Living alone.....the last person left in remote Russian village

(20 May 2017) Elderly Russians are finding themselves alone in abandoned villages as their younger relatives move to the city to make a living.
Hundreds of kilometres from the capital Moscow is the village of Safonovo where just one 85-year old woman is left.
STORYLINE:
Maria Veselova is used to her solitary existence.
All of her neighbours have died, or moved away.
Others may return for summer holidays, but there is little company apart from her cat and dog.
Her days are spent collecting and chopping wood for heating and other household chores.
Veselova, now 85 years old is just one of a growing number of elderly people who find themselves living in isolation.
Safonovo was once a big village with many people employed on local farms.
After the collapse of the old Soviet Union farming in the area disappeared and villagers were forced to leave to find work.
Veselova has long list of names and phone numbers of neighbours she is no longer in contact with.
According to Veselova many of these former neighbours or acquaintances have died.
"There are no residents in this area. Only one house was restored, covered with the steel roof and people come there, but the rest of the area is without residents. There is a house which was being sold by people from Nizhny Novgorod, but they (owners) didn't sell it and now it is derelict" she says.
There is one service Veselova can rely on, a mobile shop which goes from village to village selling food and other groceries.
According to the driver Sergei Orlov: "There are many villages like this (deserted by residents) in the district. There are more people during the summer season, because they come to use the country houses. And many elderly residents have left the villages as their children take them to live in the cities during the winter season. Even when one, or two people are left we continue to come regularly. We do this in summer, in winter in any weather".
Mobile shop owner Natalia Poleva says:"The shop on wheels carries all the essential goods, bread, flour, conserves. We have everything including sausages, sugar, candies, cakes, pasta, washing powder etc. Everything that's needed."
The truck is a vital source of communication with the outside world for Veselova who can go through days without speaking to anyone.
Veselova is not marooned in the village, her grandchildren visit and have asked her to live with them elsewhere, but she doesn't want to leave her home.
Fiercely independent the 85 year old enjoys digging her own vegetable garden and says:"I grow potatoes, carrot, beetroot, cabbage, garlic."
When winter draws in her movement becomes restricted, but she says: "I feel better when I'm busy and working. For example, in winter there is nothing to do, I just to weave carpets. And now I move more and feel better."
A nationwide census in Russia in 2010 showed there were over nineteen thousand deserted villages.
Eighty-three thousand little hamlets are dwindling away with less than one hundred villagers left.
Nightfall brings a fresh snowfall to Safonovo.
The morning after Veselova makes a long cold trek through the icy ground to the water pump to replenish her supply.

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