How many times have I heard, "It sounds like you want to do Peace Corps stuff......" ? The personnel Peace Corps is now sending to Russia are essentially business consultants- specialists in banking, accounting, management, and so forth. By and large they are not doing rural agricultural development, which is the stereotype of "what the Peace Corps does." This apparent contradiction clears up when we consider that what the Corps really "develops" is capitalism. Urban industrialism is dependent on two things; cheap food and cheap labor. Rising agricultural productivity leads to both as lower food prices drive smaller farmers off the land and into the cities. This happened in the present industrial powers, and it is the repeat of this historical process that Peace Corps serves in its contemporary agricultural work. That economic shift has long since passed in Russia, so now the Corps goes further and promotes more refined, operations-level forms of development.
Besides which fact, I am officially barred from the Peace Corps due to my "intelligence background".
Box 73 RD 3
Great Barrington MA
tel: 413 528 1737
fax: 413 528 4472
efssociety@aol.com
"In cooperation with Ecologically Sustainable Development and the US Agency for International Development, the Society is working to develop local intstitutions, land trusts, ecologically sound agricultural production, and econoomic self-sufficiency among the Buryat peoples in the Olkhon Raion, on the shores of Lake Baikal in Siberia."
Biointensive for Russia
831 Marshall Drive
Palo Alto CA
94303
tel: 415 856 9751
fax: 415 424 8767
Carol Vesecky
cvesecky@aol.com
Ecodom, Inc.
PO Box 728
Novosibirsk-90
Russia 630 090
tel: 383 235 0639
Igor Ogorodnikov, President
"Ecodom is a private organization based in Akademgorodok (Novosibirsk), Siberia, uniting Academy of Sciences architects, engineers, and scientists to develop individual dwellings that operate autonomously. Ecodom bases its systems on energy conservation and the use of natural biological methods. The utilization of the organic wastes in the garden plot is central to these principles."
"Biointensive food-growing methods on microfarms for the independent provision of food for the family have been extensively developed in the USA and are being successfully applied in other countries."
"Energy-efficient ecological dwellings require less energy for heating, and all the organic wastes therein are processed into compost and the wastewater purified for irrigation purposes. The goals of our project are to adapt Biointensive food-growing methods to the Siberian climate, as needed, as we improve our soil quality with compost obtained using Ecodom's technology; to organize workshops to train others in these methods, and to publish translations ot literature on the Biointensive method, diet, and the environment. This plan could lead to a substantial increase in the efficiency of food production in Siberia."
REAP International
1427 4th Street SW
Cedar Rapids IA
52404
Bill Mueller
"Objectives:
- Create a network of RICs[Rural Innovation Centers] to support each other, have distinctive programs and expand their impact in the future.
- Introduce low-tech sustainable methods of farming, diversification of products, small scale food processing or other infrastructure.
- Emphasize farmer to farmer training.
- Act as models for training and outreach to others in agricultural education, consultation, or information clients.
- Use select US expertise appropriate to the situation and adapt to local conditions.
- Make RICs independent of Russian institutions, supported by US grants, and eventually self-sufficient.
- Encourage individual programs of local persons, and often match them with US resources for collaboration and support."
REAP began out of a network of Soviet and US environmentalists and educators in 1991. Bill readily talks about "the Russian side and the American side," in reference to schisms in the organization, and offers politically curious and unexplained statements such as "Make RICs independent of Russian institutions, supported by US grants" .
REAP is renowned for hoarding information about its project ideas, and seems to exemplify the development-agency mentality of knowledge flowing from a core to a periphery. From an article on REAP staff in Buryatia, in the Olkhon region near Lake Baikal:
"Carol became the champion of fences. Some day, when this region is safely divided and subdued by neat lines of fence, it will be because of a young woman from New Jersey who just wore everyone down with her determination and conviction that she was right."The only preface to this is a flippant and culturally baggaged statement that "In Buryatia, you discover that the word 'fence' is a swear word."
Newsletter No. 8, ~1993
![[Kronstadt 1921; We'll never forget]](kron.gif)
Anarchist groups in Russia seem to be either syndicalist or Green-leaning. As of yet I have no contacts with explicit interest in farming.
People have oft noted that many of the famous anarchists came from Russia. Russia and Spain share certain similarities in that both countries had monarchic systems lasting well into the 20th century, and a comparatively late entry of explicitly capitalist relationships of production. If one counts the Makhnovtsi, both countries have experienced organized anarchist insurrections of some magnitude.
But none other than Makhno's propaganda chief, Volin, in The Unknown
Revolution, states there is nothing special about Russians and anarchism
and that most of the old thinkers converted due to contact with Western
progressivism while in exile. And according to some observers, the
Russian implicitly views the state as a master and not as a public
servant, as Westerners seem to do. This is a theoretical bulwark against
anarchism, but hardly a decisive one. A subject will turn on a master
before a citizen will turn on a public servant.
Cultural Outreach Project
PO Box 1627
Sisters OR
97759
SFJ has thrown out the idea of doing outreach to small farmers the world over. People who can't afford tractors, much less pay for fuel and depreciation, are liable to use horses.
The anthroposophical world is now committing such funding as it has available to developing biodynamic farming and Waldorf pedagogy in Eastern Europe.
According to Rudolf Steiner, what we call "human history" is really the history of the world after the destruction of the city of Atlantis. This he divides into various "post-Atlantean epochs," namely the Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Roman, and the modern age which he declines to name. But the Sixth Post-Atlantean Epoch, he predicts to be slavo-centric. It arises in Russia a few centuries from now.