In The Heartland: Bitter Discontent

By Paul Quinn-Judge/Pakhomovo

Most of Tetya Zhenya's savings have been wiped out in the past eight years by what Moscow bureaucrats call economic reform, and the retired cowherd knows exactly how she is going to spend what's left. "When Yeltsin dies, I'll throw a party to celebrate and get the whole village drunk," Zhenya announced in an obscenity-filled dialect to visitors in Pakhomovo, a tiny, remote settlement on the Pinega River, 650 miles from Moscow. President Boris Yeltsin, she said, is to blame for the "mess" the villagers are in: the collapse of their livelihood, the disappearance of paychecks, long delays in pensions, the near total isolation in which they now live.

The dominant mood was one of bitterness at their present plight and despair about the future. "In the past they lived like slaves" under the communist regimes, said Nikolay Lychev, the head of a school near Pakhomovo. "Now they look back on their slavery with delight."

This is the Other Russia, a vast region that is weak, divided and destitute. And well before the currency collapse last week, there was no economy: most industry is at a standstill, and villages have reverted to barter and subsistence farming. Here, $120 would be considered a good monthly salary, if anyone was ever paid on time. School principal Lychev is relatively lucky: he recently received an "advance" of $30 on his January pay. The elaborate support system created during the Soviet period for harsh areas like the north--subsidized food and travel, high salaries--has disappeared. And people find talk of Western assistance baffling, since they see Moscow as totally corrupt. If anyone gives the Kremlin money, said Zhenya's husband Viktor, Yeltsin and his friends simply "pour it straight into their own feeding trough."

In the days before reforms, life in the North was tough but predictable. But that began to change in the early '90s. In Sogra, a village of 1,000, the local airstrip closed about three years ago, and the once-a-year barges that brought food and consumer goods stopped soon after that. To survive, most villagers keep a cow, poach fish from the river and grow potatoes and onions. They go nowhere because they do not have fuel for their boats. The elderly, paradoxically, form the mainstay of the rural cash economy: pensions arrive late but more or less regularly.

Life in the nearest big town, seven hours away by road, is little better. Kotlas (pop. 60,000) flourished during the Gulag years, when it was a railway hub for Stalin's prison-camp system. Now its factories stand idle. Sergei Stepanov, a former soldier and failed businessman, speaks bitterly of the need for a revolt. "I would be the first one out on the street," he declared, "if someone organized it." Adds retired policeman Oleg Kukushkin: "Discontent is getting worse all the time. But people here won't do anything about it. In 1917 it took them two weeks to find out there had been a revolution in Russia."

--By Paul Quinn-Judge/Pakhomovo