16. Open letter to the President

the Ringing cedars of Russia Vladimir Megre English translation by John Woodsworth

Book 5. Who are we? (2001)

Open letter

To Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,

President of the Russian Federation

From Vladimir Nikolaevich Megre,

Citizen of the Russian Federation

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

We live in a generation which must be very lucky indeed. We have before us a real opportunity to begin building a prosperous, flourishing state thoroughly protected from external aggressors, internal conflicts and crime. A state in which happy families will live in prosperity Our generation has the opportunity of not only building a splendid country, but of actually living in it, provided there is enough goodwill among the legislative powers that be to grant to every willing family one hectare of land for the purpose of establishing thereon its own kin’s domain. This simple action will suffice to call forth an impulse to creative endeavour on the part of the majority of people at various levels of society

The land should be granted free of charge, for lifetime use, with the right of inheritance. The produce grown on these kin’s domains should not be subject to any form of taxation.

You will agree, Vladimir Vladimirovich, that an abnormal, illogical state of affairs has now come about: every Russian is supposed to have a Motherland, but nobody can show exactly

where his piece of this Motherland is. If every family receives one and transforms it into a flourishing corner of Paradise, Russia as a whole will become a magnificent land.

Current policies on national development do not inspire people into creativity, since it is not clear where or to what kind of future they are leading. The forging of a democratic, economically developed state on the Western model has been rejected — intuitively, perhaps — by the majority of the population. And I think this is all to the good. Common sense makes us ask ourselves: Why should any of us in particular, or we as a nation, waste our efforts on building a state which will only be racked by drugs, prostitution and gangsterism? All those things are part of Western society

We used to think that the so-called developed societies enjoyed an abundance of food products, but now it is clear that this abundance has been achieved at the expense of applying all sorts of chemical additives and poisonous chemicals to the soil, as well as genetic engineering. We have seen that imported food products have nowhere near the taste quality of our own. In Germany, for example, people gladly buy potatoes brought in from Russia.

In a number of countries the government has become con-cerned over this situation and mandated special labelling of genetically modified produce. Scientists, too, are becoming more and more concerned. America and Germany are among those countries that have the highest per-capita cancer rates in the world. Do we have to go down the same path?

I don’t think it is a path that inspires very many people. But our country has come to tolerate the promotion of foreign goods and the Western way of life. We have become resigned to the appearance in our midst of more and more diseases, to the fact that we can now drink water only out of bottles we buy at the store and that the population of Russia is decreasing by 750,000 souls a year. It’s all just like in the West.

After all, the birthrate has fallen in highly developed countries too. We are trying our hardest to be like them. But I have been hearing from people who live in these countries, hearing about their hopes — their hopes that Russia is searching for and will inevitably find its own path of development, and show the whole world a happier way of life.

Mr President, you, no doubt, have received various pro-posals for the future development of our country If this new proposal appears questionable in comparison with others you have seen, I would ask you to test it on an experimental basis in regions where the respective governors can discern in it a grain of common sense.

You will find further details of this proposal in the series of books entitled The Ringing Cedars of Russia, of which I happen to be the author. I would not imagine that you have had the time to read them personally, caught up as you are in attending to a flood of affairs of state. Still, there are certain appropriate administrative bodies which are aware of these books and have already rendered their verdict.

They conclude that these books have engendered a new re-ligion in Russia, which is “spreading like wildfire” — an opinion that is also being circulated in the press in a number of publications. Their conclusion came as a complete surprise to me. While I have expressed my feelings about God in these books, I never thought of creating any kind of new religion. I simply wrote books about an extraordinary and beautiful recluse living in the Siberian taiga and the fervent dream she entertains about what is splendid and beautiful in life.

One could say that the enthusiastic reaction on the part of people of different social backgrounds and the popularity of these books both in Russia and abroad bear some resemblance to a religious phenomenon. But I think this is quite a different story here. The ideas, philosophy and topical awareness of this Siberian recluse, not to mention the language in

which she expresses herself, have all deeply stirred people’s hearts.

It will probably be quite a while before scientists reach a unanimous conclusion on who Anastasia is and what is the full significance of the books containing her sayings, or how one should interpret the public reaction to them. Let them keep on trying to figure it out. I am only concerned lest their theoretical analyses overshadow the concrete proposals made by Anastasia.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, so that you maybe personally per-suaded of the effectiveness of Anastasia’s proposals regarding the land, I invite you to authorise an experiment, regardless of who either Anastasia or Vladimir Megre may be, which will put some of her less significant statements to the test.

First: I suggest that your public officials will not be unduly burdened if asked to commission an appropriate scientific research institute to do a simple analysis of the effectiveness of Anastasia’s proposal on cleansing the air in major cities from harmful dust pollution. The gist of this proposal was set forth back in my first book.1

Second: I recommend you authorise an analysis of Siberian cedar nut oil as a general remedial agent. Both data from ancient sources and modern research by scientists at the University of Tomsk2 confirm Anastasia’s statement that this natural product, provided it is obtained through a specific technological method, is one of the most effective remedies in the world for the cure of a broad range of diseases. You will not find anywhere else on the globe a vaster array of plantings than in Siberia, which is home to the nut-bearing cedar.

The Russian federal budget could realise substantial profits from putting this product on the international market, as well as from its use within our own country. We need to have a state policy on the exploitation of Siberian flora. A policy aimed not at the establishment of large-scale industrial enterprises but at the unfolding of a network of small businesses involving people actually living in the remote regions of Siberia. The implementation of such a policy does not require a huge outlay of capital, only a legislative decision allowing the local residents to acquire land in the taiga on a long-term lease basis.

Moreover, Vladimir Vladimirovich, life inevitably confirms even the statements of Anastasia’s that seem less plausible at first glance. Personally I am absolutely convinced of our country’s splendid future. It is only a question of whether those living today will accelerate its coming or slow it down. I sincerely wish you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, along with all of us alive today, the opportunity of being the creators of this splendid future!

Respectfully,

Vladimir Megre

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