ZAOZERYE (Russia): In the dying light of the Arctic sun, the frozen village of Zaozerye resembles the end of the world. But Gleb Tyurin sees the beginning of a new Russia.

Time appears to stand still in the village. Smoke curls over traditional wooden houses, their pine log walls insulated with moss. Only the snorts of shaggy black horses break the silence.

Yet in this unforgiving landscape of ice and tundra an experiment is unfolding that challenges fears on the eve of parliamentary elections that President Vladimir Putin has locked Russia into an authoritarian future.

Tyurin, head of a tiny NGO, the Institute of Social and Humanitarian Initiatives, calls Zaozerye “a test case.” When this bright-eyed man with a dashing moustache first came here six years ago, the village was about to join thousands of others on the post-Soviet economic rubbish heap.

No jobs had been created since the bankruptcy of the collective farm. The population of 130 was down to 70 and many of those left were alcoholics. The school of two pupils was about to close.

“If we hadn’t done something then it would have been too late. People would simply have drunk themselves to death,” the teacher, Tatyana Korotayeva, 41, said.

Then Tyurin came, urging the lost villagers to take fate into their own hands.

“They looked at me like a totally crazy person,” recalled Tyurin, 44, as the village turned silvery in the 2:30 pm sunset. “They said: ‘How can we help ourselves, when everything is decided by those above?’” Yet over the next years, the people of Zaozerye set up a governing council, fixed the water pump, and in an epic show of collective enterprise built a brand new retirement home, with employment for 30 people.The resulting economic recovery has attracted new residents, including two dozen children. A second food shop has opened, the village hall has been restored, and Korotayeva is planning a big school — again to be built with minimal funding and by volunteer labour.

The renaissance of Zaozerye has national significance because so many other villages — 20,000, Tyurin estimates — are dying across Russia, destroying the human fabric that bonds this mammoth, under-populated country.

For the villagers, though, the greatest triumph was discovering they could manage their own affairs. “We felt as if we’d grown wings,” Korotayeva, an energetic woman of 41, said.

Waiting for orders from above has been the way for centuries in Russia, where ex-KGB officer Putin is today accused of taking inspiration from his Bolshevik and tsarist antecedents in the Kremlin.

“Our leaders have always been authoritarian and people have more or less submitted to that,” says Lev Gudkov, director of the independent polling centre Levada. “Call this pragmatism, cynicism, or whatever, but that has left a deep imprint on the national character.” Ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election opposition parties have been largely dismantled or neutralised, ensuring easy victory for Putin’s United Russia party.

A flood of petrodollars also means the Kremlin has no trouble in keeping the country’s all-powerful business, political and security elites loyal.

“There’s a lot of money out there and the rulers let them have it,” said Dmitry Oreshkin, at the Mercator analytical centre in Moscow. “Right now wealth is bad for democracy in Russia.”But thanks to people like Tyurin, plus a slowly emerging middle class, the little guys are chipping at that monopoly, Oreshkin says.

“Any small businessman understands freedom — not press freedom or human rights — but his freedom to run a business and build his future,” Oreshkin said.

Igor Zaborsky, the elected head of the vast Mezen district, which stretches north of Arkhangelsk to the Arctic shore, says Zaozerye’s recovery shows what happens when government allows civil society to empower ordinary people.

“It’s amazing what you can do with this approach. Imagine if you repeated that across Russia and added proper funding,” said Zaborsky, 41.

Other examples of civil society activism include the work of Memorial, a courageous human rights organisation that has publicised war crimes in Chechnya and helped victims find justice in court.

A very different organisation is Free Choice, which defends car owners against unpopular laws, crooked police, and the road-hogging excesses of bureaucrats’ luxury limousines.

“We show the state that we are people, not some kind of robots -- that we are citizens,” said the group’s leader, Vyacheslav Lysakov.

Lysakov says passivity remains the biggest problem to reform. “In the West, people are used to defending their rights and going out onto the street. Not here. We’re still scared, we don’t debate.”Yet Zaozerye shows that attitudes can change.

Klaudia Polyakova’s proud, gaunt face lit up as she remembered the battle to persuade fellow villagers to build the retirement home.

“They were sniping at us. They said it wouldn’t work, that it would fall down,” said Polyakova, 58.

“But we did it. Bit by bit, with God’s help, we did it! Now the naysayers have all shut up.”—AFP