Into the Village for the Good of the Village? Humanitarian Tourism to the Countryside in Russia

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2024-2/86-101

Abstract

The city and the village are traditionally opposed to each other as spaces dictating and defining a different way of life. The countryside was associated with a place to leave from, but at the same time it gradually became the cherished territory of the "non-city", with special rural relations based on openness, mutual assistance, collectivism. In this article, the author will try to study the dialogue between the urban and the rural, what the townspeople are taking with them when they leave for village, and whether it finds any response from the locals. The study focuses on the introduction of urban patterns and urban infrastructure into the village space, analyzing the example of the young organization "Benevoyage", whose declared goal is the development of the village. Analyzing the structure of the organization, methods of working with local residents and rural activists, the author concludes that the organizers create new objects and relationships in the village that are characteristic of urban space, and thereby, under the banner of "village revival" or recreating the idyllic image of the village they actually urbanize rural space and rural social relations, reshaping them for implementation of their own projects. Rural sociality, which includes tendencies towards equality, mutual assistance, and empathy, is being replaced by an effective organizational structure that really develops and economically transforms territories, but triggers the process of changing their social structure from rural to urban.