On 6 May 2015, Omsk’s Odessa district court began hearing a criminal case against Sergei Gordienko, one of Siberia’s most prominent farmers. Gordienko was accused of large-scale fraud, including misuse of a 2.5m rouble (£31,000) grant from the regional Ministry of Agriculture for modernisation of his farm.
If convicted, Gordienko could receive a 10-year prison sentence. The irony is, though, that Sergei and his wife Anastasia have been at the forefront of Siberian farming for the past two decades. In the late 1980s, they were the first people in the Omsk region to take advantage of the right of the rural population to land and freedom. Several years later, as the Soviet Union was collapsing around them, the first constitution of the Russian Federation enshrined this right for all Russian citizens. But the state has yet to truly implement it. And Russian farmers have paid the price.
Winds of change
Reshetilovka, the village where the Gordienkos were born, was classified as non-viable back at the end of the 1970s when around 100 families left. Ten years later, when the wind of change was blowing through the USSR, Sergei and Anastasia were the only couple to return to the village. In 1989, they set up the first agricultural cooperative in Siberia, which was reclassified as a peasant farm enterprise three years later.
