Trip to Olkhon Raion of Lake Baikal

To: Friends of New Economics Institute
From: Susan Witt
Date: September 27, 1995

Dimitry drove us to La Guardia early in the morning of August 8th. I returned August 27th with armloads of good memories. The travel through China to Irkutsk in Siberia was long and hard, but the ten days spent in the Olkhon Raion were productive and fun. We went swimming in Lake Baikal nearly every day, visited Buryat farmers in their homes, picked wild berries in the taiga, watched hawks on the steppes, raked hay at Volodya's farm, steamed in the banya, saw cows grazing on water lilies, ate freshly dug potatoes and freshly caught omul, joined the audience at the school in Khuzir for a 50th anniversary pageant, milked Masha the cow, made countless offerings to the gods of the lake and earth and elements, and were generally feted and spoiled. Thanks to everyone who helped with this project.

OLKHON PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

The village of Tolovkah was founded during Russia's civil war and later in the 30's became a state farm. The state farm has been abandoned, but the 160 villagers continue an active subsistent lifestyle, raising sheep and cows, fishing, and producing what food they can locally. The village totals some 700 hectares with extensive hay and grain fields. It is located where the taiga and steppe meet, so has timber, berries and mushrooms as resources in addition to the rich grazing land of the steppes. It has a newly built elementary school, a store, a hall, and a memorial site along with the private houses.

Adjoining Tolovkah are two new farms, settled by Buryat families who were given exclusive use rights of the land because they could prove that their ancestors farmed that land. One is headed by an energetic and enterprising farmer named Mels.

I visited Mels in 1992 and he had only a newly built shack with rain leaking through the roof to house his wife, mother, father, and two sons. But he took us to the door and said, "Look out there, you will see a Buryat village." We visited Mels on this trip and he now has a large permanent home, several barns, extensive corrals, a root storage cellar, other processing and storage facilities, and many hectare under new cultivation.

Several families from the village of Tolovkah are ready to join Mels at the new location. Mels has worked long and hard for this moment, but he does not know how best to organize the common participation. When he heard about the community land trust from the E. F. Schumacher Society's February delegation, he realized that the land trust would provide for a means of private investment and private ownership of buildings without dividing the land of the new village. He talked with people in Tolovkah and with Volodya Markasaev, director of the Olkhon Center for Sustainable Agriculture. As a result, the village of Tolovkah has requested help to establish itself as a model community land trust. The trust would include the village land, land now settled by Mels, and an adjoining farm of breathtaking beauty that flows down a valley and to the shore of Lake Baikal. This third site is now farmed by a traditional Buryat family who speak only Buryat, a family with strong ties to Tolovkah.

Needless to say, I was thrilled with this development. I had anticipated spending my time in the Olkhon Raion knocking at the doors of village mayors to describe the advantages to the village of serving as a model community land trust. Instead Tolovkah came to us out of practical need. During the next four months we will prepare and submit a proposal to foundations to fund a professional land use and legal team to travel to the Olkhon Raion in August of 1996. The team will work for a month with Russian counterparts and the people of Tolovkah to develop the documents for a community land trust, homestead by homestead.

Walt Cudnohufsky, founder of the Conway School of Landscape Design, and Harry Conklin, lawyer for the Community Land Trust in the Southern Berkshires have agreed to go. I was also approached by a Great Barrington architect who has offered to join the delegation at his own expense.

Thanks to a loan from a New Economics Institute member, the Olkhon Center for Sustainable Agriculture has established a fund for small productive loans. It made its first three hundred dollar loan while we were in Yelantsi to a woman with six years experience as a seamstress in a factory in the city of Ulan Ude. She is now back in her home village of Yelantsi, married, with a three year old daughter. The loan is for a sewing machine so that she can start a sewing business from her home. It will mean that the women of the village can choose the style and color of their clothes rather than rely on the very limited choice sold by street vendors. The loan is for two years with monthly payments in rubles calculated at their US dollar equivalent.