Gold & Silver Forum - Ringing Cedars- Russian Eco-village movement

Just to make you all aware of this homegrown Russian green movement, unique from the west.

"The Ringing Cedars series offers material about living close to the Earth in community.[4] The books have become the basis for a Russian and increasingly worldwide back to the land movement based on the Russian tradition of self-reliant living on the land, providing physical subsistence and spiritual fulfillment.[5] It is one of a number of such projects in Russia [6]. The books and communities combine deep ecology with traditional, even conservative family values, quite unlike the conventional hippie alternative lifestyle[7]. This is based on the idea of "kin estates" or self-sufficient family homesteads[8]. Before the publication of the first book in the series, there were virtually no eco-villages in Russia. By June 5, 2004, eight years later, a conference of the Ringing Cedars Movement in Vladimir, attracted delegates from over 150 eco-villages from across 48 of the 89 regions of Russia[9]

Megré's ideas are similar to those of Russia�s agricultural economist Alexander Chayanov eighty years earlier [10], referring to harmonious relationship with nature based on sustainable rural settlements consisting of individual family-owned homesteads.[11] Also like Chayanov, Megré presents his ideas in a novel-like format. He admits using this strategy to minimize initial resistance to his writings[12].

In addition to Russia, Anastasia centers can be found in Australia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands[13], New Zealand, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States[14].

One New Age writer relates the Ringing Cedar books to the "great change" Edgar Cayce prophesied for Russia[15]."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Megre

Alexander V. Chayanov (Russian: �� ) (1888-October 3, 1937) was a notable Soviet agrarian economist and rural sociologist.

He was a proponent of agricultural cooperation, but was skeptical with respect to the indiscriminate introduction of large-scale farms. Chayanov's skepticism was rooted in the idea that households, especially peasant households which practice subsistence farming, will tend to produce only the amount of food that they need to survive. He believed that the Soviet government would find it difficult to force these households to cooperate and produce a surplus. These views were sharply criticized by Stalin as "defence of the kulaks". However, Chayanov was ultimately shown to be right about the problems with Soviet agricultural planning.

In 1930 Chayanov was arrested in the "Case of the Labour Peasant Party" (�� ), fabricated by the NKVD. The name of the party was taken from a science fiction book written by Chayanov in the 1920s. The process was intended to be a show trial, but it fell apart, due to the strong will of the defendants. Nevertheless on a secret trial in 1932 Chayanov was sentenced to 5 years in Kazakhstan labor camps. On October 3, 1937 Chayanov was arrested again, tried and shot the same day.

His wife was repressed as well and spent 18 years in labor camps.

Chayanov was rehabilitated in 1987.

Chayanov's major works, Peasant Farm Organization (originally published in Russian in 1925) and On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems were first translated into English in 1966. Chayanov's theory of the peasant household influenced economic anthropology. The substantivist Marshall Sahlins drew on Chayanov in his theory of the domestic mode of production, but later authors have argued that Chayanov's use of neo-classical economics supports a formalist position.

Consumption-labour-balance principle
The higher the ratio of dependents to workers in a household, the harder the workers have to work. Chayanov proposed that peasants would work as hard as they needed in order to meet their subsistence needs, but had no incentive beyond those needs and therefore would slow and stop working once they were met. The principle, which is called the consumption-labour-balance principle, is therefore that labour will increase until it meets (balances) the needs (consumption) of the household. This view of peasant farming implies that it will not develop into capitalism without some external, added factor. Furthermore, the peasant's way of life is seen as ideologically opposed to capitalism in that the family work for a living, not for a profit.

[edit] In practice
In practice, the consumption-labour-balance principle means that accounting is not as precise on a farm than in a regular financial capitalist company. This, as there is no separation between capital and labour. Accounting works with a artificial cost structure which charges all kinds of costs which in reality, a farm does not have. For example, wage and farm-grown animals as well as organic fertiliser and animal feed are charged against commercial (artificial) fertiliser and composed animal feeds. A bought tractor is written off in 4 years against the bought value while the farmer often buys a second secondhand tractor and carries along with it for another 15 years.[1]

[edit] Chayanov's influence
Chayanov's ideas have survived him. His work was rediscovered by Westerners in the mid-1960s. Agricultural sociologists, anthropologists and ethnologists working in developing countries, where the peasant economy remains a predominant factor, apply his theory to help understand the nature of the family labour farm. Halil Inalcik, the leading historian of the Ottoman Empire, applied his ideas to peasant land tenure in the Ottoman Empire.

Beginning in the mid 1990s, Vladimir Megre's Ringing Cedars series have many points in common with Chayanov.[2]"

Here's one of the websites of this movement:

http://www.ringingcedars.com/

This youtube article is about people who live a few kilometers from my wife's family. We consider them a bit whacko, but they are good people.

You Tube