Coming of Age…
Many Visitors to Svetlana Village are surprised that something so resembling a Camphill Village has managed to take form on a piece of land that was only a few years ago at the heart of the Soviet Union. To be sure, we have our little idiosyncrasies as a village, not to mention a few short-comings. Nonetheless, it is good to occasionally take stock of what has actually been achieved. Svetlana today, eleven years on, is a lively and bustling home to around forty souls, aged between two and seventy, and from ten nations. Given that financial necessity dictates a large degree of self-suffiency, the Bio-Dynamic impulse burns strongly at the heart of the Village, tended by a steady stream of enthusiastic young people, and a solid contingent of Villagers. On the opposite side of the river from us, a Waldorf-inspired project operates in the local village of Rishkova. Over the past five years, it has provided a steady stream of school children through Svetlana. They come from both the local village state school, and from the Waldorf Schools of St Petersburg and beyond, bringing with them eager working hands for our fields and some delightful cultural performances. And then there are the straw-bale house builders…! Since 1997, Svetlana and Rishkova have been the focus of an on-going project in alternative building technologies. We have hosted upwards of eight work-camps from Scandanavia, and they are now completing their third project here: a small but very beautiful family house. In whatever we do, one is always conscious that the eyes of many in both Russia and the West are upon us. We are, after all, a unique meeting-point between cultures estranged by the centuries.
However, in my heady enthusiasm to describe all the achievements of the last decade, I would not wish to create a false impression. It is a hard and at times perilous struggle. One has to know Russia a little in order to understand. Firstly, on a purely practical level, there are the -40C temperatures; the familiar power-cuts (usually simultaneous with the big frosts); the cars that need a change of gear box almost as often as they need a change of oil; and a telephone system reminiscent of a by-gone age. But one just has to know how to get along under such conditions. And that’s the problem: we don’t! If your car breaks down in any Western country, you’ll reach immediately for the Yellow Pages, and a Credit Card. Here, however, you’ll have to visit the ‘Moozhiki’ (blokes) in the local village. What with locating a mechanic fit and willing to undertake the repair, and then locating the elusive spare parts through the enormous network of local contacts, you can probably write-off the best part of a day (or two!). And that brings us to a deeper aspect of the question…..you see, for all the smart chain stores opening up in St Petersburg, here in the countryside, you are constantly reminded that this is really ‘the East’: that unfathomable state of soul that so eludes and frustrates our own. Be it hospitality that overwhelms and humbles; or car-driving that belies a fatalism sufficient to leave you in a cold sweat; or a volatility of soul that turns a sworn friend into a mortal enemy with a speed that leaves you grasping in vain for a rational explanation…..time and again, you are reminded that you are, and will ultimately remain, an alien in a strange land.
Likewise, life in the Village itself can be similarly incomprehensible for those of us used to the clarity and rationality of life in other Camphill villages. There is, for instance, a fluidity to the life here that would give many a Camphill housemother palpitations (and indeed, can periodically produce similar symptoms in those of us who should be used to it by now!). House life in Svetlana is characterized by an endless stream of comings and goings, be they guests, coworkers or even villagers. It is not unusual for such upheavals to take place entirely unannounced. So often it seems that just when things are at last coming together, some vital person suddenly leaves. However, there is another side to it. How many times has it seemed as if we’re really sunk, and then, as if by magic.…someone appears?! One former coworker referred to his own attempts to cope with this phenomenon as learning to ‘surf the chaos’. Indeed, as one slowly becomes more adept at it, (at least on one’s better days), one begins to ask, “Is this really chaos at all?”Perhaps it just requires us to learn to let go a little ofour more fixed ideas, in order to begin to glimpse, in this swirling stream of Russian life, laws of a more etheric nature.
And so, we can ask, ‘Where do we stand today?’, as we approach the twelfth year of what can only be described as a difficult village biography. It is most gratifying at last to see that the Russian coworkers in the Village have grown and matured into a positive and self-confident element. We must hope that this will provide a stability into the future that has not hitherto existed. However, we still require help from the West. We need farmers and gardeners who can commit for a number of years, and we need people (perhaps older people?) who carry within themselves strongly the ‘Camphill Idea’. The home life is perhaps the area most in need of strengthening.
Finally, I am almost hesitant to raise the question of our precarious financial position, since by now I am certain that this has become well-known through-out the Movement. However, I would wish to make one concrete suggestion. Perhaps there are Villagers out there in Camphill Villages in the West who yearn for a touch of adventure. Were they to spend a shorter or longer time with us, their pensions for the period of their stay would certainly be of enormous help!!!
I wish to close with an intriguing reference made by Rudolf Steiner in 1920, recently drawn to our attention by Lars Henrik Neisheim. In it he speaks of the social life in the West dying into individualism, and the seed of the future instead passing to the “Russian Village”, formed by the impulse of the Three-fold Social order from the West (You can refer to the original in GA 199, Lec. 2, if my ham-fisted English paraphrasing bothers you). I wonder….are there not perhaps a few pioneers out there who might perhaps find inspiration enough in such thoughts to commit themselves for a while to this unique project in the East?
Mark Barber