We were lucky to be there when the strawberries were ripening. After spending a couple hours picking strawberries, then weeding the other fields (though unlike five years ago I was spared having to hoe potatoes – now they have a machine that does that automatically!), we enjoyed some tea and delicious wonderful fresh strawberries. In general, the veggies and fruit tastes better in Russia – especially strawberries, tomatoes, and even cucumbers. The reason is that it is very fresh and straight from the ground – here at Hannaford, whose produce is great by American standards, much of what we buy is shipped from other places or even other countries, and the result is a little less flavor. Russians spend a lot of time taking care of there little fields, and making jams and canning in order to have food for the winter. Even Natasha’s family, which by Russian standards is doing OK with her dad working at Luk Oil, needs to grow most of their own produce to assure enough money is there for other things. The dacha is work, it’s not just relaxation.
The dacha is in the town of Shoshka, and the town has really good water, which gives it an advantage over Syktyvkar, whose tap water is undrinkable. I don’t know if it would make you sick, but it smells funny and often looks brown. The drinking water they use all comes from a well in Shoshka – whenever Natasha’s family heads there (a couple times a week at least) they bring back containers of good tasty well water. With my American love of water (Russians don’t drink water much – most don’t have access to good well water, and usually prefer a non-alcoholic beer called Kvass, or a cranberry drink called Morss), I originally was drinking their supply faster than they could replenish it. Once I realized that, Natasha and I started buying mineral water. Also, the lack of good toilet facilities when we travel or walk around town convinced me there was an advantage to keeping myself slightly dehydrated.
One problem with post-Communist Russia – the work ethic that is needed to rebuild the economy still isn’t completely back. The Communist era deadened that ethic to many Russians – and those with a desire to succeed tended to have to work through the party, that was the path of upward mobility. Others (like Natasha’s dad) ended up joining the Communist party because he was promoted to a job that required it. But her family’s experience is an example of what Soviet life was like. Her great grandparents were "kulacks," rich farmers who Stalin demonized. They lived in the Volga region, but the family was separated and shipped off to other parts of the Soviet Union as punishment – hence Natasha’s family ended up in Komi. Her father is of German-Komi heritage, her mom is Russian. He was a hard worker, and instilled that in his children, something which has allowed them all to do very well in tough times. After running the collective farm in the north, Natasha’s father briefly served in the Duma for the Agricultural party, and was there when Yeltsin’s troops attacked and broke up the Duma in 1993. As village life in the north worsened, they moved to Syktyvkar. Many Russians not motivated to work hard found it easy to simply get by in the system, however, and the result is a ‘psychology of dependency’ where people try to milk the system or other people for whatever they can. That is often seen as preferrable to hard work, and has helped create a real problem with alcoholism, especially among men (whose life expectancy is about 55). The second picture below is of the Dacha house being built, but it was supposed to be done by now. Natasha’s dad is paying them by the day, and they are taking the money but doing as little work as possible. That angers her dad, and is symptomatic of the cultural problem left over by communism that Russia has to overcome to really succeed. It’s just impressionistic, but I really get the sense that young people are making real progress, and often it’s lack of opportunity rather than desire that gets in the way – and in such cases, people are starting to find ways to create their own opportunity. As long as organized crime (either from mafias or the state) doesn’t get in the way, Russia is slowly emerging and may surprise a lot of people in coming years.