Posted on 07/14/2016 12:42:46 PM PDT by Trumpinator
KAMEN-RYBOLOV, Russia — Standing ankle deep in mud in a swampy grassland more than 4,000 miles from his home, Yuri A. Bugaev surveyed a mosquito-infested wasteland that the Russian government is offering to would-be pioneers under its own modern-day version of the 1862 Homestead Act in the United States.
“This is not really what I had in mind,” said Mr. Bugaev, who had traveled across seven time zones from St. Petersburg, Russia, to scout the possibilities for settlers in the country’s sparsely populated Far East, a territory roughly two-thirds the size of the United States.
The nine Far Eastern regions targeted for settlement in the government’s land giveaway, which began on June 1, encompass more than a third of Russia but are home to only 6.1 million people. This is just 4 percent of the country’s population and compares with the 110 million Chinese living across the border in the three provinces that make up Manchuria.
Mr. Bugaev is a dedicated, if largely sedentary, Cossack, a centuries-old fraternity of Slavic warriors, freebooters and freedom-loving rebels. A romantic throwback to earlier generations of Cossacks who settled and secured the borders of the Russian empire, he sees getting his Cossack brethren and other Russians to move out east as the only way to keep mostly empty Russian lands safe from China.
For years, he said, he had dreamed of Russia embracing, or rather re-embracing, the pioneer spirit, and he was delighted by the Kremlin’s backing of a program meant to reassert the country’s manifest destiny as a continent-straddling power.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Think how valuable this land would be if global warming really came true. We need to deport our leftist true believers there.
Ample parking for over 5 million Syrians!
Go East, Young Man.
Most people live in European Russia west of the Urals.
If you’re hardier, you can live in Novosibirsk or Vladivostok.
Few Russians consider living in Siberia. Freezing winters there.
“Come and keep your Comrade warm.”
“This is not really what I had in mind,”...
There’s the understatement of the year! :)
Moscow ain’t exactly Miami Beach, neither.
Send the Syrians there with shelter, equipment and medication. Problems solved!
“one free hectare, about 2.5 acres, a person.”
Up the offer by 100 fold and I would be interested enough to marry a russian woman and give it a shot.
Yes, all those who have been saying they will leave the USA if Trump is elected! They could create their perfect commune haven.
Hmm...just send them there
Ping for later.
Well that’s fine. As long as you also make the practice of islam punishable by death.
Otherwise, I would never advocate that for our Russian neighbors.
Oooh wow, a whole 2.5 acres per person.
They are going to fail with a policy like that.
Irkutsk is a very nice compromise.
I would be interested enough to marry a russian woman
As long as she looks like the one in post #2!
Perfect for these “off the grid” types that you see in those Alaska reality series.
I read this story published somewhere else, a month or two ago.
Ridiculous program. I wouldn’t go there for one those tiny plots; anyone who does is a fool. I wouldn’t go for a hundred times that.
I might go, for a thousand, if I got to pick my own plot, got immediate title to it instead of having to wait five years to see if they wanted to take it away from me after all my work, and a guarantee that the government regulators would leave me alone.
This program is so dumb that you would almost think that 0bama put it together.
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