Tree sticks
I admit honestly: before the story with the forest, which is located in Malaya Gogolevka and flows into the Korytovsky forest park, I have never been here – neither as a mushroom picker, nor as a skier, nor as an ordinary Pskov who takes sun baths. But I’ve heard a lot: my friends visit this pine forest often: some walk a dog, some ride a bicycle along the glades.
The news that the forest was threatened with cutting into plots with subsequent felling in connection with the legalized individual housing development literally pulled me out of the house: I wanted to see these places live. I wanted to understand what made the residents stand up for the forest. After all, they went with their complaints not only to the head of the volost and the local media – they told the governor about what was happening. It seems that the president would also be contacted if necessary.
And now a sunny September day, we are walking with the village activists along the sandy road to the “tree and shrub vegetation” – this is how, in the opinion of regional officials, pines, birches and aspens qualify. Just ten minutes walk from the busy part of the village – and you find yourself in a real forest kingdom: moss covered with needles, mushrooms in blueberry bushes, paths curling around trees, amazing air. In general, its own microclimate.
In the distance, I see a cyclist. Almost behind him is a strolling couple with a stroller. A few more minutes later, a man with a dog. “There are always a lot of people here,” says one local woman. – In the morning I went to pick mushrooms – the car of the visiting mushroom pickers was already standing. On weekends, almost more than in the Finnish Park. And when the quarantine was – it seems that half of the city came here! You should have seen what kind of forest there is. The pines are in even rows and everything is covered with moss – I don’t want to walk. Here the local residents restored everything after the war. Village old-timers still remember how pines were planted here, how they put out fires themselves. The residents worked a lot on this forest. “
Twenty years ago, Malaya Gogolevka was really a small village adjacent to the city, where the outermost houses now stand, there was a field – cows were grazed on it. There was no Lazurnaya Street with its fences, which stand, I suppose, that my two-room apartment is a Khrushchev. Then, in 2013, the residents of the village did not have time to intervene in the process of turning the forest into plots. Or maybe they were afraid. As a result, solid cottages have grown on Lazurnaya among half a century of pines.
Climb into the forest
Things turned out differently in 2020. One fine day in May, noticing that in the forest, where mushrooms and berries were growing yesterday, a trench appeared under the foundation for the house, the locals sounded the alarm. We looked at the cadastral map and found that plots in Malaya Gogolevka arrived: two fresh land plots flaunt, blocking the side branch of the only normal carriageway in the village into the forest. They had to defend their forest.
MK in Pskov did not remain indifferent to the problem of residents: we talked about “Whose cones in the Korytovsky forest”, in June. Deputies of the Pskov Regional Assembly, representatives of the district and volost administrations, as well as officials from the KUGI listened to the complaints and requests of residents: a number of meetings and negotiations took place, as a result of which a Solomon decision was made – taking into account the initiative of the Tyamshan volost administration, to transfer plots from the zone IZHS in the recreational P2.
But, as it turned out, it was too early to celebrate the victory. Activists show me plots of 30 and 15 acres, which were leased to veterans (according to the law, certain categories of beneficiaries have the right to lease a plot at the place of registration without holding an auction). True, according to extracts from the USRN, the veterans immediately, within two weeks, transferred their plots to sublease. On one of the plots of 30 acres that suddenly appeared, there is already a frame house, which was built by a sub-tenant in just three weeks. It is placed next to a fire ditch, dug back in the Soviet years (now it is also rented), and at the moment it is registered as a residential building on the public cadastral map.
Local residents say: a legally savvy subtenant will now “crank” an excellent working scheme – according to the law, if a residential building is built on a leased plot and it is owned, the tenant has the right to buy the plot without holding a bidding (auction). Moreover, the redemption price of a land plot is determined on the basis of the Law of the Pskov Region dated 05.10.2015 No. 1559-OZ and is 3% of the cadastral. Yes, this is a song: the cadastral price of 30 acres, on which the mushroom house appeared, is 1,050,000 rubles. This means that a new settler has the right to buy a “golden piece of land” in a forest for ridiculous money – 31,000 rubles, which is not at all funny for activists (for comparison: the real market value of a hundred square meters in Malaya Gogolevka is now 100,000 rubles). Yes, such a gesheft can only dream!
The veteran would have known about his “generosity” when transferring to sublease. The residents would know that a piece of land empty next to their plot can be obtained not by redistribution for 50% of the cadastral price, but much cheaper by separating this piece.
Eh, roads!
It turns out that it is possible, and even legal. Quite legally, the third site was drawn on the cadastral map of Malaya Gogolevka – during the proceedings with the first two. The new section No. 607 has blocked with its borders not just a road, but the main only carriageway into the forest, which, again, according to eyewitnesses, has been passing here for much more than 50 years.
“We are now with you on a foreign land,” one of the residents of the village warns me while we are walking along a knurled dirt road – you cannot call it a path or a country direction. – The new owner blocks it with a car when he comes here. I am dissatisfied if someone goes along its section, more precisely along our road. Cyclists have to dismount and walk around this piece on the grass. ”
Blocks a new site and a well-groomed path to a forest glade, along which not only local, but also Pskov pensioners often go to the forest to pick mushrooms and berries, because you can get here by city shuttle bus. They feed on this forest: when the season comes, they collect the gifts of nature and sell in the market.
The residents discovered the new plot by accident, when it was already known that the forest would be transferred to zone P and when everyone who could, including the KUGI and the parish, assured them that the forest would be left alone. Updated the cadastral map, lo and behold – and on it a new cut.
They say – they began to find out: it turns out that the application for the site was approved back in January 2020. While the documents were being drawn up, the zoning was coordinated, summer came, followed by the fateful September. Either the will of heaven, or chance, or justice finally triumphed, intervened. In the wake of popular indignation, the authorities urgently issued a long-awaited decree on the transfer to the P2 zone – a new section, as they say, “right out of the box” got into it.
The lease agreement for this site was concluded after a public hearing on the transfer of zone G to zone R. The fate of this site is still in question, which is of great concern to residents. All they have to do is to make sure that the tenants do not cut down a single tree on the leased plots. Such actions will definitely be regarded as illegal.
Registered
If the local residents with small losses, but defended the forest, then the road is more difficult. It turns out that according to official documents, there is not a single road in the village. In fact, they are, just no one bothered to put them on the balance of the parish.
Cheap and cheerful: no road – no problem (after all, it would have to be cleaned in winter, and sand added in the off-season). And it is much easier to cut plots in the forest if you do not notice the existence of a roadway there.
Of course, this is not a road we are accustomed to, a rural, unpaved road, but this does not change its purpose: all residents drive and walk on it. If, God forbid, there is a fire in the forest – again, it will be along this road that fire engines can enter the forest. Or will the rescuers also have to go around the “veteran” sections? Or is there hope for a rescue helicopter? In winter, a ski track from the Sosenka base in Korytovo runs along the same road, and in summer orienteering competitions. To send athletes bypassing too? Well, grandmothers with mushrooms, and individual athletes: runners, lovers of Scandinavian walking, and mothers with baby carriages after them to heaps … Let them wander along the ravines or along the highway.
Residents of Malaya Gogolevka want all the roads in their village to be cadastral. So ideally and according to the law. But, as the district and volost authorities explained to them, cadastral registration of roads is an expensive process, and volosts cannot afford it. It is hoped that the roads can be added to the upcoming PZZ change. In this case, although they are not on the cadastral register, they will have the right to exist.
Residents took measures to this, having made such a request to the district and the volost, but they doubt that this will be done: on October 1, the government will change, a new head will replace the previous head of the volost. Then, residents complain, they will have to rebuild relations with officials and explain to them where the road is, where are the pines, where are the plots and where the will of the people is.
***
Saying goodbye to us, one of the local residents shares her emotions, waving a bag of freshly collected butter oil: “We bought a plot on the outskirts of the village, there was already an untouchable forest around: pine trees, junipers. Over the past ten years, everything has changed so dramatically: IZHS was legalized in the forest, houses are now growing instead of mushrooms, pines are being cut down. Sorry for the forest! “