Vetoshkino Russia

Kirov is the name of a large northern city, as well as the surrounding region in which Vetoshkino lies. Kirov was founded in 1181 on the Vyatka River and is 540 miles northeast of Moscow. It is best known for its ballet company -- one of two major ballet companies in Russia. Its former name, The Kirov Ballet, was changed in 1991 to The Kirov-Mariinsky Ballet. You can visit the following web site to learn more about the ballet's history, and see an exquisite photo gallery. www.mariinsky.ru/en/ballet
    One hundred and twenty-five miles southeast of Kirov is the village of Vetoshkino. It was founded in 1793 by three brothers whose family name was Vetoshkin. They were what was known as "Old Believers". Old Believers were those who did not accept the changes in the church made by the patriarch Nikona and, as a result, the three brothers were exiled into what was considered a wilderness -- a far off woods that would become the village of Vetoshkino.
     In 1860 the settlement was officially established as a village with a local form of government. A small wooden "Church of the Trinity" was built by a priest called Malah. But the majority of the village remained Old Believers. In 1888 the church opened a school that had three classes and two teachers.
    In 1905 a huge fire broke out in the village that virtually wiped it out. When it was rebuilt, it was renamed Vetoshkino. Vetoshkino is now set in the midst of endless hay and wheat fields, has about 400 residents and depends largely on argriculture. It still functions as a "kolhoz" or collective community, with about 100 of its members employed by the community to harvest the wheat and hay, pasture the community's cows, and work in the post office, general store, and school.
    Until 2002, no American had ever been to the village.

It was the first day of spring according to the calendar, but still the middle of winter in Vetoshkino. Nikolai and Jeannie had traveled 22 hours and 750 miles over the snowbound, isolated roads of winter Russia to supply the school with new books, as well as to buy every child in the school a book of his or her own. Their journey had taken them through Vladimir, Nizhni Novgorod, Kazan and Malmizh -- and, finally, beyond all semblance of the 21st century. At 2:00 a.m., seventeen hours after they'd left Moscow, they were less than 25 miles from Vetoshkino in the town of Urzhum. There they came upon a lone man walking his dog and stopped him to ask about the roads. His breath hung in the air and froze as he spoke. There were only two roads that were likely to be passable, he said.

They drove on past the last few houses but on a premonition stopped at the last one and knocked gently on the front window. The curtain pulled back showing the weary face of a man who, seeing them, exchanged a few words and then shortly appeared from behind a courtyard door. He said that the road to the right was the better chance.

They started out again and had gone no more than a mile when the road became impassable: a sea of frozen ice heaved up here -- or with gaping holes there. With no way to turn around for the road was narrow and dropped off sharply into fields below, they had no choice but to inch along, straddling huge ruts, as the ground groaned and cracked beneath them. At last, and without warning, the ground simply gave way and the road disappeared. Half the car lay engulfed in an ice hole. After every attempt to get out, there was no choice but for Nikolai to set out on foot to try to find help while Jeannie waited in the car.

Though they had no way of knowing it, across the stillness of the night the shrill sound of the tires spinning on the ice, and the horrible roar of the car's engine, had reached the ears of the man to whom they had last spoken. He had left the warmth of his home and found Nikolai on the road. Together they walked 30 minutes to the home of yet another man with a large truck. At 4:00 a.m. the car was out of the hole, turned around and inching its way back to the only other road open to Vetoshkino. An hour later, just as the sun was spilling its first soft light over the edge of another day, they turned into the village. Nikolai's cousin Tatyana and her husband Mikhail greeted them anxiously, pulling off our boots and wrapping us in warm blankets and valenki (tall, soft felt Russian boots). Tatyana quickly filled the kitchen table with hot food, and having filled themselves to the full with fresh bread and cheese, and eggs and sour cream, they were hopelessly overcome by a sleep as deep as the enchantments that befall all innocent characters in Russian tales.

    The school had one main hall whose tall ceiling stole most of the pale yellow light coming from three light bulbs dangling precariously from their electrical cords. The upper half of the walls were white, and the lower a rich and typically Russian shade of deep blue-green. As the heavy, wooden door to the first classroom was held open, the sound of synchronized feet shuffling to attention filled the air. The students all rose together and stood rod straight, intoning the formal Russian greeting to the visitors.

    As Nikolai spoke, the children's and the teachers' faces were a combination of awe, wonder, and disbelief. We had not only solicited their input for which books would be useful in the library, but then we told them that each child would be bought a book of his or her own. One child dreamed of having an encyclopedia of biology. (There are beautiful single volume encyclopedias as well as multiple volumes.) Another asked for an encyclopedia of geology and another of medicine. One asked for Shakespeare, another Hemingway; others Conan Doyle, Dumas, Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, Lermontov, and on and on. All the while Tatyana and the teachers took copious notes.

    Only on the second day of their stay did they learn of Vetoshkino's sister village, Votckoya, where a primary school is located. Learning of their needs, it was decided that the sister school should be helped as well. All of the books would be bought in Kirov. On the third day, they set off early, the two and a half hour drive north to Kirov landing them in the city just as the shops were opening.

CULTURAL LESSONS: THE VALUE OF BOOKS

The shopkeeper of the first small bookstore on a busy main street of Kirov was, as is often the case with store clerks, stony-faced and reserved though Nikolai and Tatyana had made it plain that they were going to buy a considerable number of books. Tatyana read a number of the titles we were looking for, and Nikolai explained that they wanted only books of the best quality. Still none of this caused any real response. The one or two books the clerk produced were only of average quality at best. They could not have withstood long-term use. Seeing at last that they would have to take a more patient, coaxing tack, Nikolai and Tatyana began to explain the library project. Did she know the village of Vetoshkino? Well, yes, she had heard of it, but she didn't know anyone who lived there. What were the roads like now? Still very bad. Would all the books be used in the library, she asked? Yes, except the ones to be given to each child to have for his or her own. The clerk could look at the list herself, offered Tatyana.

Nikolai was losing patience. They would buy the books she had showed them, he replied, only if she was willing to tell them where in town they could buy books of the highest quality. He knew, he continued, that such books existed, and he was determined to have nothing but the best for the children. Finally she believed him. It had taken nearly an hour, but when they had earned her trust, she was suddenly able to supply them with literally hundreds of beautiful and well made books. The bookshelves, it turned out, consisted of not one, but two layers. The front layer, immediately visible to the customer, held books of average and inexpensive quality. Those, however, the shopkeeper suddenly began to take down revealing a second layer of books of astonishing quality. These, the most treasured books, were not to be lightly sold, not unless the clerk was convinced that they would be truly valued and well used. The best books were not about making money. They were about the value of books themselves and how they were to be used.

With the exception of one or two books, by the end of the day beautiful editions of every child's request had been found, in addition to finding art and science books, full sets of encyclopedias, Russian-English dictionaries, and all the classics.

Once all the boxes had been carted inside the office of Sergei Evgenevich, the school's director, they were carefully unpacked as if they had been made of glass. Hands ran over the pages in silence, the teachers' faces saying more than could be said in any language. At last, Nikolai unpacked the prize -- a magnificent World Atlas that was over two and a half feet tall and held in a beautiful slip case. Sergei Evgenevich resolved that the atlas would have a table of its own. No child would be able to lift it and, laying on a table, they would feel like they could climb into it. The group hovered over it for the longest time like Columbuses discovering their world for the first time. Someone said, "Find the page with North America." It was found, and then Jeannie's small home town. It was only a spot on a map, yet somehow it felt like they were there. But that was, after all, the genius of books: providing a place where people could meet and leave understanding one another a little better.

In most every village we've visited, the village's general store has a small lending library. It has been, at times, a box of books on the top of a table, or two small shelves over the bread counter. In any case, the books are well used and valued, and read over and over again.