Word: sergiyev
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...region, shares Korotkov's dim view of the government plan. "Realistically, I'm not sure that the funds will reach all of the factories," he says. But even if they do, not all of the country's handicrafts are produced in the small factories that dot rural Russia. In Sergiyev Posad, the historic home of the nesting doll, many people still paint dolls in their living rooms and kitchens. While the government says it aims to save a traditional Russian art form, the artisans who still do the work in the most traditional way may be the ones who suffer...
Under the white walls and blue-and-gold cupolas of the Sergiyev Posad monastery, the row of vendors selling nesting dolls and other traditional Russian handicrafts is noticeably shorter this summer. Usually the cheap folding tables, set up in a double row outside the spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church, are surrounded by tourists snapping up the iconic egg-shaped souvenirs, made of smaller and smaller wooden dolls hidden one within the other. But on a recent Thursday afternoon, there were only about a dozen people looking to buy. At one table, Olga Isakova waited on her first customers...
...Outside the Sergiyev Posad monastery, the women selling nesting dolls are also skeptical about the industry's future. "The government's plans rarely help," says Yelena (who declined to give her last name), a handicrafts vendor along the souvenir strip. As the women sitting in their lawn chairs nearby nod their heads in agreement, she adds, "If they really want to help, they should increase our pensions." If Russia's handicrafts industry collapses, a 120-year-old tradition could begin to fade and pensions could be all that these women - and thousands of dollmakers - have left...
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