Badland
Zapolye is a small village in the center of Russia. I was born here in the mid-1990s, during the crisis after the collapse of the USSR. Five generations of my family lived in this place, but I became a representative of the latter. When I was 16, I moved to the city. While getting a historical education, I began to look at this place as a researcher. I wanted to know why my birthplace was gradually disappearing.
In the end, it became obvious to me that the reason for the abandonment of villages is the collectivization of the 1930s. Harsh repressive measures against the peasants, the physical destruction of farmers, the prohibition of private property led to the fact that the peasants were not able to manage the land alone. The democratic government did not provide any support to the peasants in the 90's and people were forced to just leave their land and go to the cities. The extinction of villages in Russia is the result of another experiment of the Soviet government, which led to irreversible consequences. Russian villages continue to die out one after another: in a few years Zapolye will add to the list of extinct settlements, and its chthonic emptiness will become a reminder of the consequences of utopian ambitions.
