Immediately after the Great Patriotic War, private houses in the villages of the Arkhangelsk region were decorated with red metal stars. What does this mean - in the author's column of the journalist and former policeman Sergei Lyutykh especially for Gazeta.Ru. The village of Zaozerye of the Mezensky District of the Arkhangelsk Region is one of the most inaccessible settlements I have ever visited. This is the territory of the Pomors - harsh and enterprising northerners who are used to relying only on themselves. People live there in age-old good-quality huts: modestly, but do not live in poverty.
There are almost no other settlements for hundreds of kilometers around the village. At any moment a bear or some other animal can wander here. The dirt road that connected the district with Arkhangelsk appeared only ten years ago. Before that, communication with the mainland went only through water or through the sky.
At the same time, people living here feel an inextricable connection with the country. A connection that is sometimes not felt by young people living in big cities.
The locals will not talk for a long time about foreign policy or defense problems. As a rule, they designate their position briefly and succinctly, because there are too many worries about the household. There is no time for empty talk.
But the results of their Pomor labors are visible to the naked eye. What are only gigantic age-old huts. Each of them could have decorated an exhibition of wooden architecture.
On the pediments of these huts, while passing through Zaozerye, I noticed red metal stars: where one, where two, and where three. Couldn't figure out what that meant? I asked the locals. It turns out that from these houses people went to war with the Germans. How many people have left, so many stars. It's not about the victims, but about all the front-line soldiers.
I was surprised why I did not see such stars in other villages, in other regions of our country. Maybe he just didn't notice?
Later, when I returned to the mainland, I learned that huts not only in the Arkhangelsk region were decorated with red stars. It's just that these houses themselves are few. In the Russian North, they built for centuries: frosty winters demanded solidity.
In a country that lost millions of men during the Great Patriotic War, many people needed help, especially in the villages, where you always have to chop wood and bring water.
The red star on the pediment could stop a bully or a petty thief. Not everyone, of course, but there are also people with living hearts among the villains.
In another district of the Arkhangelsk region, I again saw red stars on houses. Some of them were completely new or appeared to be so.
It turns out that in 2016, the soldiers of Mirrab Azadov's Fakel search unit were engaged in replacing the rusted old stars. They recruited local schoolchildren to work. I wonder if the guys realized that hanging a star means taking the house under their wing?
A remarkable incident occurred in one of the villages near Moscow, located not far from my dacha. There for a long time teenagers were unrestrained. Their leader was reputed to be a man who has not an ounce of conscience.
Once this guy stole jewelry and a fold from some grandmother, in which a photograph of her son, who fought and died in Afghanistan, was next to the icon. The grandmother found him and asked to return only this photo in exchange for a promise to pay a kind of tribute from the pension. The bully agreed, but when after a while the woman did bring him the money, he returned it back.
Because of this, the guy had problems with his friends, however, remaining the leader of the gang, he insisted on his own, and then painted a fist on fire on the gate of this grandmother - he had such a tattoo. It was a sign for those who want to rob the hostess that it is better to bypass her house.
In Zaozerye, as I think, there is no need to protect veterans' huts from thieves with the help of stars. They remember the time when dashing people wandered through abandoned houses in search of ancient icons that are in great demand among foreigners. They don't wait for their own people here and they don't lock the doors of their houses: they calmly leave, even for a day, even for a month.
Red stars on the huts here have become something deeper, associated with a folk tradition going back centuries, like carved window frames.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board of Gazeta.Ru.
Author biography:
Sergei Lyutykh, journalist, retired police captain, worked as a district policeman, investigated criminal cases in the inquiry, solved crimes, being an operative in the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department at 38 Petrovka Street.
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