The destiny of the country-side: only city intellectuals cry for the disappearing villages

Sergey Baimukhametov

It is conditionally "new" because it is an "edited" Program for the Comprehensive Development of Rural Areas for 2020 - 2025, adopted in 2019.

The government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta then wrote: “They will provide a breakthrough ... Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a hefty list of instructions. Their implementation will radically change the quality of life of the villagers. 2.3 trillion rubles will be allocated for the development of rural areas”.

More specifically, 2.288 trillion. But when the count goes to trillions and hundreds of billions, it is not accepted to “waste time on trifles”, the numbers are rounded.

Note: in the government decree on the approval of the Program dated May 31, 2019, it was written in black and white: "Without changes in the total amount of its funding".

However, then something incomprehensible began.

Six months later, on January 29, 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture put forward a project to INCREASE funding to 3 trillion. That is, immediately - by 712 billion.

And after two weeks - on the contrary. The new project already assumed the REDUCTION of funding. As much as 1 trillion 33 billion 352 million. More than twice!

As a result, the old new Program was recently approved with a reduced total amount of funding - 1,254,648,001.5 thousand rubles.

Fantastic scrupulousness of the calculation. These 1,500 rubles cannot but touch (or delight?). After billions and millions - one and a half thousand rubles. Two and a half kilograms of Moldovan cherries in the store.

What happened before? There was a priority national project "Development of the agro-industrial complex" for 2006-2008.

Then it was transformed into the State Program for the Development of Agriculture for 2008-2012 with a total funding of 1.407 trillion.

Then there was the Program for 2013-2020 - 1.5 trillion.

And what are the results of 15 years of grandiose plans on paper? (Historical note especially for young contemporaries: 15 years after the devastating World War II, a destroyed economy was restored in the USSR, the world's first artificial Earth satellite was launched, and the world's first spacecraft with a man on board was launched into Earth's orbit.)

By 2013, the number of schools in rural areas, compared to 2000, decreased 1.7 times, hospital organizations - 4 times, outpatient clinics - 2.7 times.

From the speech of Vladimir Kashin, Chairman of the Agrarian Committee of the State Duma, 2017:

“The average distance to a feldsher-obstetric center in a village is 80 kilometers. How long does it take to get first aid? And if a heart attack? What if something else? Over the past 20 years, 34,000 villages have disappeared from the face of the earth. Another 10,000 villages today have fewer than 8 inhabitants. If we talk about gasification, 95,000 villages do not have it. If we talk about quality water supply, then this is only 5%. People do not see the prospects of living in the countryside. There is no work, the infrastructure is backward. 30,000 villages do not have paved roads. A little bit screwed up - the fire engine can hardly pass, not to mention the bus service. "

Four more years have passed since then. Experts from the Center for Economic and Political Reforms predict the final death of the Russian village by 2033-36.

At the end of 2020, the government established new signs of unused land. The report said that the total area of agricultural land - arable land, hayfields, pastures, orchards, vineyards, on-farm roads, communications, reclamation protective forest plantations, water bodies, areas under buildings, structures used for production, storage and primary processing of products - 382 , 5 million hectares. Including farmland - 197.7 million hectares.

Not used - 76.3 million hectares. This is one and a half territories of France.

Who received and will receive the trillions allocated for "rural development"? It is well known - the so-called agricultural holdings. These are large companies affiliated with the government and bureaucracy. According to the Accounts Chamber, farmers receive only 2% of government subsidies.

Here we are talking about subsidies primarily for the production of agricultural products. Peasant farms (PFs) account for 13% of the total. Another 35% are personal subsidiary plots (LPH). The rest - everything that is sold in city shops - is provided by importers and agricultural holdings. With their already established system from the field and the barnyard to the counter.

Neither peasant farms, nor, moreover, private household plots will not be engaged in the "arrangement of rural areas." God forbid, each owner, to preserve his own business and to use his estate.

This means that this economic and social task, to one degree or another, is assigned to agricultural holdings. Starting with employment of the population. There are two sides. In our country, unemployment is somehow combined with a shortage of workers. The villagers, of course, need a salary. Large agricultural enterprises are milkmaids and machine operators. Who works and will work in these agricultural holdings during their further development? Guest workers from the former republics of the USSR? A month and a half ago, the Ministry of Agriculture planned to bring migrant workers by charter trains to harvest. But seasonal campaigns are over, and rural production remains. Five months ago, State Duma deputy Vladimir Zhirinovsky suggested: “We will give them housing in empty villages in Russia, let them live there. They are good farmers. And how many empty lands do we have with ready-made houses? "

The announcements in Moscow are understandable: “We invite janitors, roofers, complex cleaning workers to work. Free accommodation, free overalls, free registration. "

The same announcements are already on the countryside of the Internet. For example, milkmaids are invited to the village of Bolshaya Dragunskaya, Oryol Region: "We will provide housing, you can live with your family."

In the Kungursky District of the Perm Territory, milkmaids are promised: "Provision of housing, medical care, conditions for children."

In the village of Kochetovka, Tambov region, the name of the tractor-machine operators: “Full social. package, the provision of housing - a house with all the amenities for a permanent (! - S.B.) place of residence, a family is welcome! "

Comfortable apartment in the village! Both migrants from Central Asia and locals living in settlements remote from the agricultural enterprise are invited.

That is, we are talking about the concentration of the rural population around production structures.

There were and are two ways. First, production facilities are sent to settlements and separate teams, farms, schools, first-aid posts, and clubs are created there. Second, the population is concentrated around large livestock complexes and machine and tractor parks, in large villages with an appropriate social infrastructure. In the USSR, both options were valid until the 70s. Then small villages were declared "unpromising", which caused a wave of public quiet protest - mainly in fiction and, to the extent permitted, in journalism. But life was relentless - the youth left the village. Despite the decisions of the authorities and all-Union state propaganda campaigns: "Where he was born - there he came in handy."

Experts from the Institute for Economic and Political Research, analyzing the draft Program, warned in 2019: “The new policy may turn out to be focused on the initiatives of big business. And in a predictable way, he will come up with proposals for the construction of agricultural towns and their arrangement at the expense of the state program. "

That is, large agribusiness will not equip small villages (he did not equip them before)? And in general - does not take them into account?

Is it necessary to try to save them, waste energy and money in vain? Is big agricultural business pragmatically right at the present stage? Everything else - lyrics, the lament of the intelligentsia for the "Russian village"? As in Soviet times, they joked: we all left the people - but for some reason no one wants to return to it ...

It is high time to speak differently and seriously: we all came from the people, from the countryside - who will repay their debts?

Rural people want to work and live in modern civilized conditions. Soon the older generation still working today, accustomed from childhood to stove heating and wooden toilets in the cold, will leave - and no one can be forced into the village by force. Only comfortable housing, in a large village, agro-town, with social and cultural infrastructure.

Perhaps someday we will come to cozy small villages, family farms among picturesque groves and fields - completely, absolutely comfortable by the standards of modern civilization, created at the will and desire of individuals, owners of their land, their lives and destiny. With instant access to anywhere in the district or region on modern highways. In the meantime - an unsightly reality.

Do the compilers of the Programs have general ideas, thoughts about the philosophy of rural development in the modern Russian world, about the strategy? Or we rewrite the same thing from document to document, allocate trillions, do not know (or do we know?) Where they go, and in the end everything is the same - devastation and desolation.

There are many questions. What will be the answer to them, and can, in principle, our minds from the government, who calculated the 1.255 trillion Program with an accuracy of 1,500 rubles, answer them?