Photo of the Day for May 16, 2013

Kudrychy (Pinsk District), May 2012.  Кудрычы (Пінскі раён), травень 2012 г.

I first visited Kudrychy during the spring of 2007:  see photos for April 27 and April 5, 2013.  Kudrychy lies 25 km. east of Pinsk on the Jasjel’da (Ясельда) River, just upstream from the Jasjel’da’s confluence with the Pripet (Prypjats’ – Прыпяць).  Linked to the outside world by road less than 30 years ago, Kudrychy is one of a handful of Pripet Marsh villages in eastern Pinsk District which have maintained traces of traditional Polesian farming life, traditional thatched-roof architecture, and the traditional means of transport by wooden boat.  Indeed, it was impossible to enter the village on foot in early May 2013 as the higher-than-normal spring flood waters still covered the village streets.

However, depopulation (children leaving for Pinsk or beyond); prohibitions on traditional marshland farming activity owing to Kudrychy’s inclusion in the Central Prypjats’ Preserve, proclaimed in 1999; the loss of desire and skills needed to maintain thatched roofs; regulations inhibiting private initiative in tourism; and a top-down approach by regional authorities planning out-of-scale tourism projects have severely affected these villages’ ability to survive in their traditional way.

This photo illustrates the vice now squeezing Kudrychy and similar villages.  The family diligently working its acreage no longer lives in the village but travels from Pinsk every weekend to weed and tend its plots.  In the center background one can see an iconic Polesian thatched-roof granary in front of two formerly thatched-roof houses now covered in corrugated roofing.