Russia’s vast, beautiful woodlands are indeed a national treasure, symbolizing the rugged solitude and simple happiness of the collective imagination.  Like in Leonid Filatov’s fairy tale of Fedot the Archer, we all dream of getting a job as a forester.

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This past summer I embarked on a trip to find one of these forests, bringing me to Mozhaisky Rayon – one of the most forested in the environs of Moscow. Beautiful places. Happy hunting grounds. Corpulent fields. Fat cows. Tractors tilling the soil. Hay rolled in bales… The forester Nikolai Belinsky, who was accompanying me, said that the owner of these plentiful lands – is a general of the KGB in reserve. Well, what can I say, the man has, apparently, found himself. It can be seen right away – life for him has worked out well.

…We drove up to the forest. Nikolai recounted about how this forest had been planted according to the technology of the famous Karl Franzevich Thürmer.