Out here, the many changes Moscow concocts as reforms have never meant anything other than grief. A group of mechanics sit around a stove in greasy quilted cotton jackets and muddy boots, pulling on foul tobacco rolled in strips of newsprint. Some of the men are recent arrivals, refugees from nationalist friction in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and the Crimea. A concrete building skeleton in the thick mud outside marks where a garage may one day stand. Construction moves in fits, whenever building supplies arrive.
Rusted equipment stands out in the open.
The men agree that if they owned the tractors, they would never be left that way. We don't have the money to buy anything anyway. Most of us don't even know how to work the land any more. I'm a mechanic. But the prices at the market are soaring, a visitor says.