This article was originally published on Vladimir Megre’s blog on May 25, 2020. Translated by the Anastasia Foundation.
Watch Vladimir Megre’s video address on YouTube
From Gabriel: Dear friends, Vladimir Megre gave this inspiring speech 6 years ago to the day, on May 21, 2020. A lot in the world has changed since then, but the message rings as true as ever before. Please enjoy this moving article, translated faithfully in to English for you.
I address you, the readers of my book series, The Ringing Cedars of Russia. I am certain — your ardent souls and hearts will grasp both what I say in this address and what I leave unsaid. Your feelings and your reason have already nurtured the first shoots of a beautiful future for Russia and for the world. It was you who felt the heartbeat and the aspirations of Anastasia, the Siberian heroine of these books, and who answered her call.
It was you who — often struggling to find the means — purchased and continue to purchase weed-covered one-hectare plots of land, in order to create on them your own Kin’s Domain, your own small Motherland, your own Space of Love. To create, in memory of your ancestors, for the children alive today and for the generations to come, a paradise oasis worthy of the life of a thinking person.
A single hectare of land is only a microscopic dot on our planet. But even that dot, once it has felt the touch of kind human hands, can shine with its own beauty, can radiate the goodness and consciousness of those who created it, can gladden the stars of the universe.
And when these dots become many — when hectares of Kin’s Domains surround cities great and small with the fragrant aroma of spring gardens and flowers, when air and water become clean, when deadly weapons remain only as exhibits in a museum…
Impossible, fairy-tale, fantastical — that is what the skeptics will think. But don’t rush to your conclusions, gentlemen. Don’t rush.
Four Hundred Settlements
In our beloved Russia there are already four hundred — no, not single-hectare dots, but 400 settlements made up of Kin’s Domains.
Kin’s Domain Settlements across Russia
In these settlements of a new kind, people have come to relate to the land — and to their lineage — with a new awareness. Out of an unwillingness to dishonor the soil of their Kin’s Domain, many have given up the harmful habits of smoking and drinking.
The settlements vary: some large, some small, some well-developed and others still rough. But their numbers continue to grow, and their infrastructure keeps improving. This wonderful process could move faster and more effectively still, with closer cooperation between government and society.
A Political Path: The Rodnaya Party
For exactly that kind of cooperation, the law already provides a mechanism: a political party that advances our ideas, and elections to local and federal government.
We have a party officially registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. It is called the RODNAYA PARTY [literally, the “Native Party,” from rodnoy — “one’s own, related by kin”].
In the run-up to the elections, we need to mount a vibrant, information-rich campaign. Our preparation time is minimal. The Unified Voting Day [Russia’s single, nationwide September election date for regional offices] for regional government will take place this September, with elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation to follow.
But we can manage it, if everyone with a stake in their own future joins in — above all, the creators of Kin’s Domains, whether or not they are members of the Rodnaya Party.
Come and See for Yourselves
Yes, we see this beautiful future of our Motherland, and we are creating it. But we struggle to put the impulse of our souls into simple words that society can understand.
Words are hard. It is easier for a person to grasp a beautiful future when they can hold a piece of it in their hands, taste it, breathe in its scent.
Can we offer society something tangible — today? Yes. We can say this:
Come and see what these emerging settlements look like — the settlements of Kin’s Domains that are the seedbed of Russia’s prosperous future. You will find them in nearly every region of the Russian Federation. One of them sits in the Sudogodsky District of Vladimir Oblast, just 30 kilometers from the city of Vladimir.
Rodnoye Kin’s Domain Settlement, Vladimir Oblast
Seeing the solid homes on their one-hectare plots, someone might say: “These people must have had real capital — that’s how they could buy the land and build a decent house.” I can follow that train of thought. But help me understand a different one.
The Old Man on One Hectare
Let me show you one hectare among the others. On it stands a solid log house. A pit has been dug for a pond. Fruit trees and bushes are growing. Beside the entrance, by the road, stands a board-built garage.
The Zhukov house
Perhaps you’ll see a woman among the vegetable beds. I cannot drive past this hectare without stopping. Why?
This hectare was bought for 30,000 rubles by an 80-year-old man. While his neighbors built up their domains as families, he was alone. He would stand thoughtfully amid the weeds and the young forest growth, lost in some private reflection — or he would walk, with difficulty, pacing off the perimeter of his hectare step by step.
Then he pitched a soldier’s tent and quietly began planting fruit bushes. The neighbors helped him build a small banya [Russian bathhouse — a near-sacred fixture of country life]. When I heard about this strange old man, I came to see him. I wanted to learn what he was after, and to try to persuade him to return to the city, closer to modern medicine. But I couldn’t. His way of seeing things was too unusual.
When I entered his little dwelling, the old man was bent over a small table, writing poems into a notebook. I asked him to read them. They were about the Motherland, about love, about the meaning of life.
As I opened the door to leave, he stopped me with these words:
— Vladimir, don’t worry about me. I’m all right. More all right than I’ve ever been. I’m only just beginning to live a meaningful life — a life with a direction.
— A direction to where? I asked.
He answered, calmly and with quiet certainty, smiling:
— Toward the future you wrote about in your books. I want to see it. And I want to wait for a woman with a soul like your Siberian Anastasia. She will come, if I make myself worthy of her. That is why I am building a Kin’s Domain — to make myself worthy of a woman with a beautiful soul.
I didn’t want to intrude on his strange dream with my own disbelief, so I said goodbye, got into my car, and drove away. On the highway back to Vladimir, I could think of nothing but the old man and his impossible dream.
Where a country road branched off the highway, I stopped my Lexus and stepped out into the wind and the autumn rain. I knew that road led to another Kin’s Domain settlement still being built — one where a woman in a wheelchair was alone, trying to develop her hectare.
Somehow, she had already laid out flower beds on her own. She lived in a tent, and she was sketching out, page by page, the design of her future house — a house in which she would be able to move freely in her wheelchair.
And in the neighboring settlement, a single mother with two small children was also trying to build up her Kin’s Domain — to put up a house of her own.
All of them are my readers. And somehow I feel responsible for them. Anastasia, the recluse of the taiga, must really have given me a magic pen — and I should be more careful with it.
I can understand it when entrepreneurs, taken with Anastasia’s idea, set out to create their Kin’s Domains. But a woman in a wheelchair dreams without realizing she cannot build a house. A single mother with two small children cannot turn an overgrown hectare into a blossoming oasis on her own — and she doesn’t see that either.
And how could an old man, in the twilight of his years, come up with something so impossible — that a woman with a beautiful soul would come to him and live with him on his domain?
There are clearly many like them. In Russia, in Belarus, in Ukraine — readers of mine with ardent souls and impossible dreams of a beautiful future. And it would be one thing if they only dreamed — but they are working to bring the impossible into reality. I really must be more careful with the pen Anastasia gave me. I thought this more than once. But soon I came to see that I had underestimated something — either the powers of the recluse of the Siberian taiga, or the powers of a human dream.
What Three Years Brought
About three years went by, and Margarita Vasilevna — the woman in the wheelchair — was now greeting me with a wave from the veranda of her own house. Everything was accessible to her: wooden boardwalks ran from the house to the summer kitchen, and a thoughtful path led to an unusual gazebo.
It was in that gazebo that she once hosted a well-known American family. The head of the family had also been left in a wheelchair after a car accident. We had a translator with us; people chatted and joked. And just at the right moment, a neighbor brought over fresh hot bread straight from the oven.
The Russian woman — who had, after all, built her wonderful house — and the American sat in their wheelchairs, looking at each other and saying something to one another without a translator and without words.
I bring you greetings from that American family who visited the Vladimir Kin’s Domains. And I want to tell you: back in America, they have bought up hundreds of hectares of land to create a Kin’s Domain settlement of their own.
As for Natalya Sergeevna — the single mother of two — she did build her house on her hectare. And then she married, and had four more children. She now has six. And she is slim and beautiful.
Beyond what an ordinary mind can grasp — that is how the old man’s fate turned out, too.
His neighbors told me how, one day, a woman who had come to visit the settlement happened to hear the story of the unusual old man. The neighbors had been talking about how he lived, how he was trying to build up his Kin’s Domain all alone — and people couldn’t understand who this solitary man was working so hard for.
And the woman decided to pay him a visit. She entered his tiny dwelling, and she did not come out until nightfall.
What followed in the lives of those two people could fill an instructive novel — or perhaps a philosophical novella about how, even in the twilight of life, one can begin a new one. Here I will tell it briefly.
The woman who had come to visit married the old man. She was twenty-five years younger than he was. Beautiful — with a kind of inner beauty that doesn’t fade. And as it turned out, she was wealthy. She quickly had a solid house built on the domain. I came over for the housewarming.
In the spacious main room, a long table was laid with food, with a great many neighbors gathered around it. The conversation ranged across many subjects. People talked about how beautifully the Russian stove [a traditional masonry stove that both heats the home and cooks the food] had turned out in this house. The old man, dressed in an embroidered Russian shirt, smiled with happiness and read his poems aloud to the guests.
And then his wife — Raisa Aleksandrovna, the name of the woman who had walked into his dream — said to the guests:
— Would you like me to show you something?
— Yes, show us, the gathering answered.
And she brought out the old man’s military officer’s tunic. The room went silent. People stared at the many combat orders and medals on the tunic of a Russian officer — a frontline Colonel.
Ivan Dmitrievich Zhukov
I looked at the tunic and thought: where on it would there be room for his most important medal? This Colonel had won — single-handed, before all his neighbors’ eyes — the great battle of his life. He had won it for his dream, for love, and for the flourishing of Russia.
Ivan Dmitrievich and Raisa Aleksandrovna Zhukov welcoming guests
Ivan Dmitrievich and Raisa Aleksandrovna spent four and a half happy years together. The neighbors filmed scenes of their tender love on their mobile phones. The Colonel died in 2013. His wife did not take his body to a cemetery — she buried him on their own Kin’s Domain. Such had been the hero’s wish.
What These Words Hold
What power did the recluse of the Siberian taiga conceal in the phrase “Kin’s Domain”? And what power is hidden in her other words — for instance, “People, give back to yourselves your Motherland”?
Not in words but in real, waking life, the future of our homeland is growing beautiful.
Already today, the Kin’s Domains of Vladimir Oblast and other regions of Russia can supply the hospitals and kindergartens of nearby cities with truly clean, ecologically pure fruits and vegetables. The hundreds of wells dug by the creators of Kin’s Domains can give living water [in Russian, water of restorative, life-giving power] to anyone who wants it.
This very spring, medicinal herbs will be planted in thousands of Kin’s Domains — herbs whose properties exceed those of what is sold in pharmacies.
A number of Kin’s Domains are already producing first-rate natural cosmetics and hygiene products.
And in a small Siberian village, under the Ringing Cedars of Russia trademark, a production facility has been set up to make cedar products using ancient techniques and the warmth of modern human hands.
Megre Cedar House — entrance to the Ringing Cedars production facility
Among other products, the facility makes cedar nut oil — recognized by both science and folk medicine as an effective means of strengthening immunity.
Inside the Ringing Cedars production facility
I’m proud that my own children founded this production, and that dozens of villagers work there.
I’m proud that products from a small Siberian village are sold not only in Russia, but exported to cities in Europe, America, and China. Small batches so far — but they show the splendid possibilities for the development of the Russian economy.
I am certain that children raised in Kin’s Domains will grow up talented, worthy of their parents. This is already happening.
The monumental mosaics of Ulyana — daughter of my domain neighbors Viktor and Nina Medikov — already adorn Orthodox Christian churches in Rome, Bari, and Barcelona, and Catholic churches in Detroit (USA) and Kraków. She has carried out commissions for the Pope. She has become a world-renowned artist.
Anastasia, the Coronavirus, and a Race of Disarmament
Our children! Through them, a worldwide race of disarmament will begin — the one Anastasia foretold. A race of disarmament provoked by a little girl from a Kin’s Domain, who learned to befriend bacteria invisible to the ordinary eye, and with their help began detonating the munitions she disliked, all over the world. I included Anastasia’s account of this phenomenon in one of my books. It seemed unbelievably fantastical to me.
And then came this remarkably strange coronavirus. Here is what Anastasia said about it:
“What people call the coronavirus, Vladimir, is nothing other than a living, thinking substance. It has been created and set in motion by the energy of thought, and it submits to that thought. It will conduct a dialogue with humanity in the language of action.”
Look closely at what is happening. These invisible beings have forced people the world over to suspend their often harmful industries, to self-isolate in their homes, and to think about their own future and the future of all humanity.
I am certain that, with combined effort, we can chart a path to a beautiful future — and create that future ourselves.
With Gratitude
I thank the scholars of Russia’s universities — and above all, the group of scholars at Moscow State University [MGU] who recognized what splendid prospects for the country are contained within the “Ringing Cedars of Russia” public movement and its Kin’s Domains.
Viktor Yakovlevich Medikov, Doctor of Economic Sciences, who gathered the signatures of dozens of scholars in support of the movement to create Kin’s Domains.
Viktor Yakovlevich Medikov, Doctor of Economic Sciences
Mikhail Pavlov, in whose scholarly works the splendid prospects for the development of our Motherland through the Kin’s Domain movement are demonstrated with historical examples.
Mikhail Yurievich Pavlov, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor at Moscow State University
The Governor of Belgorod Oblast, Evgeny Stepanovich Savchenko, on whose initiative Russia’s first regional law on Kin’s Domains was passed.
Evgeny Stepanovich Savchenko, Governor of Belgorod Oblast
I also thank those who have spread frightening disinformation about the “Ringing Cedars of Russia” movement — because in doing so, they kept the authorities from prematurely overorganizing the movement, and gave people the chance to learn how to work together on new principles.
I thank our President, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who — despite the flood of disinformation — issued the Decree on the Far Eastern Hectare [a Russian government program offering citizens free plots of land in the Far East]. To my mind, not everything in the decree is smooth; it lacks the right words, and it is too official in tone. But thanks to it, the mechanism for obtaining the free hectares Anastasia spoke of has been established. Now that decree needs to be extended to the entire territory of Russia, with the right words added — words capable of inspiring people to take part in a great common act of creation.
And when fragrant hectares of Kin’s Domains surround the cities great and small, the turn of the Far Eastern lands will come, too.
The Safest Place in a Pandemic
Russia has a great opportunity to stop the pandemic that has gripped so many countries of our world — and not only to stop it, but to prevent the more serious catastrophes that follow in its wake.
Anyone who applies their own logic to a few simple facts can see what I mean.
Science cannot yet offer effective drugs against viruses. Even if such drugs are eventually invented, it will take months — possibly years — of trials to determine their effectiveness and their side effects.
The Russian government, like governments around the world, has reduced air and rail passenger travel, banned mass cultural events, and called on people to self-isolate at home — all to slow the spread of the virus in any way possible.
Self-isolating in a modern apartment may reduce, to some extent, the risk of infection. But for most people, self-isolating in the closed space of an apartment will also have a negative side effect. Stripped of their usual way of life by the threat of infection, seeing no bright prospects ahead, a person inevitably sinks into depression — which in turn significantly lowers immunity, and therefore raises the risk of falling ill from many diseases.
Self-isolating in a dacha cottage on a six-sotok plot [about 600 square meters — the small allotment typical of Soviet-era dachas] increases the risk of infection, because the plots sit so close together. A sick neighbor working on the other side of a chain-link fence has only to sneeze, and you’ve been exposed.
The greatest degree of protection from the coronavirus belongs to families building their lives on Kin’s Domains.
What, then, is a Kin’s Domain as we understand it today? It is a one-hectare plot of land, with a living hedge planted around its perimeter. Within: a house; a pond; a well of living water; an orchard; a vegetable garden; a small forest of valuable tree species; beds of medicinal herbs; cedars exuding phytoncides [volatile antimicrobial compounds released by plants — a well-studied concept in Russian science] that purify the air. In a living, paradisiacal place like this, a family will undoubtedly be most protected against any virus — and if illness comes, the living home will help them through it.
Kin’s Domains solve economic questions effectively, both for the individual family and for the state as a whole. On a hectare of land, a person provides their own work and their own income from it. Someone living in a Kin’s Domain can work remotely — modern communications make that possible for many professions — or, alternatively, can commute to a job in a nearby city. To free up time, the vegetable beds in the domain can be reduced, and the low-maintenance forest and orchard zones expanded.
A Kin’s Domain can provide even a large family with first-rate food, with surpluses that can be sold to city dwellers.
A Kin’s Domain is not only first-rate food, clean air, and life-giving water. The knowledge that one is creating an oasis in memory of one’s ancestors, for the happy lives of one’s children and the generations to come, joins a person to eternity — and gives a powerful charge of energy.
A Closing Word
And to you, the readers of my books, I want to make a request: look closely at the plan put forward by the doctor from the future [a reference from Megre’s Ringing Cedars book series], which sets out how creators of Kin’s Domains can work together with the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation and with research and medical institutions. This plan is extremely timely today — including for overcoming epidemics of every kind, COVID-19 among them.
And on Earth — may there be good!
With respect, Vladimir Megre May 20, 2020