This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
In the forlorn village of Kuratovo, nestled within the Komi Republic, Vera Maksakova’s heart-wrenching scream reverberated through the cold air, shattering the tranquility of the otherwise remote settlement.
The year was 2002, and the news that had reached her was devastating. Semyon Tutrinov, her sweetheart and the father of her 1-year-old son, Aleksandr, had been killed fighting in Chechnya.
Fast-forward two decades, and a familiar anguish echoed once again through the worn corridors of her village apartment complex. The source of her torment, this time, was the news of Aleksandr’s death in the war in Ukraine.
“I was shouting at the whole village, screaming. This can’t be happening! He can’t die!” Maksakova told RFE/RL from her apartment, crying as she recalled hearing the news that day in 2002, a memory now deeply entwined with the fresh anguish of 2022.
Since coming to power in 1999, Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched wars against the recalcitrant region of Chechnya and independent Ukraine in an attempt to reassert Moscow’s control, demonstrate Russia’s major power status, and boost his own popularity.
The domestic human toll of those adventures has mainly landed on Russia’s poor, on families like the Tutrinovs and Maksakovs, who don’t have the financial means to bribe their way out of mandatory service like so many others do and who often see the military as one of the few social ladders left to a better life.
‘Traditional Russian Values’
Kuratovo, located 1,200 kilometers northeast of Moscow, is the largest of about two dozen villages — some consisting of just a few people — that make up the Kuratovo rural settlement.
The population of the settlement has shrunk by nearly a quarter over the past decade to just under 700 people as the elderly die off and young adults move to towns or cities for work.
The population decline is visible in the number of abandoned wooden homes — some already swallowed up by trees and shrubs — that dot the local landscape. Old tractors and tractor parts lie quietly on unkempt fields.
Residents still mainly burn wood in stoves to heat their homes, as natural gas pipelines have yet to be extended to the settlement. Only about 50 percent of Komi Republic households are connected to the natural gas network, well below the 73 percent average for the country, despite the region’s proximity to energy fields.
Putin prioritized connecting homes to natural gas during the early years of his rule. While the number of households receiving natural gas has increased by approximately 20 percent, his government has been unable to meet its targets within the expected time frame.
Kuratovo does have a relatively new church, part of a Kremlin program to instill “traditional Russian values” into citizens, though it is unclear whether that was a priority for villagers.
The average salary in this part of the Komi Republic is 43,580 rubles ($475) a month. Residents working for small businesses like cafes and grocery stores or in the public sector typically earn between just 26,000-35,000 rubles ($280-$380) a month.
Yet, the Komi Republic is rich in natural resources, including oil, timber, and coal. It also borders, to the east, the Nenets Autonomous Region, Russia’s natural gas mecca, and Khanty-Mansiisk, one of the nation’s largest oil provinces.
Komi villagers are lured to work far away from home for weeks or months at a time in the natural resources sector for relatively high salaries. A sign on a telephone pole in Kuratovo entices residents with 55,000 rubles a month ($600) for such shift work.
By comparison, young men who signed contracts to serve in the Russian armed forces prior to the war in Ukraine typically earned from 30,000 ($330) to 60,000 ($660) rubles a month, along with free housing or a housing allowance. Total take-home pay rises with each promotion and year of service. Contract soldiers are also eligible for a host of benefits, including subsidized mortgages and free travel. Many enter the service for the opportunity to buy a home at the government’s expense.
Aleksandr had been living with his three younger half-siblings, mother, and stepfather, Sergei, in a small, two-bedroom apartment that had a lumpy floor from moisture and stained wallpaper from age. As Maksakova’s children grew, the living space became tighter.
Maksakova purchased the apartment, in part, with the pension she received for the death of Semyon. She had been trying to save up to buy Aleksandr an apartment in the closest town but struggled on her 20,000-ruble-a-month salary ($220) as a cook at the local kindergarten.
Putin’s rise to power coincided with a commodity price boom that led to, perhaps, Russia’s greatest decade of economic growth, securing him wide popularity. However, Russia’s economy has largely stagnated since the early 2010s due to widespread corruption, war, and sanctions.
And while Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and a handful of other cities in Russia continue to be showered with billions of dollars in beautification projects to placate sometimes restive city dwellers, large swaths of the country, like this corner of the Komi Republic, have seen little improvement.
As part of his 2018 election campaign, Putin promised to invest hundreds of billions of dollars over the years into improving living standards, especially for those who had been left behind. The National Projects, as it was called, targeted such crucial areas as education, health care, and housing.
Again, war, corruption, and mismanagement have meant that little has been achieved over the past five years.
“Maybe Putin is doing something for people, but I don’t know what,” Maksakova told RFE/RL.
Conscript To Contract
Aleksandr, like his father, was conscripted into the army at age 18 for mandatory service that now lasts just one year, following changes implemented in 2007-08.
Upon completion in 2020, Aleksandr agreed to sign a three-year contract.
Russia’s military has been trying to move over to a fully professional force consisting of contract soldiers, but has struggled to reach its targets.
Teenage conscripts without university degrees are prime targets, enticed by high wages.
“Sasha reassured me that there are no wars now, nothing terrible is happening. This convinced me” to agree with his decision, recalled Maksakova, using the diminutive for her son.
Aleksandr may have also been influenced to join by the honor showered on his father — whom he had never known — by local government institutions.
Putin has expended much effort during his more than two decades in power promoting “patriotic” teaching at schools, including memorializing those who died in war.
In the 2010s, a plaque dedicated to Semyon was unveiled inside the same school where his son studied. Teachers said Aleksandr was proud of his father, who received the Order of Bravery posthumously.
Semyon died after the infantry fighting vehicle (BMP) he was traveling in ran over a land mine in Chechnya. He allegedly threw himself onto his colleague, saving the latter.
Russian BMPs and tanks offer less protection to servicemen than Western-made vehicles because their ammunition is stored in a carousel-type autoloader.
When their armor is penetrated or when they run over anti-tank mines, the ammunition explodes like a round of firecrackers, destroying the vehicles. Semyon, a gunner, was sitting atop the ammunition.
Semyon’s body was so badly burned from the explosion that a DNA test was required to identify his remains. He was buried in Kuratovo two months later.
Aleksandr became a tank gunner, similar to his father. In 2021, a year into his contract, he was longing to finish and move back home, Maksakova says.
He came home for a short break in March 2021 just as Russia was building up troops along its border with Ukraine. Before returning to service the following month, he stopped by the kindergarten to say goodbye to his mother.
It would be the last time she saw him alive.
‘My Whole Body Felt Seared’
Ten months later, Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine. In the weeks leading up to the war, Aleksandr’s unit had been sent to Russia-controlled Crimea.
“When Putin declared war, it was as if I was killed by this word. My whole body felt seared. My son is there! I couldn’t breathe. I was like a zombie,” Maksakova says.
Aleksandr told his mother that his unit didn’t have enough food at times. He looked painfully thin in the photos he sent her, she says.
His unit was later sent to Donetsk, where the fiercest fighting was taking place. Less than two weeks before he was to get a vacation, he was badly injured in battle. The following day — July 2, 2022 — he died in the hospital. The circumstances of his death were not revealed.
Days later, while Maksakova was preparing food at the kindergarten, her colleagues told her she needed to go to the village council next door. When she entered, Aleksei Belyayev, the district military commissar, was standing there with other men in military uniform.
Her heart sank.
“Shut up!” she screamed before they could open their mouths as she held her hands over her ears. “Don’t you dare say anything! Don’t you say a word!
A year later, she says she is still angry.
Putin “has no right to send such little boys to war,” she says about her son and the thousands of other young men who are dying in Ukraine.
“Let those who are older and more experienced go, and not those who have not really started living,” she says. “There was no need to declare war. They were simply sent to the meat grinder.”
Vladimir Uyba, the head of the Komi Republic, and other regional dignitaries traveled to Kuratovo for Aleksandr’s funeral.
Fearing Uyba might visit Maksakova at home, local officials quickly had the rotting wooden walkway leading toward her building replaced, a request residents say they had been making for months, to no avail.
Last month, on June 12, known as Russia Day, Komi officials unveiled two shiny, rectangular black granite memorials with the engraved portraits of Semyon and Aleksandr.
The memorials grace the yellow aluminum-siding facade of the elementary school where the father and son studied. The memorials state that the men “died heroically” carrying out their military duties in Chechnya and Ukrainem, respectively. Both were awarded the Order Of Bravery.
“Semyon and Aleksandr Tutrinov are heroes of different times, united by love for the motherland and a sense of duty. Father and son were not destined to know each other in life, but each of them could rightfully be proud of each other,” the deputy chairman of the regional government, Aleksei Prosuzhikh, said at a ceremony.
Schoolchildren, including Aleksandr’s younger brother Bogdan, will be brought over to look at the plaques and learn about the father and son, said Svetlana Lushkova, the director of the kindergarten.
It is a way to begin to prepare boys at a young age to join the military.
‘Too Much Time’
Aside from taking care of her three children and cooking for the kindergarten, Maksakova spends her time visiting her son’s grave nearby.
“Too much time,” her husband says.
At the local cemetery, Aleksandr’s tombstone stands top center in a rectangular sandbox covering some 30 square meters where weeds and other shrubbery once grew.
The tombstone is barely visible, still covered in large wreaths donated by Komi officials. Maksakova squats down to pull out a few weeds that have pierced through the sand.
To compensate her for the death of her eldest child, the federal and regional government paid Maksakova a total of 14.5 million rubles ($160,000), the equivalent of a lifetime of work on her current salary.
Maksakova has purchased a car and a wood-cutting machine and is looking to buy her eldest daughter Viktoria an apartment in Vizinga, the largest town in the district, where she will attend a vocational school.
Maksakova could easily buy a large apartment for the family, as well, in that more affluent town just 30 kilometers way. However, that would mean leaving Aleksandr behind, something she can’t do. At least not yet.
“I would like to stay here to live,” she says.
