Just found on the site of the Russian weekly Rossija (
http://www.russianews.ru/index.php?body=pub&id=103 ).
(translation is mine; Latin-2 encoding for best results)
Peter S.
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NO ENTRY!
But our correspondent did, after all, get to Russian soil in�
Byelorussia
It was still in the Soviet era when I made an interesting discovery: on
a map of the Byelorussian SSR, I found a minuscule territory, having an
entirely different colour than Byelorussia, which was made subordinate
to the administrative structure of the RSFSR by an indicative arrow.
Russian soil in Byelorussia?
I asked the executive committee in Gomel� for explanation� that very
same enclave was in the Gomel� region, after all. Yes, they answered
me, the villages Medve��e and San�kovo were part of Brjansk province,
Russian Federation.
That very day I took off on a search in the Polesian woods and marshes
for this Russian territory. And I found it! This is the history of the
enclave. In ancient times, some enterprising farmers lived in the
Brjansk village of Dobrodeevka, but land poorer than theirs (sand and
marshland) apparently was not found in the entire district. The farmers
took a decision and went to make their living as far away as in North
America, working in the coal mines of the Indian Company in
Pennsylvania. For three years, they bent their backs below the ground.
They returned home before the First World War and bought land from the
Byelorussian landowner �vedov. They moved to the Medve��e dubrava
(=Bears oak wood) and Sanina poljana (=Sanja�s clearing) and built
their houses there. They ploughed a bumpy, uneasy piece of land. They
got to catch fish in the little river Iput�. And the woods were nearby,
just behind the gardens. And they started to make a living there. In
this way, behind the border, these Russian hamlets (both with ten to
fifteen farms) Medve��e and San�kovo came into existence. One spring,
the newcomers hoisted an old wagon wheel on to the top of the highest
birch tree, secured it to the top with some string, so that it wouldn�t
be blown off, and waited for the storks to come. And the storks came.
�Your storks come from our nest�, said the Byelorussians of the
neighbouring village with the name Chatki. �That means that your brides
should now live with us in our nest�. The potential grooms from Chatki
didn�t leave the others wait for them. So, in the midst of the woods
and the marshes of Polesia, the Russians lived amidst the
Byelorussians. They didn�t quarrel, didn�t bargain, but married and
became kinsfolk.
In 1926, all problems linked to administrative boundaries were decided
on the spot by a joint committee, set up by the Central Executive
Committee and made up of representatives of each of the union
republics. Taking into account the will of the inhabitants of these
villages, the committee left Medve��e and San�kovo under Russian rule.
During the war, the Russians gladly helped the Byelorussian partisans
and fought in their ranks. When the fascists burned down Chatki, the
refugees found harbour in San�kovo and Medve��e. Chata Kor�ova, living
in the one-but-last house of San�kovo, still being a child herself,
took in the Ber�enko family, five members in all. The Belopuchovs found
harbour in Medve��e. In this village, at Stepan Pesenko�s place, P�tr
Taraev, with wife and three children, was housed. The Gorevs stayed at
Filipp Mol�anov. In Medve��e there was also place for the Jur�enko�s,
the Maku��enko�s, the Borisenko�s�
But the bitter cup didn�t go past the Russians either: at the end of
the summer of forty three, the fascists burned down Medve��e and
San�kovo, and the red village head Sevost�jan Spravcev and his wife
Evdokija were shot for having links with the partisans.
After the war, Medve��e and San�kovo were raised from the ashes. Chatki
as well. After that, the farmers joined efforts in draining the
marshes, and enjoyed big harvests. On my (first) visit to Medve��e I
saw a prosperous village: streetlights were shining bright from the
lamp posts, and TV screens shimmered from behind the windows. Who could
imagine back then that this land, where everything breathed prosperity
and where one could live, as it were, forever, could, from one moment
to another, turn into a (I dread to say this!) zone of death, where it
is forbidden to be or enter.
It is like the cry of a guard, that what you encounter on the edge of
Medve��e, this sign saying �Stop!�, together with a sign indicating
radiation danger. A terrible sight! Empty, abandoned settlements. A
fence made out of heating tubes. A broken-off winch of a well. The
weeds are more than man-high everywhere. You�re standing there for a
while, paralysed, hoping to catch an albeit faint sound of life, but to
no avail. Not the cutting of the axe, not the sound of the bucket in
the well, not the familiar cry of the cock. Just that silence that
freezes your soul, all around!
Medve��e and San�kovo can only still be found on old maps; the villages
don�t exist anymore as settlements. The people left their native soil,
saving themselves from the �ernobyl� clouds. Only the storks stayed
behind. Also Chatki, as well as other surrounding villages, have
vanished from the face of the earth. All were swept away by a black
wind. The lands, killed by radiation, are now overgrown with thistles
and shrubs.
Lately, I went to these sad places, together with my old good
acquaintance, the former local kolchoz chairman Vasilij Luki� Pesenko,
to say goodbye for a last time to Medve��e and San�kovo, and we
immediately felt like being outsiders already. Entering and being there
is, like the sign warns you at the village entry, prohibited.
The shattered Vasilij Luki� stands in front of his house, or rather,
what is left of it: ruins and a pole of the garden gate, on which a
forgotten and abandoned veteran star is getting wet in the rain. He is
silent, but I know, that he can�t come to terms with everything that
has happened.
Anatolij Vorob��v
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