Perm, Russia EVS Story - Sinead Walsh
European Voluntary Service
EVS in Perm - Sinead Walsh 2009
It would be hard to push the borders of EVS much further than Russia's Perm region, which lies over one thousand kilometers east of Moscow, in the western foothills of the Ural mountains, the traditional geographical frontier between Europe and Asia. This seemingly remote region is home to almost 3 million inhabitants. One third of these live in the city of Perm itself, a sprawling town which was founded nearly 300 years ago, but much of whose history remains secret.
In Soviet times, Perm, with its harsh climate and isolated location, was often designated as a place of political exile, and conservative estimates suggest that at the peak of Soviet repression (1929-1953), over half a million people here were or became victims of political persecution. During the second world war, much of Russia's heavy industry, including military industry, was relocated to the region, and as a result Perm was a closed city throughout the Soviet period. Even now, almost twenty years since the Soviet Union was dissolved, many people in the town and region have never left the Russian Federation, and are surprised to meet people from foreign countries here, and to find out that there has been a steady stream of long- and short-term volunteers arriving in Perm since the mid-90s. Read on