FACTS ABOUT TALITSA:

     Talitsa is a fairly typical Russian village.  The only way you would know it exists, was if you had either family or friends who lived there.  The first villagers arrived more than 300 years ago.  Today it is virtually engulfed by the industrial town of Pervouralsk where people from Talitsa work and purchase their home goods.  Talitsa, like all villages, is a close knit community where people come to the door, rather than call, if they want to talk or if they need something.  It is still filled with the sounds of roosters and cows, but they are fewer now than in earlier times.  The morning air is more apt to be filled with the sound of barking dogs.  Each neighbor has a large garden (tilled in the spring by a hired man and his horse), their gardens' bounty keeping them in vegetables year round.
 

MAY 2005:  HAULING WATER, OR LESSONS IN DEMOCRACY

      The morning procession was starting.
      The first rays of light were coming over the rooftops of Formonov Street.  They fell like the ends of a schoolgirl's yellow ribbons.  A sparrow, sitting in the apple tree outside Nikolai's window, had just finished her early songs.  One minute she cocked her head toward the east, waiting impatiently for the sun to fill the tree, and the next sat preening herself as if expecting company.  Carts began to clink and rattle down the road, followed by the footsteps of a woman off to fetch
water, and another walking hand-in-hand with her child to school.  Cars
and buses were gathering on the main road, carrying people off to another day of work.
      Talitsa is as unremarkable as it is typical of a Russian village. And as such, it became a test village for an unexpected new project that, if it proved successful, would become an on-going part of our work.  The project had not been "exported," so to speak, but had come from the villagers themselves.  It started with four piles of trash and a broken water main that had left the village without water.
      Each time we have worked in Russia, we have seen the quality of life deteriorate at a startling rate (at least in the villages).  Even more sobering is the fact that the success of a few, and the deteriorating conditions of the majority, is all being equated with democracy.  As invaluable as the library projects are, in the end, they are not enough in and of themselves.  No book learning can be much believed when, after fifteen years of waiting for democracy, real life continues to fall short of people's hopes and ideals.  If democracy is free elections and tax collection, it is also a system to collect the trash, build new roads and -- at least in the villages  -- maintain platforms on the river banks where women can wash their husbands' clothes.
      These mundane, basic essentials of everyday life are rarely thought of or mentioned in discussions of democracy, and yet a well-functioning democracy is obviously one in which life functions well.   Even more, it was very clear that democracy would never take hold in Russia, or anywhere else for that matter, if daily life continued to deteriorate.
      In Talitsa, the path to the well and the well house itself had deteriorated to an extent that they were actually dangerous to use.  To get to the well in the first place, you had to cross a long wooden path filled with gaping holes, opening to marsh lands below.  The villagers' other option for getting water was a pump at the side of the main road that came up from a heavy metal cover resembling a manhole cover.  This was the water source the oldest women used because it was closer than the river.  In winter you could get to the cover over snow, but in every other season it was stranded in the middle of a ditch that required a four foot leap to reach it.  The third day of making the dreaded jump, I returned home and I told Nikolai that our work needed a reality check. He had already come to the same conclusion.  Further, he saw the needs in the village as also an opportunity to help the villagers improve their standard of living themselves.  The solutions had to be the
villagers', allowing the people to take hold of their own situation now, if they were to take hold of it in the future.  Our chances in succeeding, however, were clearly based on the fact that Nikolai had been born and raised in this village.  His help, therefore, would be seen as natural and acceptable.  He was not only trusted, but knew how to work with the people in such a way that imposed nothing, and even lifted their self-esteem.
      We began by trying to learn what was keeping various situations from being corrected.  That took us to the director of the water department to find out why the water main that had broken a month before (which supplied people with water for washing and cleaning but not drinking) had still not been fixed.  It was then that we learned that the company didn't have the manpower to fix it in less than two months.
If the situation was frustrating, it was not a situation to be critical of.  Post Soviet Russia and pre-democratic Russia is not an easy world in which to live.  The foundation of one system had been taken away without something else being ready to put in its place -- and what was to be put in its place wouldn't be built overnight -- and wouldn't be built without trials and setbacks.
      The only immediate result of our meeting was that a truck arrived the next day under a cold pouring rain.  Nikolai went to talk to the men and learned that they had isolated the problem.  The size of the truck and the number of men sent out were impressive.  We quickly made friends.  Nothing, however, was fixed. As the truck pulled away, a group of women were waiting for us.  In reply to their questions as to what to do next (knowing nothing had been fixed), Nikolai replied in such a way that set a startling amount of activity in motion.  "You're intelligent people," Nikolai began.  "Organize a meeting and find a solution.  The problem is not insolvable, after all.  It simply requires some thinking."
      By the end of the day, the women had succeeded in organizing a meeting.  One of the neighbors, a retired carpenter, offered his front yard.  Over half the villagers showed up.   By the time the meeting was over, the sun was dipping below the horizon.  It had been a lively exchange between both the men and women.  It covered not only the water problem and the problem of the growing piles of trash, but the repairs needed to the well house, the footpath, the roadside pump, as well as the need to rebuild the platform along the river.  The man who offered his front yard for the meeting, also agreed to draw up the plans for the projects, while another man organized a work crew.  Our part, as we saw it, was to encourage their efforts and to help -- at least initially -- by purchasing the supplies.

      We then made a trip to the department of sanitation in Pervouralsk which was responsible for the trash collection in Talitsa.  Like our experience with the water company, we had no illusions about the complexity of the problem.  We were, however, convinced that a situation can change if you not only persist, but find ways to draw on people's honor and need for respect.
     We drew a map of four large areas of trash that were beyond the ability of the villagers to clean up.  We took the map to the sanitation department and left it with a polite note explaining the predicament and appealing to their desire to help people live better lives.  Two days later a large truck appeared on the road, along with six or seven men and women, who had begun to clear the first of the four large piles.
      With each of the projects, it is the awareness of being self-empowered that is significant.  The day after the town meeting, for instance, a five foot piece of rubber hose suddenly appeared on the roadside pump.  The simple solution let you leave the buckets on the road to fill them up, rather than having to jump the gully with them in hand.  While the money to fix things properly might result in a better or more long-lasting solution, still, ingenuity without money was not to be looked down upon -- or taken lightly.  That short five foot piece of hose could not have given us more hope:  it was proof that people were thinking on their own.
      Two weeks after we left Talitsa, we found out that the villagers themselves (on learning that the water department was honestly overwhelmed with the volume of work facing them), worked out a temporary solution for getting the water main up and running.  Two and a half months later, the water company came through as promised and fixed the water main properly.
     In addition, each of the other building projects the villagers voted on were completed.  The washing platform could be seen most any time of day holding people washing anything from shirts to large oriental carpets.  Such things, to be sure, are not because washing machines are non-existent, even if expensive.  It is an ingrained part of the villagers' traditions.  If washing clothes by hand in the river seems like something out of the past, it is as important to these people as are fresh vegetables, milk from the cow, and homemade bread.  It is a tradition that preserves an unquestionable quality to life.  Indeed, no sooner had the well house and platform been completed, than people from nearby villages, not just Talitsa, could be seen washing clothes and hauling water -- both of which do have something to do with a living democracy.