged, but it is impossible to get to the allocated areas. Kornilovo, Turuntaevo is the same problem: people have no firewood for the winter. And this is in our Siberia! " Here are the data voiced by the governor: about 15 thousand inhabitants of the Tomsk region are annually forced to turn to private foresters - as a rule, strongly overpaying. In order to find out how the Siberians winter, the correspondent of Novaya Gazeta Europe, having insulated as much as possible, went to the Tomsk region.

Siberian flavor

The fact that you are in Siberia become clear from the first moments after leaving the airport. The face fetters a forty -degree cold. Thank God, a taxi arrives in just a few moments.

An empty winter road from the airport to Tomsk snakes through the taiga. The tall pillars of smoke of rare villages and a cold winter fog, which lay over the road ... The air itself, as if freezing, shimmers in the rays of the frosty November sun.

Tomsk is a large city whose total population due to agglomeration with a regime atomograd Seversky is about 1 million people. Due to numerous universities and the Research Institute of Tomsk, from Soviet times, it is considered a student and scientific city. However, despite the presence of advanced universities and scientific organizations, there is no way to find masterpieces of innovative architecture, as in Skolkovo. On the contrary - outwardly, Tomsk looks as if frozen in the first half of the twentieth century. The city center for two -thirds consists of wooden and red -brick buildings of the turn of the XIX - XX centuries. In the sleeping areas of Khrushchev and Brezhnev nine -story buildings are adjacent to the huts and the private sector with amenities on the street ...

Despite the large TPP, the steam from which is visible ten kilometers from the city, not all houses receive warmth from it. And even worse: according to 2021, in the Tomsk region, with a population of just more than one million people, the level of gasification of households is only 37.7%.

Local resident Mikhail, a stocky peasant for about 40 years, holds me a tour of Tomsk snowdrifts:

“My parents live in a private house, this is almost a center,” says Mikhail. - For gas, our branch is not stretched, they buy firewood every year. But this winter, the hucksters were completely overwhelmed: for one truck, they ask for 14-15 thousand firewood, and in order to score the house, for the winter of such cars you need three to four. And now these commerce are told that, they say, you need to order everything at once and in advance. Type their queue is large. They always managed, and now, you see, they may not have time. You figure out: the taiga around - and they are tubing such grandmas from the people! And the seven -sides? There is such a village, it is in the area. There, they say, they are almost drowned with houses.

- Houses?!

- Well, yes, abandoned huts, where no one lives, is disassembled, chopped - and in the oven. But I myself was not this witness. Just so people say.

There was an emperor here

The village of Semiluzhka is 30 kilometers from the regional center. By Siberian standards, this is almost a suburb. Moreover, a suburb with a long history. After all, it was the seven -lines that were chosen by the merchants of Kitier for placing the road residence of Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich. The visit of Tsarevich, the future - and the last - the emperor became the most striking event in the history of the village, and already in our time, the endless stream of tourists ensured seven -Revolutions.

Since the time of Tsesarevich, it seems that little has changed here. But instead of equestrian teams, snowmobiles fly through the streets of the village, and once a taiga village now stands in the middle of the forest -steppe blown by all winds.

The house of Tsesarevich himself and the adjacent huge white-stone temple in the mid-30s were demolished by the Bolsheviks. A orphanage appeared on the site of the monastery house, located in a wooden one -story building. However, in 2016, the institution closed, leaving many residents of the village without work. But the remains of the orphanage are still on the hill, providing local with simple objects of orphan life and wooden boards.

In 2019, the imperial residence was restored at the expense of budget funds. True, the historical place where the imperial house originally stood, preferred a more picturesque, at a distance from the huts of local residents.

Near the abandoned orphanage, which took the place of the imperial residence, I met with a local resident Alla, a short middle -aged woman. A large mother lives on the outskirts of the village, and five children do not prevent her from being an activist. According to her, it was the family and anxiety for the future of the children that brought her to the road of struggle. Alla and her husband and children arrived in the village from Tomsk just a few years ago, built here. According to a woman, at first there were no problems with heating a large house, until in 2021, fire prices rose several times.

Upon learning that the journalist was going to the village, Alla tried to gather residents. However, only a few people dared to meet with me.

“It should have come more, but ...” the activist shrugs his hands. - That's in Votsap, in the chat like that. Everyone seems to be unhappy, everyone is indignant, but you will tell you the appeal to sign - they have business immediately. People are afraid. Why be afraid? Or do they seriously think that because of communication with the press we are crashed? It’s just that the people have the habit: everyone is indignant, but do not climb anywhere. They say: "What will we do?"

And here we are sitting on a warm and in a symbolic hospitable cuisine of Alla.

The elderly couple of the guests-Nikolai and Elena,-interrupting each other, say: due to increased export prices for wood, loggers began to sell it to China than to supply fuel to the inhabitants of the villages. At the beginning of December, when frost was already on the street for forty, the inhabitants of 10-12 houses were left without firewood. At the same time, many, without waiting for “state” firewood, are stored by wood on their own, at market prices.

“Last year, we had no firewood all winter,” Alla recalls. - And winter stood so fierce that I had to break the picket fence for Saray. In order to at least stand up. To drown the stoves, people came to the shops for boxes, shied around the trash, searched for cardboard. I turned to the loggers, I say: “Think about my own! Bring firewood. " And they answered me: they say, there is no firewood, and if we do not sell the Chinese, then we will go around the world ... Well, sell to your Chinese. And what are we, not people, or what?

In fact, all residents of the village are entitled to purchase firewood at preferential prices. To do this, you need to contact the village council, there they will write out a timber tank with the ability to purchase 25 cubic meters of firewood with a discount. This ticket needs to be handed over to loggers. However, businessmen, even from among the Semiluzhkovites, often collect foresters from the population - but they are not brought firewood.

- One ticket in May I gave to the workpiece. At best, I get 10 cubes, and where the rest went is not clear, ”says Tatyana, who also came to our meeting. - No matter how you contact them - excuses. Either the roads were carried by slush, then snow, then severe frost. At the same time, we ourselves live by the road, and see how cars with firewood ride. Before my eyes, two cars were brought in a row in my eyes. I come to them, I ask: bring me too. And they say: "There is no firewood." So how not? I handed over to you a forest wheel! They in response: "It used to be, we have already sold your firewood." Naturally, they sold, they cost 16 thousand in the city, and five in a forest knee. Therefore, it is more profitable for them to sell there.

Although conversations about the analysis of houses on firewood turned out to be a bike, people admit: in order not to freeze in winter, they have to not only break the fences, but also collect a fallen in the forest. Fortunately, a few years ago, the authorities allowed citizens such a gathering. However, the locals are still collecting such wood with great cautiously:

-In the same place where you can go,-someone's forest. This means that the owners should write out permission to the foller. And where will you find this owner if he is in Moscow or in China? Therefore, we are drowning with a croaking.

Gorbil, as Alla says, is much cheaper than the birch bark, but it burns out very quickly and does not really warm. The trim of pine, ate and larchs are more difficult to find on free sale, besides, they formed from them: if you forget to clean the stove before trampling, the smoke can go into the house.

“While I have been living here, four leaders have already changed,” says Nikolai, the only man who came to the meeting. -They put one-it works for six months or a year, it is apparently starting to steal, and it is changed to another that steals again. And the problems are not solved! To be honest, I don’t even know where to write! You write to the village council - they say: we don’t intervene in business. You write to the prosecutor’s office - they answer: “Checking is being conducted.” And the timber trucks to China both went and go. And there is no police. If you write, then only Putin.

Evgenia, the indigenous seven -haired woman, a miniature woman about 45-50 years old, spoke about the very, in her opinion, effective tactics in dialogue with loggers:

- I received my firewood only two weeks ago, and then with sin in half. We rented a forest roll in the spring, waited all summer, already November, snow fell - but there is no firewood. But every day or every other day I go out into the garden-I see a “kvassov” machine-a shymig-shkyg with firewood there and back. This is some kind of mockery. But I think, okay, I'll arrange you. Then I hear: they go. She grabbed a brick on the road. Kvass stops, asks: "What do you need?" I say: where is the firewood? And he, as usual, they say, wait, no one yet. And the car itself is loaded. I was already raising me ... I say: I will see once again that you are passing by my house with firewood, excuse me, but I will throw this stone into your glass. So the next day he brought two cars. Not four, of course, but with a tattered sheep at least the wool of a handle.

Kvass

Kvasovs. Kvass. In a conversation with me more than once or twice were mentioned by the Semilovites. This is a family involved in the village of logging. Kvass provide firewood with firewood.

- When we arrived, everything was fine. You will come to Vlad, you just ask a humanly-you will be brought fire to the firewood in the evening. But then he went to the rural Duma, he became a deputy, and that’s all - now you can’t approach the shitty goat. You call - does not answer. You come to the house - and his mother seemed to break off the chain, screams, throws at everyone. He says, and so losses, and even we walk endlessly.

- And I think it would be a unprofitable matter, they would not have been engaged in it. But now they are deputies.

To clarify the situation, I contacted Vladislav Kvassov, a logging logging, to which so many complaints were made.

As Kvasov explained to me, the difficulties with the harvesting of firewood really began from last year, and, according to him, these difficulties have not been caused by the desire of entrepreneurs to cash in on people's troubles. Kvasov complained that the state began to simply distinguish fewer plots for harvesting wood, which is why not everyone has enough firewood, first of all they provide those who have submitted applications earlier. I complained about the bureaucracy:

- We take the forest in the Kornilovsky forestry. The forestry itself is state, but the last couple of years bureaucratic difficulties have begun there. For the design of the division, you need to provide a package of documents, which not everyone has. In addition, the terms of consideration of documents have increased.

Vladislav expressed the opinion that the deficit is also associated with "possible depletion of forest resources." Because of what next year, in accordance with changes in forest legislation, forestry will further reduce the volume of wood harvesting. At the same time, in paradoxically, he expects that even before the end of this year, the regional authorities will decide to increase the additional volumes of the workpiece.

“So far, I do not undertake to assume what will come of all this. But until there is firewood, I will deliver them. ”

According to Vladislav, he received applications from about 30 households, and most of these applications have already been executed, only a few houses are in line. But even before them, according to him, the forest will be delivered in the near future.

The logger calmly refers to criticism addressed and adds that people do not take into account transport costs, as well as the fact that they receive firewood at a very reduced price:

“If in the city a car of firewood can be sold for nine thousand rubles, then we release wood for five thousand foresters. I work in the minus, but what to do. ”

As for the alleged trade with China, it is also not so simple here. “Due to the tightening of legislation, forest trade with China is possible only with the corresponding package of documents, and the Chinese themselves follow this very closely, ” the logger explains.

According to Vladislav, he used to sell the forest to the Chinese, but since this year, partners from the Middle Kingdom have become very demanding of the quality of wood. Because of what Kvasov switched to the internal consumer.

I will add from myself: from January 1, 2022, a ban on the export of unprocessed wood to China entered into force. As a result, by September of the current year, the export of the circle was reduced by 3.3 times, only the birch did not fall under the ban (which just mainly goes to firewood). However, the rising wood prices allowed Russian companies to maintain income at the same level. According to the agency, if in 2019–2020 the average price per cubic meter was $ 178, in 2021 it increased to $ 210 /cubic meter. Today, 1 cubic meter of wood costs 234 dollars.

Prison

- But I generally wait for the mobilization that they will announce the universal! I will bury children with grandmothers, I will burst out my aunts - and I will go with my husband. Not in Ukraine, no! The most important thing for me is to give an automatic. As they give out - I immediately back. And I’ll take a walk in deputies ... How much can you mock people?! - With the determination of the fiery revolutionary, one of the women who came to meet with me at Alla's house.

Alla also complains: the lack of school teachers, on the absence of pharmacies in the village, for buses, which, contrary to the assurances of the administration, do not even reach half the stops in the village. The Cossacks also got, on which, according to the woman, the director of the only school was “literally obsessed”.

“We have a lot of children from both seven -year -olds and from neighboring villages. They should go to school at minus 30 on foot or ask for someone to be brought. This is fine? There is a school bus, but the director does not give it, he says, does not work. But as soon as the Cossacks are taken somewhere-so the bus, money, and gasoline are located at once. ”

According to the woman, the Cossack Cadet class works at the school. And in general, more comfortable conditions are created for Cossack children in the educational institution than for the rest. At the same time, a few qualified teachers literally run from seven -leggings.

- We can’t find English as a teacher for a year. Because the director is a tyrant. But with its Cossacks as a written trade, it is worn. Not a single meeting with his parents has yet held. Each time it refers to what is busy, and he has almost every day meetings with Moscow. And who will teach children? - Alla is outraged.

By the way about the Cossacks: in the very center of the village of Semiluzh, a huge Cossack fort was rebuilt. The idea of ​​this construction belonged to the local local historian to Vladimir Ilyin, called modestly in the seven -year -olds - the governor. Ilyin, who, besides, the deputy of the village Duma, says that the construction is an almost accurate copy of the fortress erected here by the Cossacks in the second half of the 17th century. It was built according to all the canons of fortification of 400 years ago. Although today the fort does not play any defensive role, along with the imperial residence reconstructed a few years ago, attracts tourists in the village.

The problems that the locals spoke about, apparently, bypassed the Cossacks. Пройдя за крепостную стену, где и обитает немногочисленный казачий отряд, я, к удивлению для себя, обнаружил огромную кучу березовых и осиновых чурок, над которой суетились одетые в военную форму, овчины и бушлаты четверо мужчин с колунами.

Поначалу увиденное за крепостной стеной показалось мне какой-то позабытой киношниками декорацией. Здесь было всё, как на съемочной площадке: заснеженные копны сена, сделанные из бревен импровизированные мишени для стрельбы из лука, у самого входа — кузница, а в центре острога — самая настоящая деревянная часовня. И просторный жилой дом с уходящим высоко в морозное небо дымком из трубы. Около дома припаркованы машины и снегоходы. Здесь вместе с семьей и ближайшими помощниками и живет Владимир Ильин.

Заметив незнакомца, казаки тут же переключили внимание на меня, любезно предложив мне поколоть дрова.

— Ты с Томска приехал?

— Нет, с Екатеринбурга.

— Откуда-откуда? — настороженно и удивленно переспросил казак. — От либералов? Не зря же говорят: город бесов.

— Ну, вообще не совсем…

— А чего приехал?

— Да люди говорят, у вас здесь дров нет.

— Как нет, а это что? — улыбаясь, казак показал в сторону кучи лежащих на снегу чурок. — А ну-ка, Вань, топор дай, пускай гость поколет, — шутливо-приказным тоном обратился мужчина к одному из своих подручных. И уже через мгновение в мою сторону протянули орудие с прорезиненной ручкой.

В России от предложений вооруженных топорами людей в военной форме лучше не отказываться. Скажу так: в минус 32 колка дров является довольно неплохим способом согреться. Но топор у меня быстро изъяли.

— Ну вот, дрова рубить научился. Почти казак. Всё казачество — оно как раз из Сибири пошло, — с почти академической уверенностью заявил тот, что в форме.

— А Ермак? Да и вообще: откуда казаки в Сибири взялись? — закосил под дурачка я.

— Наверное, с Дона, — опершись на колун, но уже не столь уверенно выдал собеседник.

— А запорожские казаки — это кто? И чем они отличаются от донских?

В глазах казака блеснул какой-то огонек, намекающий на дискуссию.

— Запорожские казаки — это не казаки, а бандиты! Они никогда никому не подчинялись — грабили и убивали только для себя. А донские — это казаки настоящие, государевы. Эти если грабили и захватывали, то во славу державы и царя, — в голосе моего собеседника вновь почувствовалась та самая уверенность.

— А, ну я всегда так и думал, — я решил съехать с темы. Казаки этот реверанс восприняли всерьез и с явным одобрением.

Мы зашли в одну из множества надворных построек — что-то вроде казачьей казармы. Довольно узкое помещение, покрытый пленкой длинный стол, печь, на ней — несколько бронзовых самоваров с дореволюционными печатями. Висящие на стене шкуры животных и черно-белая принтерная распечатка фотографии, на которой Владимир Ильин обнимается с самим Никитой Сергеевичем Михалковым, — вот и весь декор.

Казарма обжита, внутри тепло. Посреди беспорядка сразу несколько котят спасаются от холода.

Ильин, воевода и депутат, приходит следом. Он смотрится в этом интерьере вполне по-хозяйски. Однако о том, что в поселке за стеной замерзают люди, он слышит от меня будто впервые. И объясняет этот факт очень просто: «То, что у людей нет дров, — это следствие отсутствия политической воли и безалаберность чиновников. С них просто никто не спрашивает — и они ничего не делают».

По мнению воеводы, чтобы проблема решалась, тех, кто занимается древесиной, нужно лучше контролировать.

— А кто должен заниматься контролем?

— Как кто? Authorities. Те, кто принимает решение.

Попытка задать вопрос о том, не желает ли воевода сам, по-депутатски проконтролировать снабжение поселка дровами, не увенчалась успехом. Главный казак схватил ведро и тут же выскочил на улицу.

Буквально на следующий день после моего отъезда, когда о визите журналиста стало известно в сельсовете, дрова, которых Алла не могла дождаться более двух месяцев, внезапно привезли.

В озвученных в телеграм-канале главы Томской области Владимира Мазура планах по газификации на 2023–2024 годы среди внушительного списка населенных пунктов поселок Семилужки не обнаружился. Значит, проблема с дровами останется актуальной и в ближайшие годы.