Pine forests are being plundered as Russia's nouveau riche build turreted mansions for weekend country living. Daniel McLaughlin reports from Nikolina Gora, near Moscow
When pianist Sviatoslav Richter attended the funeral of his friend, Sergei Prokofiev, there were no flowers to lay on the coffin. The great Soviet composer died on the same day as Josef Stalin, putting bouquets at a premium in Moscow.
So Richter said farewell with a single pine branch, redolent of an idyllic forest outside the city where artists and academics enjoyed a bohemian hideaway, and where top Soviet politicians later found refuge from the rigours of urban life.
But now the wooden villas of Nikolina Gora, dotted among the tall pines and wild flowers of Maslovsky forest, are being swamped by a property boom that critics say is illegally destroying a historic and environmental treasure.
Where once Prokofiev, Richter and like-minded intellectuals whiled away hot summers in their discreet dachas, Russia's brash new business elite is slashing trees to build huge constructions behind metal fences and guarded gates.
"They were romantics, and wanted to do things together," says dacha-owner Ms Yelizaveta Brilling, of the people who established Nikolina Gora in the 1920s. "Later, people came because they loved the atmosphere and wanted to fit in. But now Nikolina Gora is synonymous with prestige, and new arrivals do things differently."
For Ms Brilling, whose family has had a dacha here for 67 years, and for dozens of other Nikolina Gora veterans, the last decade has brought only destruction.
"The pines are hundreds of years old, and are being cut down every day. There used to be moose and wild boar, too. Now we can't even pick berries or mushrooms where we did because the places are fenced off.
"Even the wild flowers are disappearing because people want smooth lawns."
She co-ordinates opposition to a wave of building work that she says is destroying Nikolina Gora while earning fortunes for developers, the officials who sanction the work, and the courts that refuse to stop it.
A walk through the relict pines of Maslovsky forest by turns soothes and appals. Forget-me-nots carpet the ground, birds sing in the clear air, and central Moscow seems far more than 25 miles distant.
Then an eight-foot makeshift fence and armed guards will come into view, protecting a swathe of ground that has been cleared for the builders; or a towering confection of battlements and turrets looms up - the kind of mansion that New Russians call, without irony, kottedzhy.
About a kilometre away through the woods is the village of Sosny - "Pines" - where top Soviet officials used to unwind at a prestigious sanatorium. It is home to about 1,000 people, many of whom rail at lucrative plans being made for the future of an area where 100 square metres of land sells for some $25,000.
"The nomenklatura used to come here on holiday," says Ms Olga Nikolayeva, who was born in Sosny 70 years ago. "Now corrupt officials are selling the place for cash." The concrete skeleton of a seven-storey apartment complex now dominates Sosny's main street, and even the village car park has been sold for development, leaving the narrow roads lined with vehicles.
"Let them build nice buildings but not these monsters," Ms Nikolayeva says. "We can't walk around the forest because of these huge fences, which block the old paths and stop us getting down to the river." She has bombarded President Vladimir Putin with appeals to save the forest, which the Kremlin administration has controlled for over a decade. She suspects interested parties in the Kremlin of intercepting her letters and illegally selling land to developers.
Presidential Property Department spokesman Mr Viktor Khrekov said the Kremlin had nothing to do with the rampant building in Maslovsky forest, as most of the land was sold before Mr Putin's administration came to power in 2000.
"But we fully share people's concerns," he said. "We are looking at previous property privatisation deals, and if we find violations, we will refer them to court."
Most of the deals were clinched in the 1990s, when Kremlin property was largely handled by Mr Pavel Borodin, a flamboyant power broker whom Swiss authorities later accused of laundering $25 million in kickbacks from Kremlin renovation contracts. And, despite denials, Mr Putin's Kremlin is linked to events around Sosny and Nikolina Gora.
The Sosnovy Bor compound sits behind a gatepost where armed guards check your pass. Inside, dozens of huge luxury houses are being built. Roads are being laid on what was meadow and forest, and cement mixers and excavators rumble around a site that is surrounded by the obligatory metal security fence.
Cars from the presidential administration come and go through the gatepost, and it maintains dachas for its employees here. Locals from neighbouring Sosny are now barred from forest that was open to all until the developers arrived.
"The situation is very serious in the whole Moscow region, and outside Russia's other big cities," says Mr Mikhail Krendlin, head of forest preservation at Greenpeace Russia. "Officials see the forest as only a potential source of profit, and the new forest code passed late last year made it far easier to hand over land for development."
The revised law removed many obstacles preventing private logging firms buying and felling immense tracts of ancient Siberian and Far Eastern forest, which absorb some 15 per cent of the world's output of gases that cause global warming.
"The government planned to completely open up the forest to private ownership," says Mr Krendlin. "They have steered clear of that so far, but that is the definite trend. I'm not optimistic about the future."
Few people here expect officials to help save the forest, but Ms Nikolayeva is sure who should answer for the destruction. "This land belongs to the presidential administration, so Putin should take responsibility for what is happening here."