Word: lyudinovo
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...want to take the pulse of Russia as its oil and gas boom of the past few years comes to a sudden and wrenching stop, leave behind the garish consumerism of Moscow and drive 220 miles (355 km) southwest to the small Russian town of Lyudinovo. For the first part of the five-hour trip, the road is a smooth four-lane highway that whisks you past gleaming gas stations and a brand-new Samsung TV factory. Then everything slows down. The highway turns single-track and becomes progressively rougher. For the last 20 miles (32 km), you bump along...
There's nothing flashy about Lyudinovo (pop. 47,000), whose name translates roughly as People's Town. The central square is a traffic island with a Soviet T-34 tank on a pedestal, a World War II memorial. Next to it is a farmers' market, where local babushkas with woolly hats and dodgy teeth sell homegrown carrots and potatoes for 10¢ a kilo. But look closer and it's clear that even Lyudinovo isn't frozen in time. An emporium that opened a year ago sells South Korean refrigerators, French yogurt and fake Italian pumps. Several houses are being built...
...more. The cable factory laid off 40 people and cut pay 15% for those who remained. At least they're being paid: the machinery factory nearby is two months in arrears. "People woke up one day, and everything had changed," says Ivan Pronin, editor of the local paper, the Lyudinovo Worker. "It's like a hurricane blew through here...
...Lyudinovo's woes are not exceptional. The markets of the huge exporting firms that are the foundation of Russia's recent prosperity have suddenly dried up, and that's having an immediate effect on machinery makers and other manufacturers...
...biggest fallout has happened in cities that are wholly dependent on one big industry, especially steel or autos. In the Urals town of Magnitogorsk, a gigantic steelworks has placed 3,000 workers on forced leave. In Novolipetsk, to the east of Lyudinovo, thousands have been furloughed since Nov. 14, when the steel factory idled two of its blast furnaces. The government estimates that companies laid off about 200,000 workers in December and January, but that's probably an understatement. Yevgeny Gontmakher, an economist who heads the Russian Academy of Sciences' Social Studies Center, expects that Russia's official unemployment...