To settle sensible muzhiks.

The hovercraft "Marina" confidently rushes along the Letnij coast of the White Sea. The record of "Маrina" - 185 kilometers (from Arkhangelsk up to Letnyaya Zolotitsa) for 3,5 hours. The vessel likes a windless weather and shallow water. "Marina" bears the storm, but no more than force three.

It was not lucky with the weather a little for this time. We reached Letnyaya Zolotitsa only after nine hours of travel. The arrival was at about three o'clock at night, but everybody was waiting for us in"Letnyaya Zolotitsa" resort. Rural milk, potatoes, gherkins were on the table. Oleg Prodan, the director general of "Wildlife Discovery Club», has spent five years to create this tourist complex. The resort in Letnyaya Zolotitsa village is registered, so, all the taxes go to the local budget.

The Muscovite Oleg Prodan has attracted the enterprises of our region for the creation of the resort. The log-cabine of a good quality is the product of Ust'yansky "Wooden architecture", and the huge chipwood "birds of happiness", florid national paintings on walls and furniture are produced by the hands of workers of Arkhangelsk "Belomorskie uzory".

The resort is a kind of semienclosed club intended first of all for the VIP-tourists. It is just 60 kilometers on the sea from here up to Solovky. Oleg Prodan, having a wide experience of participation in the Arctic expeditions, organizes the helicopter flights for the visitors to show them the seal cubs and other surprising living creatures of the Russian North. He is really going to prove, that such kind of tourism will bring much more money than the murdering of animals.

- It is interesting to look, how the seals bask on stones... Believe me, the simple supervision over animals is not the smaller extreme, than the hunting, - Oleg considers.

Laima Vajkule, Leonid Yakubovich, Alyona Sviridova, the high-ranking militarians had a rest in "Letnyaya Zolotitsa" resort. But the way here is closed for different sorts of mobsters, despite of thickness of their purses.

- The club rest means the certain outlook, rules of behaviour. Briefly they can be formulated so: do no harm to the Nature, do no harm to the neighbour, do no harm to yourelf, - Oleg Leonidovich says.

It is possible to smoke only in special places. No fires, dust, drunken feasts. The alcohol is supposed in rather insignificant quantities. But visitors here are treated with cottage cheese, mushrooms, salmon soup and bread baked in Russian furnace. Each evening - the bath with smart birch brooms. The bath is heated not by electricity but by wood. Though the modern diesel station is ready "to digest" considerable overloadings.

Everythihg points, on the one hand, on a healthy, approached to the boons of a nature, image of life, and with another - on comfort of the European level. Here (certainly!) the parlourmaids change towels and bed-clothes every day.

The resort has given job for about twenty inhabitants of Letnij coast of the White Sea (not including those who sell here mushrooms, berries, fish and products of animal industries). Tatiana Shaplina is already on pension, but was arranged as a parlourmaid.

- Well, it is sadly to sit at home alone. Here I am engaged all day long, - she speaks. - Daughters have grown. Olga works as a teacher, Hadezhda is a shop assistant, Lyudmila works in a staff department of "Belomor" collective farm. They were in time to be arranged. And now just try to find any job in a village! And my son - in - law Sergej Samojlov has come to resort together with his brothers Oleg and Аlexander. Now the three of them work here on diesel.

Jurij Lapintsev, the 21-year's old inhabitant of Letnyaya Zolotitsa has returned to native territories after a service in army. He served on Northern fleet, went on "Peter the Great" and other large surface ships. Oleg Prodan has found job for him! Now Jurij is a sailor-motor mechanic on a vessel "Маrina". And recently he became also the student, having entered Sevmashvtuz to study to become the engineer - mechanics.

Oleg tries to attach sensible rural muzhiks and non-drinking youth: "I want them to see that other life is possible. What for is it necessary to me? Probably, I became intimate with the country life for the last five years".

The collective farm needs only quotas

The river Zolotitsa separates the village and the resort. But not only the water barrier passes between these two completely different worlds. Oleg Prodan can not find common language with Sergey Samojlov, the chairman of "Belomor"collective farm. Prodan's plans (together with Sev-PINRO) to revive a salmon herd in the river Zolotitsa on the basis of a local material (salmon hutchling), and also to create a trout facilities on Paraninskom lake became one of stumbling blocks.

- The biological substantiation of the project, on which some hundreds thousand roubles were spent, is ready for a long time. But I was refused in rent of water sites under a pretext that everything was bequeathed to "Belomor" collective farm. Collective farm does nothing! - Oleg experiences. And the creation of trout facilities is the coming of new workplaces for the local population. It is a fresh fish, which we could deliver on Solovki, where there are a lot of the tourists now. For the rural inhabitants it is a product of meal: want a trout? - So, you take a fishing tackle and catch. Feel lazy to catch? - go to the shop and buy. It is possible to make the price on a level of ten roubles for kg for the natives.

Alas, it was not possible to meet the chairman of "Belomor". According to the inhabitants of Letnyaya Zolotitsa, Sergey Samojlov basically lives in Arkhangelsk. He runs round here occasionally. Therefore I took an interview from his assistant Тatiana Bratuhina. The conversation, however, has turned out very sad. According to Tatiana Semyonovna's words, there are five milk cows, one bull-calf and 15 horses (young animals and workers) in "Belomor" today. Only 12 collective farmers from Verhnyaya Zolotitsa - as much as from next Pushlahta - work on preparation of seaweed. Everybody tries to sell it not to Arkhangelsk seaweed complex but to customers from Moscow and St. Petersburg now.

Traditional coast-dweller's coastal fish trade almost does not exist. "There is actually no coastal fishing, - marks Таtianа Semyonovna. - Fishing quota on 200 kgs of a salmon is selected on amateur fishery. So it should be divided between 300 men of the local population!"

Industrial catching of crashes, haddock and other fish seems to exist. According to Bratuhina's words, quota for a sole collective farm vessel "Tiligul" is scanty - only 540 tons. And vessel is now handed over in rent to Mezensky fishing collective farm... Bratuhina is sure that only the increase of quotas can revive the collective farm.

There will be a production of seal in autumn. The quota is 300 heads. "We throw out the seal's fat, we sell only skins after primary processing at the price of 650 roubles for a piece", - Tatiana Semyonovna says. Well, as it is spoken, no comments... And in winter the collective farmers are engaged by preparation of a wood... The average salary here does not exceed 5-6 thousand roubles per one month...

The fuel fever continues

The collective-farm diesel station is given up in rent to "Vzmor'e" limited company. This "limited company" made the inhabitants of Letnyaya Zolotitsa moan and groan. And the reason is not only in the sudden jumps of a voltage, which caused the damage of home appliances in the village. Fuel remained slightly! And everyone is afraid of the last year's situation when the fuel has been delivered only at the end of November...

The inhabitants of Pushlahta took tractors (!) to reach this fuel when it was finally delivered to Verhnyaya Zolotitsa. It took ten hours one way along the stones and bogs. Three ancient diesel engines stand in Pushlahta. One is militarian, another was taken from a tractor and third one is stationary. All of them had major repairs in the year before last. Since then they were exposed to partial repair repeatedly.

- "Vzmor'e" promises to give us the new engine by autumn, - the motorman Nickolai Agafonov says. - They only "feed" us with the promises for two years.

Not suffering by any problems concerning the electric power Oleg Prodan offered the collective farm to carry out a cable from the resort's diesel power station so that the inhabitants of the village could receive the necessary quantity of the electric power round the clock under the guaranteed payment of a part of expenses. But such offer does not arrange the chairman of "Belomor"...

The kindergarten was built by the dispossed kulaks

At the end of August Letnyaya Zolotitsa village will celebrate its 590th anniversary. Here it is possible to find buildings, which might be related to historical sights. My "guide" is Victor Sikorsky - the deputy of a local representative and school director. The native of Коnoshsky area, he has arrived here 12 years ago "in searches of romanticism".

The romanticism has appeared rigid. The wooden collapsing buildings, which are used today as kindergarten, school and boarding school, were transported here in 50 years of the last century from Кego - settlement, where the dispossed kulaks lived... And also the director has shown me some terrible dilapidated house, having said, that once there was a school sports hall here... Today lessons of physical culture are spent in the street, sometimes - in a school hall.

The computer was set in school under the presidential program. Alas, it does not work. The answer from Moscow was: wait! Teachers and children wait for 1,5 months... Boys and girls use textbooks printed in 1990s. Not each parent can afford to buy new...

There are13 kids from one year up to seven in the kindergarten, 18 schoolboys (from first till the ninth classes) and six teachers are at school. Director is the student of the sixth rate of faculty of psychology and pedagogics. The sole teacher having maximum education is the biologist from Arkhangelsks Маrina Lisina. She got married here, the year ago she gave birth to her daughter Varvara... She likes the job, house and kitchen garden, where it is possible to dig "by a botanical part ".

But many things here seem strange to her. For example: the locals hold neither hens, nor pigs... Later somebody has told me, that in the Soviet times the kulaks just exactly had hens and that is why they had been dispossed. Is it the genetic memory that shows itself? Maybe at that times the coast-dwellers lost the skill to work and to live normally?..

Well, even the ultrasound devices have been brought...

Future first formers from Puhlahta prepare to move for winter to Letnyaya Zolotitsa. They will live in a boarding school far from their mums and dads. There is no school in Pushlahta. But there is a medical assistant's item. Externally beautiful (the polyclinic has allocated money for painting of a building). There are only tonometer and phonendoscope inside...

- The doctors from city come to us for two years. And every time we ask them to bring the ultrasound devices with themselves, - experiences the local doctor Tatiana Glebezdina is upset. - This time the ECG device have been brought, but in such a state... We repaired it on a road.

But also the children are born here! "The newborn has appeared this year, - continues Тatiana Аrkadievna. - Sasha Agafonov, the medical assistant from Letnyaya Zolotitsa, assisted in childbirth (he was here on holidays). The girl has been named Sashen'ka in his honour".

Nobody pays for being the deputy

Letnij Navolok, Zhizhgin Island and two beacons enter Letnezolotitskoe Municipal Unity as well as Letnyaya Zolotitsa and Pushlahta. Basic problem spots of the territory are transport and communication.

- The plane АN-2 flies to us, you know. But the cost of the ticket is 2730 roubles one way - and not many people can afford it, - the head of the Мunicipal Unity Elena Pahomova says. - The products are carried by a vessel "Dauriya", and people - by a barge with two "sheds", on which waves "go for a walk" around a deck during storms.

- The large problems are with communication. It happens, that it is one-way unilateral, and sometimes two words have been said, and all breaks, - the secretary of a local election commission of Verhnyaya Zolotitsa Natalya Samojlova complains. - They say that the equipment is old. "Artelecom" plans to replace it. When?

By the way, the overhaul of a local line was spent... twenty years back! But, in spite of all, the preparation for October elections of a local representative continues in Letnezolotitsky. In current structure are the employees of government-financed organizations and the representatives of trade sphere.

- It is not enough now wishing to go in the deputies, - sighs Наталья Самойлова. - There are people, that could change something in the best way, but they do not want to put forward the nominees. One says: simply I do not want! Others: well, nobody pays for it...

Palsy-walsy on a beacon

The chairman of a local election commission of Pushlahta Natalya Trubina also prepares for the elections. She penetrates into the legislation, tries to understand the documents. It is very uneasy to her! She has worked as the driver of a tram in Arkhangelsk for twenty years. The trams have been removed. She started to work as a trolleybus driver. The trolleybuses have been removed, too... Having waved on all by a hand, Natalya has left to Mum in Pushlahta. She has also met here Alexander Emelyanov that has pulled in a village after 20 years of work for Sevmash.

Today Natasha and Аlexander live palsy-walsy on Chesmensky beacon (12 kilometers on the sea from the village). Alexander is nominated as the chief of a beacon. Natalya is a technician. Having arrived on a beacon, first of all they have adjusted the stoves. Now they are finishing the repair of the bath. Wait for a steamship, which will bring the main lens for a beacon (while its small substitute works).

Economic Natalya has created a flower bed, has planted the vegetable marrows, the greens and has started to keep chicken.

Alexander and Natalya say that they have got tired of cities. Enjoy calmness and beautyful environmental that surrounds us. And thus they do not fold their hands, they do not cry, and try to create the comfortable and kind world in the small territory...

And at last. On a Letnij coast of the White Sea the ship - phantom lays. They say that it did not reach three years before its century - it has been taking out by storm on a coast. There is an inscription "Solovetskye bells", and an onboard magazine lie still in captain's cabin. It seems that the owner of the ship - certain Severodvinsk businessman - has prefered to forget about this vessel... Whether will turn the villages of a Letnij coast in the same phantoms not necessary to their inhabitants?

Nadezhda SHILOVA.
07/08/2008