A pastoral lost: the withering of Russia's old Soviet farms and villages

Strewn with abandoned buildings, ruined grain silos, and muddy streets lined with empty, tumbledown Russian-style cottages, this community is mostly a ghost town. The current population numbers just 10 people. Pyotr Volkov and his wife Natasha are already pensioners, yet they are the youngest inhabitants here.

Perhaps due to a bureaucratic error, Komsomolskoye still has a functioning post office. It's only open three days a week, but that's enough to ensure that pensions are paid, newspapers delivered, and the mail comes. A single working pay phone, standing amid the overgrowth outside the post office, is for some the only direct link to the outside world.

But Mr. Volkov remembers other days, when this was

'An objective process'Village cultureA pleasant, disappearing life