bm297 The Russian City with No Jobs

Friday, March 13, 2009
By bicyclemark

250 kilometers east of St. Petersburg lies the city of Pikaljovo, population just over 25,000.  Until very recently, Pikaljovo was an industrial city, where people had steady jobs for good wages, and lived a quality of life accordingly.  Yet in a relatively short amount of time the main sources of work in Pikaljovo suddenly closed down, leaving behind a city with little hope, lots of car payments, and shops that no one can afford to frequent.

My friend Olaf Koens, an occasional correspondant on citizenreporter.org, joins me to explain what he learned while in Pikaljovo. We also get into the situation overall in Russia and even a little on how Moscow has changed with the financial crisis.

Music:

  • Final Fantasy – Ultimatum
  • Tom Brosseau – Instructions to Meet the Devil
 
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This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Audio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

One Response to “bm297 The Russian City with No Jobs”

  1. Chris Weagel
    March 17, 2009 at 4:07 am

    Sounds like Detroit.

    My dream solution is for workers and anyone living here to slowly, individually or with unions, take over the abandoned factories and begin making things on their own, if only on a small scale for sale here locally.

    Like everything else, we need to just bypass the existing systems and get on with life without them and their barriers.

    Real easy for me to type that, of course.

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