Page 78 - Litteratteur Redefining World December issue

Litterateur redefining world December 2020

The owners of the local businesses and
factories have changed so now money
makes it to the pockets of some oligarchs
in Moscow instead of the government in
Moscow—but what do local workers care?
People still work at the same garage they
always have, the same factory, the local
store. Maybe more customers from the city
show up, but otherwise life is the same
Ancient quarters (recreation)
since no one in these small hamlets had near Lake Baikal
any knowledge of, or any need to know,
where the profits went to begin with. They
live their lives, and once in a while they ride

this train east, to visit family or find work.
Life in the city and in the rural spread of
Russia is similar for that disconnected
routine.

Farther east, the city-sprawl eventually
gives way to villages with their own center,
disconnected from St Petersburg in the
daily ways of life, with their own soul of
sorts; a town square, an abandoned or
repurposed estate, and some notable
industry. These are the suburbs which
mark time as we know it. In these suburbs- Baikal Fisherman
as-we-think-of-them, people try and
balance the changes with home
improvements such as satellite dishes, new
appliances, and foreign-made cars, all

tempered by traditional garden plots
tended with archaic tools. Throughout the
run along the rails out of St Petersburg
nearly all the way to Yekaterinburg, small
gardens back each another with tiny sheds
for supplies. This is shared land, and
everyone learned generations ago to
respect each-other’s plots, their
vegetables, their place in time. And the
further we travel the more distance exists
Chersky's Rock, Lake Baikal

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