Either masks or people
A woodcarver from Ryazan, who worked for 30 years as an unpaid teacher and tour guide, is selling his work. He needs the money to live on and pay for his wife's medical expenses.
“I’m tired, I can’t fight anymore, says the 77-year-old wood carving master Alexander Zimin, shuffling his way to his workshop. And my wife is sick, and my pension was cut.".
Several years ago, regional and federal media wrote about Zimin’s carvings and his volunteer work teaching children the art of carving. got in the project "Pride of Russia" and was "The Face of Ryazan" in the Russian media project "Heroes of Our Time." Now, the "Pride of Russia" sits in an unheated room, continuing to carve his masks—caricatures of famous people—but no longer just for free display to everyone. He dreams of selling the collection for 3 million rubles, forgetting about visiting government offices and courts for the rest of his life, and nursing his wife back to health.
Faces on the walls
A one-story wooden house on "golden" land in the city center on Novoslobodskaya Street, a porch covered in grape leaves, walls covered in graffiti from vandals—this is the entrance to Zimin's workshop-museum-exhibition. Some time ago, it was crowded with children attending woodcarving classes, groups of excursionists, and solo tourists. Now the building is dank—a couple of years ago, the boiler broke down, wood shavings are scattered across the floor, and the dim lighting in the hallway makes tripping a hazard. From the walls of the spacious exhibition room, Yakubovich and Pugacheva, Brezhnev and Yeltsin, Jackson and Khazanov stare down at visitors; Politkovsky and Listyev, for some reason, are juxtaposed with Putin. Zimin says he "didn't choose who was with whom, he just hung them in the available space." These are caricature masks, and there are hundreds of them. In total, he carved over a thousand works—some are stored in the attic, others were sold or donated. For example, he carved a mask of Maxim Galkin. gave He himself appeared on the show "Older Than Everyone." According to Zimin, Galkin liked the caricature masks so much that he even promised to start a joint business: the artist would continue carving celebrity masks, and the artist would "slap them on" at group concerts.
Some masks are funny, others slightly frightening—like mythical wood-goblins, there's "The Wind of Change in Russia," imitations of African masks, and strange deities. There's also something beautiful—female "nudity," but not frivolous, but within the bounds of propriety. Just recently, there was no room left on the walls for the works; now, here and there, gaping holes appear between them—the artist has started selling off the masks. It's a small supplement to his pension, which, contrary to presidential decrees and common sense, is becoming ever smaller.
Mini-pension and zero salary
This happened to me, I don’t understand at all what to do now, how to live, and I’ve done a lot of bad things, - Zimin begins from the threshold.
He walks into his small workshop, crammed with odds and ends (primarily tools), takes out and shows receipts showing his pension amount. Several of them say 21 rubles, and since the summer, 15 rubles and some change.
"At first, after all the increases, I had 20, then I started getting 15. I ran to the pension fund, they recalculated it, and one day it was 31—they'd refunded the shortfall, then. Then another increase, and my pension was 21. And since May, they've been paying 15 again. They say I'm not entitled to more because I'm a 'working pensioner.' And where do I work? Nowhere. This Wood Carving Club is registered in my name. But no one pays me a penny—on the contrary, I pay rent." — explains Zimin, sorting through the tickets, looking at them again and again, as if he could see something new there.
What he did was this: he walked into the first law firm he came across in the city center and asked for help in his lawsuit against the Pension Fund. They quoted him 25 rubles. Zimin borrowed the money and paid. The court hearing was scheduled for October 19, but the lawyer he hired had already warned the pensioner that he was unlikely to be able to help—that's the law, he said, and his case was hopeless.
Zimin recounts what he's said dozens of times before. After graduating from Spassk Pedagogical College, he worked at a local orphanage, then served in the army as a submarine radio operator. After the army, he went back to school: first as a navigator at the Luhansk Flight School, then at the Kharkiv Aviation Institute, and for a long time worked at the Dnepropetrovsk Machine-Building Plant. Returning to Ryazan, he taught vocational school No. 9 for 15 years—without a formal education in the field, he taught teenagers the art of woodcarving.
He started carving at about 40—he saw a piece of driftwood and thought it resembled the silhouette of a fox. He developed a passion: he'd carve a spoon, then a figurine. He seems either unable or unwilling to talk about them, limiting himself to laconic comments. This lady with polished buttocks was the first of his "lady" series, and while carving Nikita Mikhalkov's mask, he decided to "play a joke" and gave him a gold crown on his tooth. The collection of carved figures and masks grew and was stored in his apartment until his wife, Alevtina, finally reached the end of her patience. He then approached the city's first mayor, Valery Ryumin, and asked for a space for an exhibition. Ryumin granted him such a space—free of charge, for an indefinite period of use. The building was old, in the city center, and either burned down or was set on fire. Zimin managed to save almost the entire collection, but his works became "homeless."
Later, another mayor, Pavel Mamatov, again gave him an abandoned building at 20 Novoslobodskaya Street. It was used to store janitors' brooms and shovels. With his own efforts and the help of friends, Zimin made some repairs, added a new porch, and opened a new woodcarving exhibition, along with a workshop offering classes for children and teenagers.
"There were teenagers there, and I even remember the mother of a disabled boy taking them. In 2015, the building was declared unfit for classes with children. I couldn't teach them anymore, even though they initially came to me and to the mayor's office demanding that everything be returned. Some thought that since the building was municipal, the authorities should fix it up so the children could study, but nothing happened. And then the heating boiler broke down." — sighs Zimin, dressed in four layers of clothing. — Just two years ago it would have cost 20 thousand to fix it, but now I don’t even know how much it costs.
Neither in the 2000s nor later could he understand what it was like to teach a remarkable craft or simply display his work—for money? He still refuses to do anything for even a small income, such as setting up a donation box.
"Maybe I should make myself a coffin while I still can?"
He started talking about selling his collection about two years ago. Everything came together suddenly: his wife's illness (a photo of them "from their youth" hangs on the wall), a broken boiler, and a battle with the mayor's office over the building that houses the museum exhibition. Someone gave him an idea: Zimin, apply for privatization, since you've been renting it for a long time. And if that's the case, they'll transfer it to you without any tender. He believed it and fulfilled the terms of the deal: he set up a sole proprietorship. He was immediately informed that the rent for a sole proprietorship is much higher, and he wouldn't be able to get the house for free. And considering the cost of land in the city center...
"Then it turned out that the rent had risen to 15 rubles, and my pension was 16. I quickly liquidated the sole proprietorship. I thought, 'If the administration doesn't repair its own property, then why should I invest in someone else's?' And if they'd let me privatize it, I'd have known why I should invest in the renovations. I'm not young anymore, so maybe my grandson would continue my business. The main thing I want is for the exhibition to remain here after I'm gone."
Did not work out.
After the transfer oncological disease His wife's illnesses have become more frequent. Zimin suspects that "other organs were accidentally irradiated during the radiation treatment, as she couldn't lie completely still on the machine." Whether this is the case is unknown, but the need for money is constantly growing.
"She even begged me for the funeral allowance. You know what that's like? I'm from the Spassky district, where it's common to save for your funeral while you're alive. Well, we save up, too. Now we've spent it... The kids say, 'Don't worry, we'll bury you properly.' And how can you not worry?" — Zimin ponders and continues, — I'm thinking, to make it cheaper, maybe I should make a coffin for myself while I can? I know how to do that; I made ones for two of my grandsons. [died in infancy]...
They call Zimin - schoolchildren are asking to go on an excursion from one to two o'clock in the afternoon. “What, do you want to leave me without lunch? - he laughs and invites, - I am waiting"He walks around the room in small steps, wiping dust from his work with his hands, which he has "accidentally cut a hundred times, hit just as many times." He sighs: "There's a lollipop museum in Ryazan, there's a chocolate museum, but this one is on its last legs, and it'll soon be gone."Zimin says he'd be happy if a Ryazan resident bought the collection so people could see it. Then he waves his hand, seemingly giving in: "Ah, well, let them buy it anywhere, even abroad!"
He regrets abandoning the work of almost half his life, and, he says, there's no other way to survive. So far, no one has been willing to buy the entire collection, although his grandson helped him post the photos on a free classifieds website. He wrote about his request to the regional Ministry of Culture and the mayor's office, tried to get an appointment with Governor Pavel Malkov, and went to Metropolitan Mark of Ryazan and Mikhailovsky. The former refused, while the latter accepted, took the gift panel, and blessed the sale.
The master doesn't know what to do next. The only option is to contact Galkin.
