Hi! You are reading the short textual version of the first episode of the podcast “We’ll figure it out”, where we talk about people and projects working for social change. This time we introduce you to “In the woods” media project, dedicated to the heritage of Russian regions. “VLESAKH” (“In the Woods” ) is a volunteer project that has been working for almost four years. Dozens of people from the regions and the capital of Russia as well as from abroad, have been working as volunteers doing research on Russian historical monuments and sites, writing educational texts and recording podcasts. Today Dmitry Gorsky, the project’s publisher, tells us about the motivation of these people and how the team manages to build a comfortable working environment.
Heritage is an opportunity to speak freely about the complex past and the vague future
The name of the project grew out of student expeditions held by the Higher School of Economics’ Faculty of Humanities. Project co-founders Lesha Izosimov and German Baroyan traveled to the Ivanovo, Kostroma, and Yaroslavl regions and, as historians, described monuments and abandoned cathedrals that are located in the local forests. On the one hand, these sites are physically located in the woods – with trees quite often literally growing through the remnants of the construction. On the other hand, they have to be placed in scaffolding, that is, they need restoration.
Meanwhile, there are tens of thousands of such monuments in Russia. There are enthusiasts who photograph them, interact with them somehow, have certain thoughts and ideas about these sites. What we wanted to do is to tell the story of these monuments. In our opinion, the only chance at reconstruction and attention these buildings have is if their stories would be told and understood through some human-related or social lens. Many of our colleagues and activists understand this as well and agree with us.
For me personally, “VLESAKH” is a project about something that is barely noticeable, even hidden or liminal sometimes, ever evading the eye, requiring careful treatment, it’s almost like a secretive pro-local community that exists and works in the woods. Later we started writing about cities and towns and realized that in fact there are many unexplored hidden gems in cities and towns too, but it all started in the woods anyways.
We are trying to counteract the “Moscow-centric” narrative.
“VLESAKH” was created in 2020. We now have a very large team of 21 participants. All of us are volunteers, it’s a part-time job, as everyone has a major occupation. Who are all of these people? Everyone’s a little bit different, and at the same time similar. We have quite a few graduate students. People are studying at graduate school in Russia or working on their PhDs now, which also creates some space and free time. Everyone’s education is different. There are slightly more historians and art historians, but there are also mathematicians, economists, journalists. Why do all of these people agree to work [for free]? I think that the values we present to people really resonate with them. At the same time, we build work processes quite well, and this allows people to really achieve their goals and understand what the expectations from volunteering are. In general, the key ingredient is a combination of values and a great team.
At some point we have taken a break for half a year – the 24th of February affected us all quite severely. We stopped working entirely for half a year, thinking really hard if the projects dedicated to Russian regional culture, in Russian, are even needed now. We came to the conclusion that they are in fact needed. We didn’t try to reinvent ourselves or anything else like that. Because heritage is by default something that holds many different meanings open to interpretation, and every single person has a chance to perceive and analyze it differently.
I, for example, am neither a historian nor an architect, but a mathematician and economist. It is very important to me that heritage is about the social and economic potential of territories, monuments change the environment around them, they often give meaning to the lives of local people, including tourists visiting these places. It is very important to me that people love the space around them and do not want to move to the capitals. That they realize and see the richness that is all around them. Sometimes it is very difficult to realize.
Another important thing here is that heritage is almost always about the stories of people, stories about the past, and often about the past that is very complicated. It’s almost as if through the framework of our heritage we get an opportunity to talk about many different things and work with our traumatic experience, not just individual, but collective as well, the traumas of the society as a whole. We have lots of historical sites connected to the wars Russia participated in, like places related to the Second World war, to deportation of different nations, etc. When talking about these sites, these material objects (monuments), that we can see, touch, experience physically, it becomes easier for us to comprehend the current moment, to understand how we can deal with the problems we face right now.
Third, we write about the regions. We try to resist the “Moscow-centric” narrative. Moscow and St. Petersburg are very well described. We want to show the regions’ individuality, but at the same time their integration into the world’s procultural processes, and to help locals invent the positive identity of their regions, to highlight their agenda.
We are a proactive team
So what is our social impact? There are many different actors in the heritage related field, many people working to protect its physical existence. I believe there are about a couple of hundred local initiatives from the regions, and one of our goals is to work as a platform for these initiatives. Let’s say you’re walking down the street and see a building, it’s very likely this building has some historical background, but you have no idea. It’s important for history to be written down and told to people, preferably in a brief, understandable manner, with good photographs, in an interesting way. That’s why recognition is very helpful in the task of saving any kind of heritage.
We also want to give people an opportunity to get acquainted, to exchange their experience, to recognize themselves as a community. This may be the most important. In relation to our readers, we do promote a proactive approach, we would like for them to get interested and then get involved, to move on to action. For example, to go to some place to work as a volunteer yourself. We had these very successful cases where we talked about certain initiatives from the regions that do church reconstruction, for example in the Russian North. Some of our readers eventually went to Arkhangelsk region last summer and took part in the restoration of a particular church in collaboration with the “Verenitsa” project.
It’s just one of many ways to engage with the heritage, another one is, for example, becoming our author and writing about some particular place you like.
There is my favorite case of that kind, we have an author, she was first a reader, she lived in Saint-Petersburg, then at some point she had to go back home to her native town of Ulyanovsk and there she wrote a text for us about a local park called ‘Friendship of Nations’, from the Soviet Era. She also talked to local activists who conduct excursions there.
Becoming our author is fairly easy. We help with editing and illustrations. We are not an academic journal, or a group of super professional journalists, therefore we dont expect people willing to join us to be super professional writers or journalists either.
Our goal is to help more and more people start noticing their surroundings, their localities, we want them to love the local space, to share their thoughts, or at least to travel and discover these sites we talk about. Sure we have these kinds of cases as well.
We did a special project about Magadan and the region, about Kolyma, and as a result of this project some of our readers visited the region, and this we think is immensely cool.
Heritage Defense and Urban issues is one the last forms of political statement.
We work and exist in a shared field with restorers and tour guides. [This is important] for popularization. When we work together, these are some high-profile information programs. For example, they were going to demolish the train station in Tver, there is also this grain elevator in Samara that is under constant threat of demolition. The more people write and talk about it, the more likely it is that the building will not be demolished. In general, the authorities in the regions are not very fond of information noise and change their minds fairly quickly.
I think that nowadays heritage defense may be the last remaining form of political statements, possible in Russia. Of course, just like any other activist field, it is also super dangerous for the participants, and yes, people get detained, administrative cases are being open against them, but this really can’t be compared to what’s going on in other fields, where the state acts much more violently against any kind of grassroots activity. We think the fact that it happens in the regions also plays a part, it seems that if the conflict is targeting local regional authorities, not the federal ones, it also helps to achieve success. Defending your home, your space is still somewhat allowed. As we all know, the most successful cases of recent years have been related to either ecology, or heritage defense.
However, I want to emphasize that Russia is a very big country with many regions. All of these regions are very different and the authorities there are different as well. Some are more understanding towards these kinds of cases, others are more radical and violent.
Recognize where you are, and make this place your own.
In general, not much has changed in the field of heritage preservation since February 24. For example, we talked to Anor Tukayeva from the Krokhino Foundation. They are preserving a temple in the Vologda region, if I remember correctly. They have been struggling with funding for projects before, they struggle with it now. People who are involved in preserving heritage always do it on a volunteer basis.
In the NGO field stones are the least popular target for donations. People traditionally send money to children, to animals, both pets and the homeless ones.
People don’t really care about stones, they don’t touch their heart, and this is also something we are trying to change. We are trying to tell human social stories about this type of heritage, trying to reconnect people to it, so that they could relate to it more.
[But there are other] challenges that the field of heritage preservation is facing now. It is very important that Russian history and regions are integrated into international contexts. When we talk about architecture, about saving heritage, it is very important that people understand the value. And the value is felt when you see what actually happened to some similar place. For example, the Samara grain elevator is a giant concrete granary that they want to demolish. It is very important to compare it with successful cases of renovation of such facilities. In South Africa, for example, there is a case where a concrete granary was turned into a modern art museum. In France, there is a hotel in a granary. In Norway, there is an art museum, just recently opened. When we put an object in an international context, it helps a lot.
Zeitz MOCAA (South Africa, Cape Town)
Kunstsilo Museum (Norway, Kristiansand)
For example, 20 years ago, everyone was quite skeptical about Russian Constructivism, it was little appreciated, and as a result it was falling apart. But now the famous Narkomfin House in Moscow is an elite restored residential complex. As well as all the other cool monuments of constructivism, such as the White Tower in Yekaterinburg. In general, it is very important that people talk about it, start to appreciate it, and not isolate themselves. Of course, Russia is now being isolated from all sides, both from Russia itself and from the international community. This has a bad effect on the sector.
Anyways, I think it’s important to be curious, to notice, to try to realize and truly understand where you are, where you live. Wherever you are right now. It’s important to walk around, to look, to seek the help of professionals, guides who can take you around the place and make you love it. You can write texts about it, and you can write texts with us. We help everyone a lot and encourage you to talk about regions, about places that you love, things you find interesting. You can make a change physically as well – as a volunteer, restoring heritage. In fact, there are numerous different initiatives you might be interested in. We have a digest of summer volunteer projects coming out now. You can go to the north for a few days, for example, to the Arkhangelsk region and restore wooden temples and live in the camp with very interesting people. There is a lot of space, it is important to love what is around us, to analyze, not to ignore the difficulties and problems, to talk about the complicated past. This is the world that we, “VLESAKH”, would like to strive for.
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