Time to read: 12 minutes(s)

Tver Oblast. A region in central Russia, directly bordering the Moscow Oblast. According to the latest 2020 census (Rosstat data), Tver Oblast has 2,798 villages without population. That is, they are extinct. This is the highest number in Russia.

17 kilometers from Torzhok. The road is almost entirely paved, with some gravel. A grader had gone through it before we arrived, so the gravel is now in near-perfect condition. The only information I could find on Google about Tupikovo was about the road. A few years ago, a snowstorm snowed the road here, and no one could drive for several days.

There's no sign at the entrance to the village that this is Tupikovo. But a plaque on the first dilapidated house confirms we've arrived at our destination: "Tupikovo Library."

Along with the post office, where a piece of cardboard has been inserted in place of the broken glass in the window, they form the village's social infrastructure. As we were later confirmed, the library building used to house a school. But it has long since closed. Few children remain, and they are transported to a larger neighboring village for school.

Lyudmila Petrovna Demina is waiting outside for the food truck. She comes on Mondays and Fridays. And it's something of an event in the village: "I'll take some sunflower seeds... I don't have any teeth, but I'm just snapping my hands."

The mobile shop travels for five days, visiting up to 15 villages a day. In the summer, when the population swells with summer residents, the mobile shop sometimes arrives at midnight. The owner of the mobile shop, who is also the driver and salesperson, has a WhatsApp chat. Especially advanced users—provided they have cell service—can even pre-order.

In Tupikovo, a rarity for such villages, there's a store, but the selection isn't as good, the prices are higher, and the convenience store's van is convenient because it comes right to the house. So Lyudmila rarely goes to the store, only to read the ads. Right now, one of the ads is calling for everyone to attend the Maslovo Club, in another village, a patriotic concert called "We Don't Abandon Our Own." Voluntary donations from the concert will go to a fund to help soldiers in the Donbas.

Lyudmila Demina was born in Lithuania, but was brought to Tupikovo as a baby, and has lived here ever since. She has one daughter in Torzhok and another in Altai. Back when a plane ticket from Moscow to Altai cost 61 rubles, she flew there almost every year to visit. Now she can no longer afford it. Her pension is less than 20 rubles.

I wonder when she was last in Moscow.

— It was a long time ago; we used to go to Saint Matronushka to pray. In Soviet times, faith was banned. But in the 70s, we had an emergency. A little girl was torn to pieces in the bushes. She was one week short of turning 14. An innocent child, the bastards... And then all our grandmothers started refusing to babysit until we baptized them. I gathered the whole village on a bus and took the children to Torzhok to have them baptized. This was 77. Then they called me to the district education department, and at a general meeting they discussed the matter, asking whether I believed in God or not. And I said, "What are we supposed to do?" We all have to work, and no one wants to babysit unbaptized children. They're afraid.

Another longtime resident of Tupikovo is Lyudmila Ivanovna Yakovleva. She rarely leaves the house; she recently suffered a stroke. A social worker brings groceries and firewood into the house. Fortunately, the house has cold running water.

"I'm only worried about one thing right now. I hope they don't take away my eldest grandson, he's in the military. He's 41. But he's so unsettled, always hanging around his mother's lap. Oh, there's more to come. Until they tone down America, it'll stay that way..."
— It’s funny that you have a curtain hanging on your TV…
- And this is me covering the screen from dust.
— Do you watch TV often?
— Yes, I watch it in the evenings. Sometimes the news. When they don't show as much war. But now, wherever you turn, there's nothing but war. There's no end in sight.

Lyudmila Ivanovna is stoking the stove. She's already stored four truckloads of firewood for the winter. One truckload of chopped firewood—plus stacking it in the yard—cost 9,5 rubles this year. That's a total of 38. If the winter is "orphan," meaning mild, like last year, there'll definitely be enough firewood.

"We heat with wood, even though there's gas nearby. But they didn't connect us. We cook with a gas cylinder; cooking with electricity would leave you without a trace. And refilling the cylinder is a real hassle these days. You have to bring it into town."

— Doesn't the state help low-income rural residents with firewood?
"No way! We get a flat payment of 800 rubles a month. But what can you buy with that? They've made veterans of labor and children of war equal. Children of war get the same 800 rubles, and only those who don't have any other benefits."

Lyudmila Yakovleva was born in 1939. She worked hard and received the title of veteran of labor, but is only eligible for one benefit.

The street began to rumble. Firewood had been delivered to the neighbors. Vladimir Razumovsky, working on his own old tractor, a 1974 Kharkiv Tractor Plant model, is filling orders for his fellow villagers. He's 60 years old, but with three more years until retirement, he needs to make ends meet. There's no other work in the village.

The person who received the firewood confirms this: there is nowhere to work.

— So, I go to the city (Torzhok). I earn 10 rubles, and 5 go on travel. So what happens?
— Still a profit! Five thousand!

We're driving through Torzhok to Tupiki in the Spirovsky District. 80 kilometers. The road is excellent. But there's no cell phone service anymore. There are two permanent residents of Tupiki—a husband and wife. They inherited the house from their father. They raise cows. But they also live here occasionally from Moscow. They've hired workers to care for the cows, and there are more than 30 of them. They've bought the houses nearby. They're planning to turn it into some kind of private farm. They only spoke to us off-camera, though. These are turbulent times, and that's understandable.

But we found out that last year, an old woman was brought to the village. She was from a "disadvantaged" family. A tiny hut. Old clothes were drying in the yard. The door was propped open with a stick from the inside. After a while, someone responded to the knocking. The old woman moved with difficulty. We waited.

— My house collapsed in Petrov. And they brought me here to this rotten place. And it's sooooo cold. They want to send me to a nursing home, but I won't go. So what, should I throw away my rags and dishes? I have plenty of good clothes. I don't want to go to a nursing home.
— Do you have any relatives?
— My daughter is in jail, I don't know where. For theft. And my grandson lives in Spirovo. He rarely comes to see me. He lives with a guy there. So, I just gave someone a thousand to chop some firewood for me. I get a pension. The minimum wage is 12 thousand. I worked in a bakery, and then I picked berries, unofficially. And I sold them at the market. Blueberries, lingonberries, cranberries. I used to go into the forest for them myself. But here I don't know anything. And there are a lot of wolves. I'm afraid to go into the forest now.

She says she once wanted to pick cherries on the other side of the village, but when she arrived, they were already gone, picked. But the summer residents "ditched" a flower in a pot under a tree, so now there's a flower next to the broken television in Tatyana's hut. It's some semblance of comfort.

"Yes, the summer residents threw it out, and I went to the garden to look for apples. And it was standing under a tree. It would have frozen anyway. Some Muscovites were there and for some reason they threw it out..."

In the summer, Tupiki really comes alive. Several families come here every year for the entire summer. Some haven't left yet. They complain that because of the new "troubled" neighbor, they're afraid to leave their house unattended.

"What good things can you remember about your life?" I ask Tatyana.
"Nothing good. My husband died of drunkenness; all three of his wives were named Tatyana. He and his last Tanya even had treatment, but they died drunk... Ah, I remember! I went to a wedding in Tupiki a long time ago, when I was 20, at a relative's. There were a lot of people there. It was a big village."

Today, Tupiki is a one-street village, divided by a barrier into a prosperous and a disadvantaged part.

We debated for a long time whether to go to the third Tupiki settlement in the Udomlya district of the Tver region. In reality, nothing remains of the village for a couple of decades. Although it still appears formally in some lists, with "1 person" listed next to the population column. Apparently, someone is still registered in these Tupiki settlements.

But since the history of those Tupiki stretches back to 1478, when they were designated "the personal property of the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III," we decided to take a look at these historic sites. Incidentally, along the way, we passed a cemetery where the famous Russian artist Alexei Venetsianov is buried. Judging by the houses and abandoned buildings that frequently appear along the road, this place used to be quite lively.

We also reached our final destination, the village of Ustye, the last one before Udomlya's Tupiki, quickly. Luckily, there had been no rain the day before. So the next 90 kilometers flew by almost unnoticed. Although there was no cell phone service, we had to stop a couple of times to ask for directions. Elena Petropavlovskaya and her neighbors were waiting for us in Ustye. They were outside.

— Have you been waiting for a long time?
"No. But we didn't know which direction you'd be coming from, and there's no one in that area to ask. They only built a proper road here in the early 80s. Even before perestroika, there weren't any roads. There was no school. And there was no ambulance. We only got to those parts by boat across the lake.

Elena lists villages that were nearby but have since disappeared. I ask: why?

— We moved closer to the road and abandoned it. Our school, too, was closed in 1969. But we're still lingering.
— Do you ever travel anywhere? Have you been to Moscow?
— I was there for two days, a long time ago, and I didn't see anything. I didn't even have a good look at the store. I have a disabled son, you can't leave him alone. We have stove heating. We have to feed the animals in the winter. Now, though, the only one left is the dog. But she needs to be fed too. And you can cook and pack her up.
- What can you do? This is the first time I've heard such a word.
- Well, she won't eat it.
- What kind of accent do you have?
- Ustinsky... Laughs.

Elena takes us around the village and shows us where everything used to be.

— When collectivization happened, they drove everyone off the farms. So they built houses here; there was only one street before. There was a teahouse (cafe) here, and they bred fish here. Merchants swam and traded along this river. And now only a trickle remains. Beavers have dammed it all up. The men will remove the dam, and they'll build a new one in the morning. There was a church there. When they dispossessed the kulaks, they burned the icons, but some stole the old money and dragged it home. It was still standing in the 70s. Wooden. And then it just fell apart. There was an old cemetery next to it, abandoned. And you can't get to the new cemetery either. Only across the lake by boat.

I notice a kerosene lamp in the window of one house.

— We've had electricity since the 60s. But even now, it's often gone. It's like it's the 21st century. But not here.

As an afterword. This is the second article in the "Dead Ends of Russia" project. Almost every region of Russia has its own Dead End. These settlements were named for a simple reason: the road ended behind them. Some Dead Ends have a history spanning several hundred years. Some were renamed to something more optimistic during Soviet times, but the essence remained the same. Although, if you already live in a Dead End, it's not as bleak as it looks from the road. And in general, each of these settlements has its own dead end story. So, we've decided to map them all on an interactive map in the future. It will include stories, photographs, and films—everything we can, thanks to journalists from across Russia. If you have Dead End stories you'd like to see on our interactive map— write to telegram @nemoskva_bot