This northern perifery used to be the richest region of Russia with its salt and timber production and trade shipping over Arctic seas. Soviet empire introduced to this region huge prison camps and cut the cultural roots. I’ve heared that according to Russian historians the northern villages has already passed the no-turn point of degradation. After my travel in August 2009 I do not beleive this opinion. The people in these villages want to recreate their deep culture and their traditions. I do hope they will.
Even if you think you know Russia (as I do), you get much to reconsider in the villages of the North. A night train from Moscow plus several hours in a bus along the gravel roads, and you get to the another world. A vanished world, if you will. The villages arount Kenozero lake. Friendly, tranquil people, living in big log-houses, going to small wooden churches, boating big rivers and lakes surrounded with dense boreal woodlands.
Deeper insight into local culture will tell you about the northern and scandinavian dimensions (look at their boats, they are a viking type!), identification with the medieval Novgorod republic destroyed by muscovites, the mixture of orthodox and pagan traditions. For instance, there has never been a serfdom of peasants in these regions, and women had equal rights since long. And — was it my imagination or reality — there were very few soviet remnants in these villages, not like in more southern areas. I even noticed a kind of memory blackout in local society. Whenever I asked people about history, they started talking about early 20th century, and older times, but nothing about the Soviet era. I had an impression that they want to go on with their lives from somwhere where their culture was interrupted. Or was it just my wishful thinking?
